Friday (Sexta - fiera) - day five

Fear not, this promises to be a shorter blog than yesterday's!

When we arrived at the CASA office we discussed where we were with our work then settled down to our assigned tasks and worked on them until lunch-time, generally making good progress. Carin took us into the Shopping Mall for lunch as some of us were interested in having some sushi. We scattered to our various preferences and I ended up with a very nice bacon and cheese stuffed crepe and salad, whilst the others had sushi and other things.

After lunch we had a general review of progress in preparation for a visit by Laerte later on. Cecilia distributed some of the work items she'd been working on and we also worked together reviewing a hypothesis model that the other Michael had prepared, and refined with Chi's help in the morning.

When Laerte arrived we discussed the item of most concern to us, getting some interviews set up for the following week.  Laerte had made some progress with that and we also discussed some other activities that might be useful to do through the week. We then reviewed our activities and progress with him before he dropped us back to our hotel around 7:30.

After a quick change we were in a taxi heading to "Instituto Ipȇ Cultural", or Ipȇ, another NGO that some of the team is working with which addresses social, cultural and environmental issues. They had invited all the volunteers to an evening of music, food and caipirinhas, which is Brazil's national cocktail, made with cachaça (a spirit made from sugar cane), sugar and lime. This was the first time I had tried these (being dedicated to the pursuit of finding the best Brazilian beer) and I found them very refreshing, not sweet as I had expected, and with very full on lime flavour.  The experts in the group said these were amongst the best they'd had, and they should know! Whilst they were enjoyable as a one-off I don't think I'll give up my beer research yet.

Ipȇ had a very strong ecological focus and had made a number of very attractive features out of recycled materials. These included a wall made of soft drink bottles filled with sand, a lamp, and the chandelier. The ends of the bottles in the wall (and column) stand out as decoration.

Large lamp, about 1.5 metres, made of strips of plastic made from bottles

Chandelier made of recycled plastic

General view of garden and entertainment area

We were very well looked after and everyone had a good time, chatting with our hosts and each other.  All too soon it was time to leave and come home - I almost made it to bed before midnight!

#ibmcsc brazil