Professional Visits...

This morning we met at the Cabildo to have a meeting with el Presidente of Tenneriefe. Some of the driving/pickup plans got confused but we all arrived in time in the center of town. We were led into a very large, very unique room where we were seated in aisles. The room was painted with frescos that show the history of the island. A few minutes of waiting led to the entrance of the President, Ricardo Melchior Navarro. Ricky (not sure that he would like that nickname that I just made up) spoke perfect English and gave us an introduction to the island, a brief history of the Cabildo and welcomed us to the area as esteemed guests. He has been in office for the past two terms (total of eight years) and is in the process of running for re-election. We learned that in the cabildo, a person can hold an office as long as they are elected. The President took questions and answered everything directly and politely. He made many comparisions with the US and spoke of sister cities, including Miami, and informed us that they have recently improved relations that will add a direct flight from Miami to Tenneriefe to try to increase tourism from the states. After his speech, we were presented with a book on the island and posed for pictures that will appear in tomorrow’s paper. The entire experience was amazing and I continued to be amazed at the royal treatment that our group is able to attain from such high level persons.
After the Cabildo, each of us went our separate ways on professional visits. Here to tell you about their visits is the group…
CATHERINE:
I had the pleasure of spending a few hours this morning with Rosina Arma Matallana, fellow teacher and President-Elect of the Rotary Club of La Laguna. She introduced me to Alfonso Ballesteros Ballester (try to say that five times fast) who is the Director of Teacher Improvement with the Ministry of Education for the Canary government. Over coffee and churros (kind of like Kristy Kreme doughnuts in pretzel form), we discussed the structure of the education system and the common European framework for instruction. I was particularly struck by the similarities between education in the Canaries and South Carolina. For example, both areas are dealing with a huge influx of immigrant students who need to learn the language of instruction. I was also interested to learn that they are implementing a European portfolio system for all languages to be taught. See Eve, I really am doing some work over here!
TONG:
At 11 am, I con Luis went to visit the department of Mathematics at University La Laguna. I met with Pablo, a former dean, now a professor of Mathematics AND the current dean. The islands have two universities, this one in La Laguna on Teneriefe and the other in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria. ULL has about 24,000 students, mostly undergraduate that come mostly from the area. There are some students who come from mainland Europe each year. Pablo and I discussed the programs, the math curriculums and the way to use technology for teaching and learning. After the meeting, I went to observe a Differential Equations class. It was an interesting experience!
BERT:
As the old retired guy, my vocational day was going back to Jose Manuel and Tati’s house and reading email, working on my part of the presentation and then having a half hour conversation with Tati and her sister Silvia. The interesting part was that they speak less English than I speak Spanish. Actually, it went pretty well. Immersion Spanish must be working!
CARLA:
I left the cabildo with Juan for the electric company. There are two power plants on Tenriefe, one old one and one new one. There is no way to connect to power from other islands nearby because the ocean is too deep. I learned there are three ways the new plant produces electricity – steam turbines, diesel engines and gas oil turbines. The new plant has a combined cycle that mixes water from the sea with combustible gases and moves sulfur and then they process the water to a pH of 7 (neutral) so it can be released to the ocean. The old lines deliver 66 kw and the new lines 220 kw. In America, we use 60 cycles, 110 Volts and in Europe the use 50 cycles, 220 Volts. It is cheaper to transport electricity in higher tension. There are 7 windmills that produce 660 w each and 53 that produce 800w each. New legislation was passed to use 2 mw windmills and Juan is working on this. 3.6% of the energy produced comes from wind – would like to be 12%. Met with Antion Lojendio, the manager of the chemical area and he took us on a tour. Juan was the plant manager for 4 years and designed the plant from construction up. The combined cycle is new since he left the plant.
CHRIS:
Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
I met with four different people. First, we discussed the different applications which are used for the scientific researchers to process there data. Condor was a specific name of one application and it actually does the data crunching for the scientists. It also keeps track of how much time each specific researcher is using it. In 2006 they used Condor for 170,000 hours but a couple of years ago they reached 900,000 hours.
