BRAZIL FACT SHEET JANUARY TERM, 2012 So Paulo (and Rio de Janeiro) Br. Mark McVann, F.S.C., Ph.D.

. Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, Group Leader Tel.: 925-631-6128 (home) 1/ Airfare Fares are high this year, between $1,200 and $1,400. You book your own ticket. Make sure that you arrive in Sao Paulo (GRU is the airport code) on Wednesday, Jan. 4th before noon, if possible. I will meet you at the airport and get you the parish where we will be staying. 2/ Visa & Insurance Brazil requires a visa that must be stamped in your passport before you leave the US. You will not be permitted to board the plane without the visa. The visa costs $130 (I think). If you do not already have a passport, you must also take into account the expense of acquiring one (some non-US citizens may not need a visa). You may visit the website of the SF Brazilian Consulate General for information about visas. You will apply ONLY for a tourist visa (not for a volunteer visa as those are granted in Brasilia, not at the consulate). We will use a visa service to procure the visas. There is a charge of $39, but it saves a real headache. The College requires that you have insurance for your time abroad. There is a brochure in the Jan Term Office that provides all the information. The overseas insurance coverage is something like $100 for 30 days. If you can provide proof that your insurance covers you outside the US, youre not required to buy that offered by SMC, but you must have insurance one way or another. 3/ Room and Board: You will be living in plain but adequate quarters provided by a Catholic parish in Sao Paulo. There are either two or three meals a day provided (depending on our schedule for a particular day). Laundry services will also be available. 4/ Other Costs The r/t between Rio Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (in a comfortable bus) is about $100. There will be group activities that will cost some money: well go out to dinner together as a group two times (once in Sao Paulo [the welcome] and once in Rio [the farewell]). Well also visit the occasional museum and undertake other group activities including a visit to Aparecida do Norte, the major Marian shrine in Brazil. In addition, at the end of our time there, I will buy small gifts to thank the

people who will have been taking care of us. All these expenses must be paid up front. Therefore, all group members should give me a check in the amount of $800. Out of this I will buy the SP-Rio welcome & farewell dinners, Sao Paulo to Rio and Aparecida bus tickets and cover some group expenses such as food and laundry service provided by the parish as well as the supplies we need for the project in the church. About a hundred dollars will pay for some group activities like museum visits; another hundred dollars or more will go the purchase of items we need to do the work: we will buy paint, brushes, work gloves, sandpaper, dropcloths, and other supplies used to paint in the church (and perhaps another site) where we volunteer. Any of these items that you can bring with you (e.g., work gloves) will save some money. The extra will be used to cover emergencies (which I hope we wont have) and unexpected expenses (which I know we will have). 4/ Ground Transportation: We will be living at the work site, but many days we will take the Metro, it costs R$3.50 (I think). So, r/t will be R$7.00; you may take the twice a day to go to shopping centers or other places. Plan then, on about $6-7 a day on local transportation. All told, youll probably need to spend about $100-$125 on public transportation the twenty days we are in Sao Paulo, depending, of course, on how much you use the metro, but this is a good ballpark figure. 5/ There will also be activities like entertainment on weekends (e.g., going out or late-night snacks at a local eatery). These are, of course, on your own account. RIO DE JANEIRO Except for our farewell dinner, all expenses in Rio de Janeiro are personal, including the hotel in Copacabana which will cost about $50 a night (about $200) for four nights. The trip up to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain, should you decide to go (and you should) is about $25; its about the same to visit the famous Christ statue (Corcovado). In Rio, all your meals will be taken out, so you need to take that into consideration as you plan for your four days in Rio. Breakfast is supplied by the hotel, but lunch and dinner have to be bought. You can shop at a grocery store to buy lunch and make it on the beach or tote it with you on a trip downtown. And dinners, of course, do not have to be lavish affairs; there are plenty of decent places to eat with good food and very reasonable prices. It is, therefore, difficult to say what the four days in Rio will cost, but minimally it will run about $400, that is, about $150 a day, perhaps a conservative estimate because youll probably want to buy souvenirs, too.

We may want to plan activities as a group in Rio, e.g., visit La Salle University in Niteroi, a town across the bay from Rio (highly recommended); tour downtown (the magnificent modern cathedral, other landmarks) and the old city with lunch at the famous Confeiteria Colombo (also highly recommended); visit the Botanical Gardens, Historical Museum, etc. However, the time in Rio is not scheduled: you can sit on Copacabana Beach for four days and four nights if you want to. Some may want to go to Niteroi, others not; some may want to see downtown, others notokay, whatever. So, the estimated total for the CSI trip to Brazil comes to: Airfare Visa & Insurance supplies r/t SP-Rio group activities Metro Expenses in Sao Paulo for 20 days (estimated @ $10) Days in Rio @ $125 per diem, including hotel TOTAL $1,300 (?) $ 250

$ 800 (paid to Br. Mark) $ 120

$ 200

$ 500 $3,170

This means that you should plan on a grand total of about $2,000 (excluding airfare) to make sure youre completely covered in Brazil. Some people will spend more than others on things like long distance phone calls, souvenirs, food, etc. Your personal expenses are, of course, hard for me to gauge. But the estimate of cost here is very reasonable: room & board, laundry service; meeting lots of wonderful Brazilians and helping them by working to improve their surroundings. Youll have twenty days in Sao Paulo, one of the worlds most exciting cities, and four days in Rio de Janeiro, one of the worlds most beautiful.

