Trabalho Voluntario (Pronounced Truh-ball-you Vuh-loon-tar-ee-oo)

Sunday began my first day of volunteer work. I’ve been here nearly 10 months and finally realized how selfish I’ve been. Yes, I’ve given time here and there to help individuals I know or taken a bit of time out of my day to answer directions or help someone on the street, but never have I actually volunteered my time for an organization. Except perhaps infancy, I am sure this is the longest span in my life that I’ve gone without volunteering (since my parents are in fact ministers) and I feel a bit like something's missing.

So Sunday I went. I woke up early (for me on a Sunday!) at about 10:30, took a shower and prepared to leave. I met a couple of friends at my university about a 25 minute walk away from my house. We left at 12:00 for the bus stop, waited for the right bus to come, and then took a 35-40 minute bus ride to the end of the line.

From the end of the bus line, someone came and picked us up. Unfortunately, there were a lot of us and little space, so we crammed 5 people in the back seat and 2 people in the front. It was almost an hour ride to the destination… and a long, hot hour ride at that!

When we arrived at the community of Copão Rodavante (or something like that...), we came to a church. There, the church gives space to the community to have English classes from 14:00-17:00 every Sunday. The people come, ready and eager to learn English because, though it’s required to be taught in all schools here in Brazil, the public schools have such poor funding and education that the students learn nothing. Most beginning students in the volunteer program can hardly introduce themselves in English let alone communicate graver issues and they have been "studying English" for years in public schools. Here is a picture of the church:



We arrived and set up for classes. They were short a volunteer professor today so I got to work with the Advanced Elementary Class! I teach English regularly here in Brazil, so volunteering to teach lessons certainly wasn't a problem. Since it's an 8 or 9 hour commitment in one day, the program works on a rotation basis, so the volunteers come once a month to teach. Each class has about five different professors that rotate through. My turn to volunteer will come again in a month! Here is a picture of a volunteer professor (who can be anyone who speaks English well enough to teach it) setting up for an Elementary Class:



I stayed in a class with two students, Maria and Amanda, who were both shy and struggling with English, yet eager to learn. Maria was very timid and hard to get to talk while Amanda was excited to talk but so nervous the words just couldn't come out. Their classmates did not make it to the class that day unfortunately. However, I had a great time with those two.

After the three hour class, I introduced myself to some of the other English students in some of the other classes who had never met a native-English speaker before. While most of them could only ask in English "How do you spell your name?" and "What is your favorite color?" since they were a very basic class, they took advantage of my Portuguese and soon began asking about my opinions of Brazilian men (a somewhat awkward topic...), the Iraq war, the death penalty and more. It was intense but they were so excited to meet an American and see what an American thinks. I really felt welcomed and appreciated.



After the classes, we piled back into the car to make the ever-long trip home. I was exhausted, but it was a good day.