News March and April:

Well, time flies here around West Texas, as fast as the wind blows this spring. Yes! Dust all around! Dust storms and dirty houses. And I am realizing that my days here are also growing shorter and shorter. I had so many remarkable day here in US that is hard to remember all.

But as I hadn’t written anything this last few days, here we go for the updates. First a few weeks ago I have been invited to give a lecture in one of my friend’s Spanish class, Heath Wing. I went there to talk to his students about South Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina and the Gauchos culture. Was really nice go there to talk about where I come from. At the end of the class I gave Heath my book and because of that I had an invitation to go read some poems at the CÉFIRO’S 11th Annual Conference at the Foreign Language department at Texas Tech. It was an amazing experience showing a bit of my art and our tradition to people here, it makes me more proud of the place I come from. The acceptance of the poems was great and surprised me, and i got really happy because of that.

Easter was a blast! I had a great visit of a friend from Brazil, Adriana. We used to work together at the microbiology lab at the Agronomy College in Porto Alegre. Now a days she is living in Florida and is a Faculty at UF. Her staying here was short but enjoyable. She arrived Saturday morning and we went around TTU campus and went to a Heath’s  farm for lunch. Francesca, a friend from Italy also joined us in the trip.   Was a big Easter lunch and we went shooting discs with 20 and 12 gauge shotguns. I got some really good shots, even thought that was my first time doing that. Texas is all about horses and guns. After that we went back to Lubbock and made a really good barbecue with some of mine and Brando’s friends. We had a great time. Adriana went  back to Florida Sunday’s afternoon.

A few weeks ago I joined Dr Brady, the Horse Production professor, and her students and we went to visit two famous horse ranches. One was the Pitchfork Ranch (http://www.thepitchforkranch.com/) and than the 6666 Ranch (http://www.6666ranch.com/), two old big ranches with where the actual mixes with the history and the legacy makes you never forget about the name. The ranches are amazing, for the horse lovers the 6666 Ranch breeds something around 3000 mares (I am not sure about the numbers, but was the number that some one gave me). Their facilities are amazing, with everything for horse training, clinic, collecting stallions, working and race horses and going on. The Pitchfork Ranch

history goes to 1883 and is one of the biggest ranches in Texas. It’s  160,000 acres still under the same family since its foundation. There the branding is done in wagons, in the “old way”  roping and riding their famous gray horses. Was amazing visiting those two ranches. If you are interested, this brief video shows a little bit of the ranch.

Last week I was surprised by an invitation from Dr. Pond to go to an interview at the local radio station. We went there to the Ag Talk with Eddie Griffis in the 950 AM to talk about the exchange program, a bit of my staying here in Texas and, most important. talk about Brazil. Is always a pleasure talk about where we came from, show them with proud facts about our country. Was really enjoyable participating of the program. Unfortunately I could not put here the link for the interview because they already changed it, but I will try to find it again and put in the blog.

Now, talking about school, one of the things that I most like here are the labs. We really got to go to the duty. In the beef production lab we do things like planning management, spreadsheets but also get dirty palpating, measuring pelvic area, collecting bulls, and on and on. Yesterday in the sheep lab I almost felt back to the southern Brazil prairies, shearing sheep.

Another activity that I participated helping in the organization at the Animal Science Department was a High School Livestock Judging Contest. There are several categories of animals (sheep, cattle and hogs, different sexes and ages) and the young judges have to select 1st to 4th place (in 4 animals categories) or keep/cull four and four (8 animals categories). In this keep/cull category, the students are given some written data about the animals that they are facing and they have to choose which one they would like to keep in a situation where they are selecting, for example, heifers for breeding. What amazes me is the attendance to events like this. Is impressive. And they are forming new professionals, the kids are since young in contact with the university and  incentive the interest in this area. Was a pleasure helping Dr. Rathman and the Texas Tech Livestock Judging Team there!

I think that is all for now. See you in the next post!