MARIA'S PORTUGAL TRIP IN MAY (2)

A little bit tired, as her physical condition was not the best, Maria Conceicao decided to spend all day at base. All volunteers who wished to meet her were invited to come and some of them really did it.
At night Maria attended an interview to TVI 24, a paid TV channel of TVI.
And in the morning of next day, she headed to Aveiro again; as schedulled from the beginning, this was a day totally dedicated to Aveiro .
The activities of this day attended by Maria Conceicao were:
- An interview to the radio station Terra Nova .
- An interview to the newspapers Diário de Aveiro and Correio do Vouga.
- Attended an audience conceded by His Excellence the Aveiro Governor , José Mota .
- A conference in Aveiro University .
- And at night, a event organized by Cristina and P.de José Henriques with the very dedicated help of D. Joaninha, who had already been the true strong right arm in Avanca party, and other volunteers for this task.
This event was a dinner in which participated a large number of people and aimed to raise funds to offer to Maria and her humanitarian work .
These people was really generous and felt enthusiastic with the idea of helping Maria.
At the end they reinforced their generosity by setting up a basket with all what is good to eat and made a raffle so collecting a prety sum ... and the winner of the raffle, P.de José Henriques, decided to offer the basket to Maria, his considered adoptive daughter, patron of the future Avanca 3rd age home .
Maria by her turn, offered the basket to one of the volunteers who accompanied her in the run .
At the end most of the people said a 'see you soon' to Maria; some people promised to help her as they can,... a gentleman offered to build a website already thinking about the association described below...
It's unthinkable to try to enumerate all who helped in any way on this day, though the remarks can go to Cristina, P.de José Henriques,... donors whose donations appeared through our dear Priest ... only through local help it might be possible... Thank you AVANCA !
And then the last day ! A golden day !
Maria and her volunteers in Portugal finally saw the so wished association officially registered. This was more an achievement of Family Ribau, by the initiative of Cristina after a tremendous and shameful failure to get this done in Lisbon ! Here we have to open brackets to a remark on all who are going to show their face to form this association - MARIA CONCEICAO PROJECT - ASSOCIACAO !
Thanks to Priest José Henriques who has been present and wished to pay the emoluments on behalf of Maria and the slum dwellers, and to Dr. António Amaral Marques who did it... and for free !!!
Equally thanks to Dra Lurdes Ventura of Aveiro University, Dr. Fernando Mendonça happily representing His Excellence the Governor of Aveiro, and Francisco Miguel editor in Diário de Aveiro and to... Cristina Ribau who was the ignition to make this possible. Maria , Cristiana and Arménio, the three who gave their names to the registry, celebrated this special event, feeling very honoured for having the company of these kind people during the registry act , with champagne kindly offered by "Flor de Aveiro" to whom we address our deep gratitude for this kind gesture.

And it was lunch time . A lunch kindly offered by the restaurant Bem Haja in Aveiro.
It's impressing how all these people showed so much solidarity towards Maria and what she has done !
Then Cristina drove us to the bank where with the fresh registry in our hands we proceeded to open the so needed account... UFA ! Finally an account controlled by Maria !
Later we drove to Porto where we arrived very late to the SPIE'UP 2010 conference but still with some time to allow Maria to take part in it...
This was not only a very productive day but also the longest day... Maria completely shattered only took some rest about 4:00 and had to be doing the check in back to Dubai at 07:00... a good fitness exercise to attack Kilimanjaro the next days then !