“Student from Brazil awaits first snow” from the August 24, 2024 Door County Advocate
Glaucia Delgado and her American parents Glen and Joyce Gerdman. —Henry Shea
Student from Brazil awaits first snow
By HENRY SHEA
If you note, around Ephraim, a slim, dark haired and well tanned young woman who is just a little hesitant in her handling of the English language chances are you have met Glaucia Maria Soares Delgado of Volta Redonda, Brazil.
Rio deJaneiro, once Brazil’s capital city but now supplanted by Brasilia, further inland on the upper plains, is only one half an hour by car from Glaucia’s home.
Though Rio is one of Brazil’s largest cities, her own Volta Redonda has a population of 300,000. It is built in part around the mammoth steel plant “Companhia Siderugica Nacional” built there to take advantage of the valuable iron and manganese deposits which exist in the country.
There her father Plinio Antonio Delgado serves as an interpreter and translator; the plant attracts many consultants both American and European and it is standard practice for factory management to keep up to date on steel processes, many available only in technical papers in English, German or Swedish.
Glaucia says she is starting a one woman campaign to spread knowledge of Brazil among her future schoolmates, many of whom, she finds, view it as mostly jungle with here and there a lonely gaucho herding a few cattle.
It is true that Brazil is large. It has 3,287,195 square miles of territory shared by a population in 1950 of 51,980,000 and obviously increased since then. At one time Brazil was an important source of rubber, from trees found growing wild, but the use of synthetics has superseded natural rubber for its greatest use, auto tires.
Brazil also produces luxury hardwoods for expensive furniture and cabinet making, gold and industrial diamonds are still working industries.
Another mistaken notion Glaucia wants to dispel is the one indicated by the question “Do you have cars, TV and everything?” South America has long been a market for European automakers and appliance manufacturers. Nowadays Sears has a thriving chain of retail outlets throughout South America and most major suppliers of consumer goods have outlets there.
Right now Glaucia is somewhat amazed at all the activity surrounding small towns such as those that make up most of Door county. She will find, of course, that this tends to simmer down after Labor Day but by that time she will be involved in her senior year at Gibraltar high school. Actually she has completed one half of her senior year in a Brazilian high school. There the school term begins in February, ends in December. Now her main efforts are toward getting a reasonable command of English, in which, although her mother is a teacher of English in the Escola Secundaria (High school) she has had little formal training. Her major interests in school are biology, chemistry and to a lesser degree, mathematics and she hopes to continue in college by majoring in one of the first two subjects.
Glaucia comes from a large family and has just heard from her older sister, also an A.F.S. exchange student, that she, Marcia Regina Soares Delgado, has just arrived in Maryland to begin her years stay with temporary parents.
Below Glaucia in descending order of age are: Helen Cristina, Anaisabel, Ana Claudia and Rusangela, all having Soares as their third name. Glaucia notes that besides his translation and interpreting work her father also teaches evenings, courses in English Literature, American spoken English, as a professor in the Universidade Ciencas e Letras (Sciences and Letters) of Barra Mansa.
Fruit such as cherries, strawberries and blueberries were unknown to Glaucia before she arrived. Bananas, papayas, guavas and pineapples are the common fruit in Brazil in addition to oranges.
Shortly after she arrived she prepared for the Glenn Gerdmans of Ephraim, who are her temporary family, what she termed a “Bolo do Palate” a kind of mashed potato dish with a filling of tuna, seasoned lightly with garlic and onion.
She herself prefers fish to meat which is not eaten in Brazil to the degree Americans are accustomed to. There breakfast is rarely more than toast or a roll, and coffee. The noon meal is the major one, practically always using rice and beans in some form and an evening meal is light, soup and a sandwich or a salad. Dessert is most often fruit. Glaucia finds she likes a heartier breakfast, light lunch and the main meal in the evening, in line with American customs.
Musically Glaucia finds herself at home here. She commented that while the Brazilian national dance is the samba, a traditional musical form of Portugese origin with overtones from Africa and the Carribean, rock music is no stranger being especially prevalent during the Carnival time, the traditional pre-Lenten celebration in most Latin countries.
She tried the local disco several nights ago in company with the Gerdmans and had no difficulty adapting to the rhythms. She was most gracious during this interview, conducted with the help of a basic Portugese grammar book and some previous knowledge of Spanish.
The spoken Portugese has a slightly depressing effect on the writer since he went to high school in an East coast city with a large Portugese population and, as a 130 lb. sophomore aspirant for right end of his high school football team, was a favorite object of workouts by two senior guards, Manuel and Joseph Carvalho. who, to say the least, used him sorely and made taunting remarks as they did so, in Portugese, which they still spoke at home.
Glaucia will shortly be introduced to American football. She is more used to soccer. After that comes the big surprise which she anticipates with much curiosity, snow, which she has never seen. Possibly she will also be involved in skiing where she will meet an old friend, Carnauba wax, which comes from a palm tree found mostly in Brazil.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by Henry Shea
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/henry-shea