The next discussion was related to the telescopes and instruments for the telescopes that are created at this institute. The telescope is in Las Palmas here in the canaries, it is currently being created and it is very similar to one in Hawaii that has been created by a company named Keck. It has a diameter of 10.4 meters. It was explained that the telescope has been created with 36 segments, each specific segment having 6 sensors and 3 actuators. All being run by software which controls how all 36 segments relate to each other when the telescope moves, so the image that is created is very clear. It took programmers 7 years to create the software that is used to operate the segments together. Spain (90%), Mexico (5%) and the University of Florida (5%) have all worked together to have respective time usage of the telescope. The telescope is planned to have the 1st look through in June and all segments will be completely finished by the end of the year.
Lastly, I spoke with a couple of IT personnel and we generally spoke about the network infrastructure, database systems and remote connection for employees. Everything seemed very similar to what we have in the United States though specific differences that I thought were directly related to the nature of business. The piece that was probably the most similar was how IT personnel dress, very similar to our typical IT personnel in the US.
NIC:
Joaquin grabbed me after the Cabildo visit and we jumped in his sweet Mercedes. He drives this car like he stole it (very fast) and cares for it like he paid 100,000 Euro for it (he came around and held the door for me so that I would not scratch the paint). We stop at El Corte Ingles for a bite to eat before my vocational visit begins. We sit down and he orders Café Cortados and breakfast sandwiches (he has anchovies and cheese and orders me jamon and cheese). After a refreshing break, we walk down the street and enter a building where we find Cuni and Associates, a small staffing and development firm that a Rotarian owns. Joaquin introduces me to the staff and hands me a map (that he drew on a napkin) and asks me to meet him there after the visit. I meet with Patricia, who is the head of training and development for the company and we sit down and discuss the various points of her position. She gives a short presentation on the various techniques that this company uses and explains the situation in terms of the labor market on the island. The entire visit was extremely interesting and I learned a lot about the customs and cultures in terms of hiring for the islands/mainland Spain.
After the professional visits, we all “reunion” at the Plaza and find Diego and Rossina who take us to the Bodega for lunch. We meet back up with Carla and Juan Linares and take a tour of this 5th century ran winery. The Monje family has owned this winery that produces Muscotel and Malvasia wines since its inception and the wines have remained the same since the vines were first planted. This family is one of the most famous wine families in all of Spain. After a brief tour of the wine cellar and fermenting process, we are shown a video and then directed upstairs where an amazing lunch has been prepared for us. Lunch is served around 3:30 and starts…of course with some wine and appetizers. After a few glasses of wine (which was remarkably good) everyone loosens up and the room gets pretty loud. During the meal, tongue twisters from 3 different languages (Spanish, English and Chinese – Thanks Tong) were yelled across the table, Juan loses something in translation that gets a huge laugh (we will tell everyone about it later in a less public forum) and Maria, another Rotarian who joined us at some point during the afternoon, makes each of us do some sort of test where we have to stand up on a chair, hold our arms out to the side, lift are leg and touch our noses….don’t worry we have pictures. The lunch was probably one of the best that we have had since we have been on the island and the La Laguna folks took great care of us.
After lunch, we were allowed to go back to our host family homes and take a break until the evening presentation. Most of us took advantage of the time off and took naps in anticipation of a late night. The La Laguna club meets at 9:30 and we were picked up from our houses around 8:30. The meeting began with a wonderful introduction from Juan Linares and our presentation (that gets better every time we present). After we did some work, Don Diego gave the most special speech to the group that brought a couple of tears to the group’s eyes. He talked about how a few days ago, he went to the airport to pick up a few people that he didn’t know and as we are getting ready to leave the north of the island, he has to say goodbye to six very close friends.Diego is a special kind of person that we will never forget. We have grown very close to the group in the north of the island and have made lots of friends that we will be sad to leave…