Rotex Countryside Project.

So on the 23rd of March, Rotex (ex-exchange students) had organised for some exchange students to go to the Ibicaba Coffee Farm out near Campinas. It was a nice day and I met some other exchange students.

The day started off at about 5am for Hannah, Taryin (Americans) and I. At that time I was still with the Sardilli family. We were to meet at Rio Branco (The Rotary owned school), where the bus and the Rotex coordinators would be wating, along with the other students going. Unfortunately, we were like the first ones there. And it was cold. Flipping cold. But, we weren't alone for long. Soon after, other exchange students started arriving. There were students from Belgium, Thailand, China, Japan, America, Australia (duh), Canada, Mexico, and some other countries I can't remember. But all the asian students kind of kept to themselves and stayed in a group. There were only about 10 of us from Sao Paulo going, the rest we were to pick up in Campinas on our way through. The bus ride to the farm was about 2 hours. Oh lordy.

Once at the farm, we broke off into to groups and Jany (the district chairman) came in my group so she could translate for me. Good stuff. They took us on a tour of all the historic bits of the farm, including the slave quarters, the main house, coffee production procedure. We even saw a 200 year old tree and 2 150 year old, 40 meter tall palm trees. Like woah dude. They were huge.

After the tour, we stopped for lunch. Nothing fancy, just like rice, spaghetti and some kebabs. Afterwards we had a bit of free time and some people bought out their badges. I bought out my TimTams. They were amazing. Omnomnom. And then after that some people went swimming in the pool. But not me. Stuff that. The pool was freezing. And I was too lazy to get changed.

We ended up leaving the coffee farm at about 5:30pm and I don't remember the drive home because I was asleep for it. So tired. When we arrived back in Sao Paulo, the two American girls and I waited around for Walmir (their host dad) to come and pick us up. During that time I was told that I would be moving families the next day. I was excited. Hannah and I had a week crossover in Walmir's house. Way good.

All up, it was a good day. Glad I went. Here, have some photos....
 

The slave quarters, they said there was about 200 slaves in this room. At one time. Stuff that.

 



 

 Here are two 150 year old Portuguese palm trees. Coming in at about 40 meters tall each. Bloody hell. They said the man who owned the coffee plantation planted five of these palm trees. One for each child. Most of which died from Meningitis or Tuberculosis or something like that. Sad really.

This is the 200 year old tree! Ohmygod, do we even have any trees in Australia this old? I mean white folk wern't even in Australia yet. Intense

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A coffee branch? Isn't it so green and pretty?

 



 

 This is where they used to sort the coffee beans... from the leaves. Oh what a tedious job that would have been.

 

Me and Jany on top of the watch tower. You can see the whole farm from here. They used to post watches here to make sure all the slaves were working. Flip, it was a steep stairway up.

 

This is where they packed and sorted the coffee into grades. The machine still works.