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After a week, I seem to be adapting to the heat. The temperature has been remarkably constant over the days. 32-33 at the hottest point - 18 at the lowest overnight. As I walked to the venue yesterday it was close to 30 but It didn't seem as hot as previous days.
The evenings are beautiful. Usually mid-20's by the time the sessions would be over I would have loved to walk back each evening but I just wasn't comfortable with the safety factor even though I was assured it was perfectly safe.
As an aside, even though the temperature reaches the mid to high 30's for most of the year, air conditioning is not common. Few businesses and very few homes will have it.
Yesterday, I had a long Board meeting and the Convention closed last evening with a concert after the closing with a Brazilian singer who is quite renowned here. I caught a bit of it but I haven't caught the Brazilian habit of the evening beginning at 11. It would have been nice to stay for it all but I was exhausted.
The Convention itself was a wonderful expression of Brazil but these things are always about the people.
Often at events like these, the circles you move in are small and in events like this one you tend to stick to tighter groups based on nationalistic lines. From my observations, that was true for event, especially among the Americans. Except for one small group, the Canadians.
I met more people and had my picture taken with more groups and individuals than I can count. And it was all about one small insignificant item that proved huge - the small Canadian flag pins. And the couple from Nova Scotia, who were the geniuses behind the idea, had many more people approach them. I was an accidental beneficiary.
People would track us down in groups large and small, especially the younger groups. Young children would always be offered a pin but it was the 15-25 year olds that were most common. I think that about 1,000 would have fit into that group and we probably met at least 1/3 of them.
With the teenagers it was common to be approached by groups of a half dozen or more who would indicate us with questions. Usually there was at least one in the group that could speak English who could act as an interpreter. They had all kinds of questions about the country and almost all of them wanted group pictures. Like teenagers everywhere the pack was important.
With the 20 year olds, groups of 1 or 2 were more common and most of them spoke English. And the conversations often tended to the economic and often for extended periods. Not entirely surprising considering the demographics.
In the almost 450 pins were given out plus a number of paper flags. We probably did more for Canadian-Brazilian relations in the last 4 days than the government has done in a long time.
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