SCHEDULE: January Term 2012 Other than the arrival and departure dates, what appears below is not written in stone and we may have to make adjustments based on various factors, including the weather. Well be in Sao Paulo during their summer and it rains, sometimes so heavily that well just be stuck at home for a day. This is how the days will generally shape up: Arrival Visit work site; and Avenida Paulista begin work visit Pinocoteca free day work visit Aparecida do Norte free day work free day depart for Rio depart for Sao Paulo and home to USA PRACTICAL PLANNING MONEY: Check with your bank to make sure that your ATM card will work in Brazil. If you have more than four characters in your PIN, the card will not work, so get a card with only four characters. Do not bother with travelers checks except, perhaps, as an emergency stash. Travelers checks can be cashed only at banks and with a passport, i.e., they are a hassle to use. You can buy some Brazilian reales if you want to before leaving the US, but there are ATMs in the airport at Sao Paulo and all over town. January 4 January 4 January 5 January 7 January 8 January 9-13 January 14 January 15 January 16-20 January 22 January 23 January 27 Wednesday Wednesday Thursday Saturday Sunday Mon-Fri Saturday Sunday Mon-Fri Sunday Monday Friday

PACKING: Remember that you have to carry whatever you pack. Therefore, pack lightly. We will be in Brazil during their summer. Both SP and Rio can be very warm, but SP, at a higher elevation, is somewhat cooler. Have a light jacket for cool evenings in SP, and rain gear (poncho, decent umbrella, etc. as it rains A LOT). Also extremely useful is insect repellent. Off or another reliable brand is highly recommended, especially for Rio (dengue is a real problem there). Also--very important--is a good sun screen lotion. This is a must for Rio--the tropical sun really burns. As we are a group of foreigners in Brazil, people will notice us. Both men and women should dress modestly so as not to attract unwanted attention. Bring old clothing and shoes that you can throw away when the work projects are finished. We will make arrangeme3nts for laundry service. You should have clothing for a week, but not much more. Please have sturdy, no-nonsense shoes as well be on our feet a lot. Remember: you have to carry whatever you pack!! SAFETY: There is nothing to be afraid of in Brazil. The country is beautiful and the people are wonderful. However, you cannot go on automatic pilot there. Always be alert and aware of your surroundings. In my eight or nine years of bringing student groups to Brazil, I have never had any trouble. But anything can happen, of course, so you have to keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Always carry with you the address and phone number of the place were staying; never carry with you lots of cash or extra credit/debit cards, do not wear jewelry, and do dress modestly: do nothing to make yourself a target of unwanted attention. THE WORK & DAILY SCHEDULE: In Sao Paulo we work at a Catholic parish in a working class neighborhood, several blocks form a large and well-known slum (favela), which we will also visit a couple of times with parish workers. The work itself involves cleaning and painting schoolrooms attached to the parish hall. This is just plain old manual labor. We work from about 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon and we eat lunch at the site. (We may also paint parts of an old folks home in another part of town. This depends on various factors Ill know more about when we get to Sao Paulo.) Evenings are generally unplannedyoull be tired after working all day--but we may from time to time do something together. You will, of course, need time for reading, reflection, and for writing in your journal. There is a huge shopping center called Tatuap just a ahort bus ride and three or four fast subway stops away and you can get whatever you may need there.

It is extremely important to be punctual: the group will depart for work and arrive at home together, eat and work and live together. Please be very conscientious about being where you should be on time. We will form something of a mission community, a group dedicated to a particular work for a specific period of time. It will be, I know from previous experiences, a most valuable part of the January term. When in Sao Paulo and Rio we will have meetings from time to time to plan work on the project(s), to plan an evenings outing, to discuss and reflect on our experiences, and any matter requiring the groups attention. THE RESIDENCE: The house where we will reside belongs to the parish church named Nossa Senhora Aparecida, and there are stores handy. The house itself will be plain but comfortable enough. The address and phone number: Paroquia Nossa Senhora Aparecida Rua Sao Vitorio 469 Vila Nhocune CEP 03561-000 Sao Paulo SP Brazil Church tel.: 011-55-11-6742-7835