On the 21st we met with professor Eduardo Marques and his colleagues at the Military Museum of Sao Miguel. While we were there, they taught us about what photo voice was and how it was used to understand photography. This work has to do with giving the lower class a voice. People are given throwaway film cameras and are able to take photos of their lives. We were able to do a workshop with Professor Marques that let us choose a photo to try to interpret from how we are viewing it. I thought this was interesting hearing other people’s interpretations of their photos because some of them were different from my own thoughts of the photos. After our lecture at the Military Museum, we were able to take photos of the guns, cannons, armor and other old military accessories that were there.
We then took a tour to Furnas. The first thing I saw was the cats that were sitting around the ground that was warm. They were so friendly and let us pet and take photos of them. We also saw that people use natural thermal heat to cook their foods under the dirt in pots. Then we ate lunch at the restaurant that serves the food that is cooked in the underground pots. There was a lot of food and it was actually really tasty.
Before we left Sao Miguel, we met with Paulo Teves, the president of Sao Miguel. We all felt so important sitting at the long table with the red tablecloth talking about the government and tourism. He even asked us if there is anything that we thought could be changed or improved upon. We really couldn’t think of anything. It was all so perfect. At the end of our meeting Mr. Teves gave us a nice book and a DVD to take home to show our families and get more information about the Azores.
After our meeting was over, we then had a flight to Terceira where we had lunch in Praia de Victoria with Anna and her two children. We also met Anna’s father who was the original owner of the restaurant we ate at. At lunch we got to try different types of foods. I thought that one dish was chicken but in reality it was cow tongue. I was not a fan but at least I can say that I had cow tongue in the Azores. After lunch, we caught another flight to go to Graciosa.