Brazil Feb/March 2007 Day 8

It was another interesting day today.  We were in the clinic in the morning finishing our last patients.  Raj and I saw a patient that I had seen on the surgery course here back in August.  At that time she had virtually no bone to place implants.and Prof took over the surgery.  Now at the time of fitting the teeth look very long.  Raj did some reshaping to improve matters.  The problem could have been resolved with a bone graft at the time of surgery but she elected not to do that.

Our patient has her bridge tried in

At the end of the morning we had a discussion with Kelly and Dr Vani to close the prosthetics course.  They have both been great, so here's my bit of Portuguese that I promised Kelly.

"Muito obrigado Kelly e Vani para tudo. Nós realmente apreciamos o que vocês fazem e esperamos vê-las outra vez. Obrigado para toda a ajuda com português. Aprendi muito nos últimos dias"

We went for lunch here every day.  Here is Yih Jia watching my hat

This is the barbecue in the restaurant

We had lunch in the usual place and then I went for a wander around Pindamonhangaba.  I had promised my Portuguese teacher Francesca that I would buy some Brazilian magazines and newspapers for her to use for teaching so I went to find a newsagent.  I then spent a few minutes sitting in the main square watching the world go by.

Click this link for a short movie of Pindamonhangaba main square.  You can also hear the music they play from speakers around the fountain.

In the afternoon we had a final lecture from Rosana about research methods and the way that scientific papers should be presented in Brazil.  This would be required to gain a specialisation certificate in implantology from the University.  There has been quite a lot of confusion about this which I think Nadeem will be clearing up in due course.

There was a suggestion earlier in the week that we would undertake a patient survey and use this as an example to construct an article in the Brazilian format.  Rosana hadn't realised that we were only here for a week and so that never happened.

Yih Jia in the clinic.  She was telling me how she came on her own from Malaysia to take dentistry at Dundee. 

Another thing that didn't happen was the trip to Sao Paulo.  Nadeem couldn't hold his final meeting with Prof until Tuesday morning and so the whole thing was called off.  So instead of travelling to Sao Paulo on Monday evening we went to a place called Campos do Jordao.  This was the most amazing place.  It is up in the mountains about an hour from here.  Strangely it is like being in Switzerland.  You would never know from the photographs that we were in Brazil.  It doesn't feel like Brazil either.  The temperature up in the mountains is cooler and this helps to explain what is going on.  It seems that there used to be a sanitorium there because of the cool temperatures.  The town then grew up around it, themed like a mountain retreat in Europe.  We stayed for about 3 hours, took a look around the place and had a meal.  We paid two taxi drivers to drive us there, wait around for us and then bring us back.

You can see from the sign here that the street is called Boulevard Geneve

Yih Jia, Me, Margaret, Mahommed and Dierdre in Campos do Jordao

Yih Jia, Raj, Dierdre, Margaret and Mohammed

We all had a drink in this bar called "Baden Baden".  Raj had two fairly stiff cocktails and felt a bit funny

At the time of writing it's Tuesday morning and we are all having a leisurely pack up and preparing to leave the hotel at about 5.00 pm.  I'll probably add a final page to the diary when I get home but in the meantime thanks to everyone who has been looking at the site.

To finish this part of the diary I need to address the subject of muffins.  My son Alastair thinks that all I say in my dairy is stuff like "today I had a muffin".  It isn't true but just to please him here is a picture of the Brazilian type muffins available at breakfast.