Daily Archives: August 11, 2010

Behrend in Brazil: Getting started

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The Penn State-Behrend men’s basketball team is Brazil, on an eight-day/seven-night tour of Brazil’s most historic cities including Guaruja, Sao Bento do Sapucai and Paraty. The team will compete in three contests against Brazilian teams and co-host two basketball clinics during their travels. Chris Saltzman blogs:

The plane ride was long roughly 9 hours, but all worth it. We had about an hour and half bus ride from the airport to our hotel in Guaruja, Brazil. Guaruja is right on the beach and you can see the ocean from our hotel. We rode through the city of Sao Paulo, which was extremely eye opening. There was massive amount of poverty, which really makes you think about how good we have it back in the states.

We had practice at a community sports complex and there were little kids in awe when they saw us walk in. Our tour guide said it is not every day they get to see Americans and it is a big deal when they do. They were making our old assistant coach say words in Portuguese which were apparently bad words and they loved it. They were watching us practice as if they have never seen basketball before. They were asking for our autographs which felt pretty abnormal but it made the kids happy.

We went to a place called Hurrascaria Chapao for dinner. They were bringing around all different kinds of meat, slicing it right at the table. When the servers brought it to your table you had to use prongs to catch it as they sliced everything and anything you could have imagined. I must say that if you haven’t tried some chicken heart before you should probably get on it asap.

Brazilian meat

Next up – Surfing lessons at a local beach. Looking forward to seeing who can actually stay on the board.

Augie in China: Tourism and industry

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Augustana senior Kyle Nelson and his teammates are in China. He will be blogging regularly on D3hoops.com about the team’s journey.

After a day fully devoted to basketball, today was a change of pace and was focused on tourism and learning. Our day began at nine o’clock in the morning and we headed to an ecological garden in a township on the outskirts of Wuhan. The ecological garden was a government-funded group that would bring in local farmers, free of charge, and teach them how and what to grow in the region to be successful and profitable. We wandered the grounds briefly before getting back on the bus to head to a crane factory in town.

The crane factory was one that built the massive cranes that are used to construct very tall buildings. The most noticeable thing was how bad the working environment was and the limited protection that the workers had while operating heavy machinery. The money that these employees got paid was not nearly enough to compensate for the risk they were taking. I believe their payments came to about 300 United States dollars a month.
 
After the crane factory we walked around the town a bit then headed to the tea and rice fields. Here we saw the large plots of land where they would grow and sell their products. Dr. Norm Moline, the Augustana geography professor who has been so instrumental in making this trip great, and our local guide spent some time explaining how these products worked best for this land and environment.

Tea fields

We had three more stops on our trip for the day. The first was to the government building of the township. Here we spent some time listening to one of the town officials speak about the future of the township and how it was expanding.

The next two stops were factories that were complete 180 degree turns from what he had been seeing. They were in a “High Tech Economic Zone”

The first was a company that built laser machines that served many purposes. Some examples were machines that reduced wrinkles, could help with skin cancer and could remove tattoos. The company officials explained how they were already successful in Europe, but were seeking to gain FDA approval so they could begin sales in the United States. One of the employees demonstrated the use of the machine on assistant coach Larry Schulte, but everyone was rather skeptical if it actually had any effect. Finally, the last stop on our non-stop tour was a factory that produced goods ranging from popsicles to baby formula. We were taken inside of their warehouse and watched the assembly line workers package and make these good that were shipped to all corners of China.
 
Overall, it was a very informative day and a good learning experience to see how business operated in a foreign nation.
 
Off to Xi’an in the morning!
 
— Kyle Nelson