Gala Dinner

We went back to the hotel earlier on Tuesday in order to get ready for the Gala Dinner. A few of us ran over to the Doha Centre to get a couple of things. I couldn't stay too long because I had to get back to the hotel in order to chat with my class.

I ran back to the hotel and was able to connect with the class using Gmail chat. Unfortunately I could not see or hear the class, but they could see and hear me on the computer screen - the SMARTBoard wouldn't connect properly. I can only imagine how they class must have crowded around the computer screen to see me. Shelley was able to type in some questions as I gave the class a tour of my hotel room. It was strange talking, knowing that they could hear me, without any feedback. I always thought it would be great to try and teach a lesson without any interruptions, but now that I had a captive audience, I didn't like it quite so much!

I ended the chat with the hope that we would be able to try it again on Wednesday.

We headed over to the Sheraton, the first hotel built in this part of Doha. It was a huge room. The tables were set beautifully and the room, elegant in nature, was lit up with colours that shifted throughout the night. It would be red and then green and blue, very interesting.

I sat at a table with Luara from Brazil, and then people from Syria, Brazil, Turkey, USA (working in West Bank), Egypt, and USA (school or arts in NYC).

The dinner started with the entrance of the queen and she was accompanied by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the first lady of France! Both very striking. The awards were handed out to the 6 winners, two from each category. It was incredible to hear about the amazing work that these individuals/groups accomplished:

For the ‘Pluralism’ category:
Name: Sheetal Mehta; Country: India
Project: “Project Nanhi Kali”
Profile: A collaborative, national child sponsorship project to ensure that under-privileged girls in India receive 10 years of continuous, quality education.

Name: Vicky Colbert; Country: Colombia
Project: “Escuela Nueva”
Profile: A child-centered, community-based educational program making schools and schooling a new enterprise led by teachers.

For the ‘Sustainability’ category
Name: Martin Burt; Country: Paraguay
Project: “The Financially Self-P”
Profile: Transforming sons and daughters of chronically-poor farmers into "rural entrepreneurs," integrating the teaching of high-school subjects with the running of 17 small-scale rural enterprises, and covering the school’s operating costs as a result.

Name: Joyce Dongotey-Padi; Country: Ghana
Project: "Widows Alliance Network (WANE) for Sustainable Economic Development in Ghana”
Profile: A network designed to emancipate and empower widows through employment skills, human rights education, reproductive health and social integration programmes.

For the ‘Innovation’ category
Name: Peter Levy; Country: USA
Project: “Curriki”
Profile: A Web 2.0-based platform that provides users with free tools and services necessary to develop, aggregate, evaluate and support Open Educational Resources (OER).

Name: Delio Morais; Country: Brazil
Project: “Distance Learning in the Amazon Forest”
Profile: An interactive distance learning solution that transmits and receives live, two-way audio/visual classes to 25,000 students in 700 classrooms across 300 schools in the State of Amazonas.

Talk about some amazing achievements!!!!

The food was wonderful. The Appetizer was: Mosaic of pressed vegetables and Fjord Salman, cured cucumber and Tobiko caviar (while this part was not my favourite eating experience overall in Doha, it was very memorable). The main course: roasted veal medallions with wild mushrooms and green asparagus on celeriac and potato mousseline and herb butter sauce. For dessert: mousse of cinnamon and roasted pears infused with pomegranate.

At the end of the meal we were treated to a very special musical experience. That is the only way that I can describe it. The Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra played with a famous Arab artist named Marcel Khalife who played the lute along with his son playing the tambourine. It was incredible. I have never heard an orchestra produce sounds like that, the music had a very "middle eastern" feel with all of the intricate pitch changes and variety of rhythms and timbres. The son was out of this world - who knew that a tambourine could be played so intricately (probably not Will Ferrel!) Here is his website: http://www.marcelkhalife.com/

And with the final crescendo of the music the Gala was over. It was a wonderful night and a great opportunity to get to know more people and relax in the company of others.

The wait for the buses to take us back to the hotel was a little chaotic but we managed not to get run over and to get on the correct bus! We went to the hotel restaurant for a little while to talk about the day and our experiences at different tables during the Gala. All in all, day two was a pretty fantastic day.

Looking forward to Day 3...I can't believe that the time is coming close to an end.