My last days in Bahia...see you again 2012!

21st September - 24th October: Massi in Bahia
Incredible but true, more than a month has already gone and my time in Bahia is over, at least for this year.
The last places I visited were Eunapolis, Porto Seguro, Arraial  D´Ajuda and Santa Cruz Cabralia.
Very beautiful places, probably the first ones to be ever seen by Portuguese eyes in the year 1500, as Cabral arrived on these coasts.
It rained a lot,basically around 10 times every day! So I was going out with rain jacket and putting it on and off all the time. I made a wonderful 11km beach walk from Arraial to Trancoso and there were nearly no people in the beach. The only bad thing: the ocean looked dangerous with high waves and dark water, so no swimming this time. 
Thanks Bahia for the wonderful experiences and now it is to go to Rio de Janeiro!

See more pics here: Brazil Pt. 4 - Eunapolis, Porto Seguro, Arraial D`Ajuda and Santa Cruz Cabralia

Colonial building in the upper city of Porto Seguro

Wonderful empty beaches in Arraial D´Ajuda

Street art in Santa Cruz Cabralia

Sustainable Couch in Eunápolis

On Friday 21st October I had the opportunity to present Sustainable Couch for a second time in Brazil!
This happened in Eunápolis, a small city in Bahia where I surfed for 2 days the couch of the only couchsurfer there, Rodrigo. Being a sustainability professor at a federal college, he invited me to present my project in front of his class.
So during the day I tried to train my Portuguese for the event! On a late Friday evening - from 9 to 10 pm - I started giving an introduction of what CouchSurfing is (no one of them knew about it), followed by the presentation of the Vienna Sustainability Groupd and Sustainable Couch. In the end, I also presented some pictures about my sustainable surfing & volunteering experience in the Chapada Diamantina.
The audience seeemed very interested and I feld very confortable while talking. A few questions were posed, but many people were already thinking about the weekend and ran away right at the end ;-)
Overall, a very positive experience for me: I am learning more and more with every presentation!
Thanks Rodrigo for the invitation and for hosting me!

 An audience of nearly 40 people listening to my presentation on a late Friday evening!

Speaking Portuguese with the helo of Spanish, Italian, English words...and of my hands!

It is hard to leave Salvador!

It has been already 2 weeks since I have arrived in Salvador...and it is getting hard to leave this wonderful place!

I feel so at home here, with the wonderful Salvador CS community inviting me from event to event: bike rides in the park, culinary meeting, weekly meeting, theater group, etc. etc.
The people are friendly, the language sounds amazing and it feels just good to spend time with these wonderful people :-)
I spent the last 3 days in the island Morro de Sao Paulo, a real paradise on earth (fotos will follow) and I came back last night with a sunburn - I forgot to put sun prtection three times a day and only put twice, so I had to pay the consequences ;-)

Still, I know it is soon time to go on. Tomorrow I will leave Salvador and work for 10-14 days as a volunteer in an eco-project in the Chapada Diamantina, a wonderful natural park. I will leave in a mountain refuge at 1200 meters, with no electricity: Eco Project Chapada Diamantina
(in the gallery nr. 2 you can see how it looks like)

But now I am still in Salvador, and I am going to enjoy my last day here!


Brazil Pt. 2 - Salvador 26.9-2.10.2011

Presentation of Sustainable Couch in Salvador

On Thursday night I presented Sustainable Couch during a CS language exchange meeting called Tower of Babel. It was a great opportunity for me to show my project. Thanks to my host, Amaury, who brought a projector, I could hold my presentation with slide and pcitures.
It was my first time ever talking in front of an audience in Portuguese, so it was quite challenging but I think it worked out well.

At the end of my presentation - based on Sustainable Couch in general and on the experience of the Vienna Sustainability Group in particular - there was an interesting discussion.

Good news: the group is interested in creating a Free Box and a few people would like to create and design their own reusable shopping bags in order to avoid getting plastic bags all the time (a huge problem here).

Altogether, a wonderful evening with nice people and I am looking forward to organising more meetings like this!