After leaving Ottawa at 9pm on Friday night, Mr. Toft and I arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil the following morning around 9:30 am.  It was a sunny 24 degrees.

There are 17 Canadian teachers on this trip as well as two organizers from Microsoft.  The teachers are from all over Canada: Manitoba, New Brunswick, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

I’m resting up in my hotel room before heading out for a Brazilian barbecue dinner with all the teachers.  Here’s the view from my window:

A couple of interesting event to report already:

We shared our flight with members of the Brazilian Bocceball ParaOlympics.  I never considered how difficult it is to get 17 people who use wheelchairs onto a full plane.  It took awhile, but they, and their assistants did it.  When the plane took off, the whole team cheered in Portuguese and the same thing happened when we landed in Brazil.

After getting through customs at Sao Paulo airport we were greeted by many teenage girls hold signs.  It turns out they weren’t there to welcome me, but the actors who play Bella and Jacob.  Maybe you’ve heard of them.  I understand that they are very famous.  When they came out it was a mob scene.  The actors were surrounded by bodyguards who pushed there way through the screaming girls.  They even tried to push straight through my cart of luggage!  I stood firm, though.  Mr. Toft tried to get a picture, but they all came out blurry.  I’ll try to get one of the other teachers to share their pictures.

It was an interesting ride from the airport to our hotel.  Lots of people drive motorcycles here and they are very fearless.  Imagine three lanes of traffic filled with cars, trucks, taxis and vans.  It seems to be common practice for the motorcycles to drive between those lanes, but with all those cars making quick lane changes (usually just by honking the horn telling them to get out of the way), I wouldn’t want to be on a motorbike in the middle of that.

Tomorrow we all fly to Salvador where the Microsoft Innovative Teachers conference is going to be held.

I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween tonight.