Another busy day.  Our morning started with a tour of Salvador.  We visited a market and had a chance to see some churches that were built in the 1700s.

I really liked this staff but there was no way I could get away with bringing it home on the plane.

The vendor told me it was made out of a sheep’s skull.

Art is for sale all over the place.  I liked this one in particular.

Art was available many shapes and sizes.

Policeman came along with our large tour group.  I think they were there to clear away people begging and making a bad impression on their city.  They aren’t as scary as they look in the picture.

I found something to buy at this stall.

There were many t-shirt designs to choose from.

This one of the churches we visited today.

These tiles are over two hundred years old. They were brought over all the way from Portugal. This church has the largest collection of Portuguese tiles in South America.

In the afternoon we listened to a couple of presentations about ways to get teachers to change how they teach their students. I know there are at least 400 teachers from around the world who are here right now that have a pretty good handle on that.

Part of the afternoon was spent working in small groups to make a lesson that we could all work together on. I’m very luck to be working with a dynamic group of teachers.  They are from Greece, South Africa and Canada.

Tomorrow is the last day of the conference. We have to set up our booth again and visit everyone else’s booth.  The idea is for us to pick a booth as “Teacher’s Favourite”, so we get another chance to see everything.  Each country will cast a ballot of their top three choices.

I have it on good authority that it snowed it Ottawa today.

No snow here. It was 33 degrees and sunny. I had to put on my sunscreen twice.

Yippee! We finally got our display set up. 

There are lots of pictures of students on the display.  

This is Mr. Toft’s badge. It’s very humbling to get to wear a badge like this all day.  There educators from all over the world doing amazing things like bringing schools to places where there were none. One teacher in Africa has her students taking pictures of local plant life and finding medicinal value in them.

Here are a very few of the other projects:

South Africa

Mexico

Sweden

Singapore

Last night we were treated to a spectacular demonstration of martial arts, drumming and dance.

It was hard to get a good picture of the people doing martial arts because they moved so quickly!

The drummers, singer…

…and dancers.

Today also included a speech from the governor of Bahia, kind of like hearing a speech from our provincial premier.  We also hear from the head of the education part of Microsoft.  Mr. Toft and I even made it into one of the slides of Michael Golden’s presentation:

See the red shirts in the bottom right corner?

That’s Mr. Toft and me!

We recorded people saying their name and where they are from as they visited our booth and had them add music.  I’ll add it to this blog once I add some final touches to it.

I hope everyone is doing well.  Please write and say hello.  I’d love to know how and what you are all doing.

We are starting to meet a few teachers from around the world.  Today I met teachers from England and Scotland.  We were told that the Canadian team is the biggest, with 17 teachers.  The rest of the countries average 5 teachers each.

This morning all of the teachers went to the market.  It was about a twenty minute cab ride from here.  We got to experience how to barter for things.  I’m proud to report that I was able to get the price lowered on some pictures by about 20 Reals. 

Once again we were struck by the contrast of rich and poor.  One moment you would see very modern looking marinas, hotels and houses and the next second you would see large rundown areas like this one:

We later went up an outdoor elevator to see a little more of the city.  Lots of people were trying to sell us ribbons and water and the like.  Some were pushier than others.   

More pictures from the day:

Our neighbouring hotel has quite the outdoor pool.

This was taken near the market.  I could help but be struck by the contrast of people cleaning around the sleeping man on the sidewalk.

Mr. Toft and I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to dress up.  The people who were organizing this really enjoyed their work.

Thank to Talia in Mr. Toft’s class for letting me know these actors’ names, Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart.  While I did catch a glimpse of them at Sao Paulo airport yesterday, two other teachers got autographs, pictures and video.  Here’s what Ms. Deyenberg wrote about it:

As we were waiting in line at customs I looked up to see Taylor Lautner (that is probably spelled wrong and my grade 5 girls could easily fix it) and Kristen Stewart, the New Moon stars.  Jodi was brave enough to ask for an autograph and Darlene snapped this photo:

Everyone was very calm and collected in the customs area and the baggage claim area, but once they stepped out into the main waiting area there was a crowd of screaming girls mobbing them.

I was just trying to get out of the way!

It is a huge city. Eighteen million people live in it, mostly in the city core. From what I could gather, most of the middle, upper middle class people live close to the downtown in apartment buildings while the outskirts are the poorer districts. We did see quite a few homeless people sleeping in parks and under overpasses. It really seems to be a place of have or have not.

We visited the Metropolitan Cathedral, a beautiful church built mostly with money from the coffee industry. Coffee is what drives Sao Paulo and you can see evidence of the influence of the coffee barons in the architecture and decoration on the buildings in the city.

We also had a stop at a soccer stadium. According to our guide, soccer is the “real” religion of Brazil and Sundays people worship this sport across the city.

The rest of the day was spent getting to Salvadore. We had a fair bit of time in the airport before taking our two hour flight here. It was a good time to continue to catch up on sleep. We were met at the airport by women in traditional dress who tied ribbon on our arms. This is a sign of friendship and welcome. The ribbon is tied with three knots. You are to make a wish and when the ribbon falls off your wish will be granted.

This is Ms. Deyenburg getting her ribbon at Salvador airport.

It was then a 40 minute or so drive to the hotel. We arrived just at sundown and so haven’t really got a sense yet of what this city of 8 million is like. I can tell you that I am on the 17th floor of a fairly luxurious hotel with a balcony over looking the ocean. There will be no swimming in the ocean here as the shore is very rocky and the surf very strong. I will go to sleep tonight with the sound of the waves.

(I just took this picture before posting this morning – beautiful view, isn’t it?)

The food here is fabulous. Last night we went to a traditional Brazilian bar b que. Each person has a coaster with a green side and a red side. Waiters come to the table with different cuts of bar b qued meat on long skewers. You get slices of what ever you want. As long as your coaster is green side up, the food keeps coming. I was very pleased with this. There was also a huge salad bar. We will not be starving here. Every meal has been an all you can eat buffet. To try to counter the effects of all this food, Mr. Toft and I hit the treadmills this evening. I will have to run a lot of miles to work off all that I have enjoyed.

Tomorrow we will begin work on our display to impress the judges and will have an opportunity to see a little of Salvadore. So far the only other country here is the Russian delegation. There will be 60 countries represented with 400 teachers. It is very overwhelming.

Not missing the cold… a lovely 30 degrees here today,

All the best

Mrs Smith