In 10 days, Christine Liggio, of Cooperstown, will be leaving for Brazil as part of Rotary International's Group Study Exchange Program.

Liggio, 29, is part of a five-member team from Rotary district 7170 which will leave April 30 to spend a month traveling around Rotary district 4500 in Brazil on a vocational and cultural exchange program.

"This is kind of all unknown to me," Liggio said Tuesday. "I don't know what to expect. I'm really looking for a great personal and professional experience."

Liggio said the program is designed to provide young professionals with an opportunity to see how their vocation is practiced in foreign countries as well as enable them to share information between members of two diverse Rotary districts.

Liggio moved to the area from Queens when she was young and graduated from Ithaca College in 1998. She moved to Cooperstown three years ago and has worked for the New York State Historical Association and Farmers' Museum for the past five years and currently is employed as the public relations director there.

"I really enjoy what I do," she said.

She said the bulk of the visit will entail going on vocational visits - time spent on the job with professionals in her trade - and visiting significant cultural destinations around the country. She said they will be traveling to seven cities and living with eight different host families.

Liggio said she hopes to find out more about how public relations work is practiced in Brazil and thinks she'll be able to apply what she learns there to her job at NYSHA.

She said she became interested in the program after hosting a GSE program member visiting from Brazil last year.

Although she doesn't speak Portuguese, Liggio said she is working with a local woman who speaks it and is practicing the basic "travel phrases" necessary to get by. The team is also preparing for the trip by meeting regularly to plan their presentations and to become acquainted with one another.

The group is made up of Liggio, team leader Robert Barradas, Zoren Bullock and Tamar Melen from Ithaca, and Jenny Rosenzweig from Oneonta.

The group will also make between 15 and 20 presentations to Rotary groups while in Brazil, focusing on their occupations and discussing what life is like in Rotary's region 7170.

"Our exposure is to South America is a kind of exposure to something totally different," Barradas said at a presentation to local Rotarians Tuesday afternoon. He said the majority of their time will be spent in Recife, a city on the eastern coast of Brazil. He said the exchange program is mostly about exchanging culturally with different parts of the world, but said he hopes to also "unruffle a few feathers ruffled by our current president."

In addition to the presentations in Brazil, the group will also be creating a website with a "blog" - an online journal - where they will share their experiences while still on the trip. Their website and blog can be found at http:/7170to4500.tripod.com/.