More on the 70 East Timorese going to study in Brazil

This article in Portuguese is the last of the few I had to write about on East Timor and the Portuguese language. I did have another but it was more or less a duplicate of another one; this one touches on a subject mentioned in the last post but has more information.

A group of 70 students from East Timor will go to Brazil in March to study at the Universidade Federal da Integração Luso-Afro-Brasileira (Federal Lusa-Afro-Brazilian University of Integration) in Ceará. Brazilian Ambassador in Dili Edson Monteiro told the Lusa news agency that: "After a process of selection, in which we were aided by the Universidade Nacional de Timor-Leste (National University of East Timor, or UNTL), the first group of 70 East Timorese students will leave for Brazil in March."

According to the ambassador, the students will be in Brazil for a period of three years, returning after that to East Timor to finish their last year at the UNTL.

Edson Monteiro also said that 30 university teachers were to soon arrive in Dili to give lessons in all the faculties of the UNTL.

"It's the first time that something of this dimension is being done, and coincides with the first year where UNTL will give courses in Portuguese. In the next year it will have two classrooms to study Portuguese and in four years it will be the language of use of the university, as the law of education in East Timor requires", he said.