Moments in the city of Joao Pinheiro (Gilles is writing & Britt checking the grammar).

On Sunday morning, we left Patos de Minas for the city of Joao Pinheiro. Waking-up was a bit difficult for Britt and me because we partied late the night before at Festamilho, the corn festival of Patos de Minas... (a short night and a cachaça shot too many).... During the journey to Joao Pinheiro, we slept an hour in the van.

My hostfather in João Pinheiro is a banker and is the president of the Rotary club of the city. He's 27 years old and works in the federal bank "Caixa". This bank is specialized in "housing credit" (crédit hypothécaire in french). This It reminds me a lot the old ASLK-CGER we had in Belgium in the past.

After lunch, we visited 2 farms (fazenda in brazilian). The first was specialized in cows for the meat and the second one in the production of milk. We all tried to milk the cow. It was a pleasant afternoon. We spent time with 2 youth exchange students from the Rotary. One from Alaska and the other one from Germany. This Sunday was very sunny and hot so at the end of the afternoon we went swimming in the swimming pool of Britt's host family. We had dinner in a pizzeria and ate brazilian pizzas. There is a lot of cheese in Brazilian pizzas !!!! Just amazing !!! Cheese everywher, even in the crunch !!!

On monday morning, we visited a distillery of sugarcane. This company distills sugarcane to produce ethanol. This ethanol is used in Brazil as fuel for cars. Nowadays, in Brazil, 30% of these cars drive with this natural product. You can use this ethanol in its pure form but you can also buy a mix. So, at the gas station you can choose between petrol, ethanol (natural product from the sugarcane) and a mix called. This visit was really interesting because we could see the entire process of fabrication.

In the afternoon we all visited different organizations correlated with our different jobs.

I visited 2 banks. Creditpinheiro which is a cooperative bank for farmers only (a kind of Credit Agricole in Belgium). This bank is a part of a bigger group which is SICOOB. They now work only for farmers but they want to open the market for everybody in a near future. It was intersting to see how here in Brazil they are so specialized according the work-sectors and to see that they want to generalize their activities.