Jovens Aprendizes chat

Today Vika, Martha, Ronald, Alewa, and I went to one of the social projects in Bahia. The organization is called the Jovens Aprendizes and the group prepare the youth in job training. The organization also gives the youth a way to learn hospitality and and develop there special skills and talents in a safe environment. When we enter the project, we saw some of the students rapping, learning stage presence and performing a skit. All of those activities help the students learn what there special talents are and how they can use them in a job environment and to bring awareness to there communtiy. I watched attentively so that I could get a feel for the project. When they they were finished we all gathered in a cirlce and we had a question answer session. We covered basic Stereotypes that the youth had of Americans, politics, PARTIES, community service, ethics, and the reason behind each of us coming to Brasil. It was interesting to me that they knew so much about American culture but we hardly knew anything about theirs and we hardly know what our own goverment is doing. One of the boys brought up the issue on Americans trying to come into Brasil and take parts of the Amazon. When he said that we were all caught of guard because we never heard of such a thing going on. It brought a new persective of how we are hidden from or our country really does not care about other countries. And from that conversation we went into politics. Basically we stated that other countries know so much about our politics and our president but we know nothing about theirs and because of that I realized another reason why i am here. Yeah, the arts scratches the surface of being here but the real culture is way more than just that. And that starts with knowing as much as I can about their culture, politics, economy, and ethics as I can and thats when a true global citizen emerges. I believed that the chat was a very good learning experience, not just to get rid of some stereotypes but to also bridge the gap of knowledge ( the stuff that we know) between what we assume about Brasillian culture and what is the truth about the culture.....PS there was a party at the end...YEAH SAMBA!!!!LOL