After a largely uneventful, quite bumpy landing in Lisboa, and eleven hour travel I arrived in the middle of nowhere in Carvoeiro, Portugal. Although, really hard to reach, the whereabouts of the hotel are just beautiful; a room with a view over a bay and the adjacent ocean. Temperatures also far above the current Dutch ones, which after such a long time let me feel how it is to wear a t-shirt again :D. Yesterday, the day after my arrival, we already had one day of conference, and surprisingly, a really interesting one. Especially, the enthousiasm with most of the presenters is amazing to see, and maybe it’s also because it’s the first conference really related to my own work. Finally, seeing some different perspectives on m-learning is really refreshing, especially when realising that on most of the previous conferences/winter/summerschools I was kind of a black sheep in the family; almost the only one doing something mobile. The afternoon was very very nice, we had a guided tour of the vicinity of the Hotel and visited two towns, Lagos and Silje, both pitoreske and quiet Portuguese cities. Most of the time, I spend in good company of Guila(Italian) and Heloisa (Brazilian), and had an amazing time in the evening, during the conference dinner, when the wine rose to our heads and yours truly was even convinced to take part in one of the traditional Portuguese folklore dances (and yes I sucked at it, but it was great fun). Today, the second day of the conference already seems promising again, and I can only hope it will be something like Yesterday. I also hope we will have some time to see some more of the surroundings of the hotel, which seem very pretty. I’ll try to upload some pictures soon for your enjoyment, so stay tuned….
12th Apr, 2008