Escola Americana's 70th Birthday Celebration

On March 15, EA turned 70 years old. The original school, 1935, was in a house facing Ipenema Beach. During 1937, it was officially named Escola Americana. Formerly, the school operated under the name Ms. Garland's School. Ms. Garland, who will soon celebrate her 103rd birthday, joined the birthday party last night! Somehow the stress of being a teacher didn't shorten her life span. When the Leblon campus opened in 1960, it was the only building on a block that is now filled with highrise housing apartments and hotels. The school moved to it's current location in Gavea in 1971.
The evening began with cocktails and mingling as well as some complimentary photographs by the photographer who does all of the student photos for the yearbook and school events. Many of the expats were laughing at the likeness to High School Prom the photographer added to the evening. Nonetheless, we all stood in line and smiled for our picture couple by couple.



Joe and I were laughing at ourselves while we were preparing to leave for the evening since the event required "passeo completo", which is formal attire here in Brazil. We are so used to spending days in shorts, swimwear and flip flops that dressing up in grown up clothing seemed a little uncomfortable at first. We both were very much looking forward to the night though. And felt great leaving to grab a taxi with Jen and Valdir.




Here are Jen and Valdir at dinner. They are becoming great friends to us both. Jen is the department leader of the student services department and services students in grades 6-12, and Valdir teaches French and Portuguese in the middle school. They are great people. Their one-year old daughter Sophia is a favorite little friend of Sierra's and whenever those two are together Sophia is squealing in delight as Sierra tries every antic she can come up with to get Sophia smiling. Most, if not all, attempts are successful.



A great topic of conversation last night was "the many faces of Jen". She is a very expressive person and she has a couple of signature expressions we all know her by. One involves moving her head with attitude and can't be captured in a still photo. However, another is shown here: hand moving to increase emphasis through gesture, leaning forward to highlight delivery, and fabulous full open mouth smile. So Jen.




Anyone who has heard of my initial travels to Brazil has heard of Mark McFarland, somewhat of an icon to me. I first met Mark in 1995 while student teaching at EA. I thought he rocked then. He is still here, still teaching at EA, and still Rocks! This man left AZ in the 70s with a backpack on foot and ended up in Rio de Janeiro. He's been living in Rio now for 30 years! Just a down to earth, wholesome, honest, funny, happy go lucky, fly by the seat of your pants man. I was so happy last August when I found out he was still here. I think I have a similar photo of the two of us from 12 years ago back home.

All in all the evening was wonderful. The dinner was outstanding. Our table conversation rarely fell below a small roar with laughter. The environment was exquisite. A Brazilian band played lovely background music and later full dancing music. A good time with our EA Family!