CIL Training in Toronto

I just got back from the CIL training in Toronto this weekend. Going in I didn't really know what to expect. My goal for the weekend was to participate as much as I could and to talk to all the other CEEDers, not just my Brazil buddies. Here's the results:

I flew out on Thursday evening and arrived Friday morning. I met up with Vannarady (SFU) who is going to South Africa and we headed downtown for some shopping. After spending too much money we took the subway to one of the CEEDers from AIESEC York's house, Llorene. Angela was there too from AIESEC Windsor. They were India buddies. We had some lunch and talked about our CEEDs and what we were doing to prepare, then we headed back downtown for our first session.

We met up at the MC office, which was really cool to see! Not fancy, but interesting. Karolina talked to us about logistical stuff: visas... plane ticket.... reimbursment... etc. and then we had to past CEEDers share their experiences. It was really cool.

Being with all the other CEEDers was a little overwhelming at first. I admit to being kinda shy in big groups. At first, I felt that even though they were all AIESECers, they were not MY AIESECers. I didn't know them. I though about how when I arrive in Sao Paulo I will have the same feeling.

But then the second day came. We introduced ourselves again and talked about what it means to live in a different country. We talked about the stages of culture shock and played a really cool game that demostrated how frusterating it can be when you don't understand and you can't communicate clearly. The best part of the sessions was actually the debreif. We talked about our expereinces and how we felt, and this allowed us to learn about each other.

In the afternoon, we we matched up with a person from our destination country to ask questions and get insght from them. Rita, Susan and I talked with Antonio, originally from Sao Paulo. He was great! He told us a lot about Brazil and about each of our cities. He gave us recomendations on places to visit and address each of our concerns. It was also a really good chance to get to know Rita and Sue better, since they are my Brazil Buddies! They are both really awesome people and I'm really looking forward to doing some travelling with them and keeping in touch while we are in Brazil.

By the end of that second day, the other CEEDers no longer felt like strangers, they felt like friends. I have never made friends so fast! I loved it. I spoke to each and everyone of them and as a group we are a great team! I learned so much from them, both in the sessions and talking to them during the breaks and afterwards.

Back (L-R): Vannarady (South Africa), Joey (China), Rita (Brazil), Ryan (Dominican Republic), Jen (Kenya), Puneet (Pakistan)
Middle (L-R): Erika (Togo), Me (Brazil!), Veronica (China), Pam (Kenya), Llorene (India), Susan (Brazil), Angela (India)
Front (L-R): Benoit (Togo), Karolina (MC), Vincent (Togo)

The hardest part was... I totally lost my voice! I was really raspy on Friday and Sunday but on Saturday I could only speak in whispers. It was really frsuetrating because I couldn't talk to people as much as I wanted to and ouldn't give as much imput. But I suppose that in itself is an exercise in not being able to communicate. :P By Saturday night I was having to write everything down because nobody could hear me!

Sunday was also good. We did a lot of group work, so I got to work with a lot of different people. We talked about adaptation strategies and looked at case studies of cultural misunderstandng and tried to figure out why they had happened and which values were being challenged on both sides. By the end we were all very sad to leave!!

I headed back to the airport with most of the other westerners and eventually caught my very late plane. After a rough ride home, I went to my classes and now I'm writing this!

Overall it was a really good weekend. I made some awesome new friends and I am soooo excited about going to Brazil!!

Left: Me (Victoria) Middle: Rita (Toronto) Right: Susan (Edmonton)

Today I also talked to an SN from AIESEC USP named Renato. It was really nice to talk on MSN with someone down there. I also got another e-mail from the LCP. I will e-mail him back soon with a whole bunch of questions! I have to decide soon when I am going and coming back, so that I can fill out my visa applcacation and look into booking flights. It seems like May is a long time away, but it really isn't! 6 weeks and I'll be in Brazil! There's a lot of prep work still to be done. I want to be well prepared!

Houston, we've made first contact!

Today I got an e-mail from the LCP of my host LC! I was very glad to finally hear from them. He explained they were really busy with recruitment lately, which I totally understand. Here's part of the e-mail:

"We're really excited about your CEED here! I think you'll be able to help us a lot, and you'll definitely learn a lot from your experience!
So, if you want a quick idea of what we'd like you to do, i'd sum up with two main jobs: new member induction and structured learning process. We need someone to coordinate our coach program and stimulate learning on all members, having ILP sessions and learning events in general. "

This sounds awesome! Recruitment and member training are my strongest areas. I love doing training sessions and leading workshops! I'll just have to familiarize myself with what resources they use in Brazil. (Probably not BMO Learning Centre ;) )

He also said they would like to me come as soon as I can. Apparently they are having a mini-conference at the end of April, but my last exam isn't until April 20th and I was hoping to go to NLDC as well. So I'll have to think about it and talk to them some more.

Tomorrow I fly to Toronto for our training session. I'm really looking forward to it, and to meeting all the other CEEDers. Unfortunatly, I've managed to catch the flu today, but hopefully I will be able to shake it before Friday. I want to get as much out of this weekend as I can.

I'll be sure to write about it when I get back, and hopefully I will be a little more coherent ;)

First Stumbling Blocks

I haven't been able to get ahold of my host LC, AIESEC USP (University of Sao Paulo) yet. I've e-mailed the LCP, and e-mailed their general address, and now I've e-mailed the LCP again. I really hope they get back to me soon because it's kinda weird to think I'm going there and I haven't made contact yet.

I'm talking to the VPP of AIESEC Curitiba on MSN right now and she said it may because they are really busy with the selection process. If that's the case, I totally understand. I know how crazy recruitment can be. Still, I wouldn't mind just a "Hi, I got your e-mail. I'll talk to you more soon" kind of thing.

I have the e-mail now of the VPP, so if the LCP doesn't reply I'll try e-mailing him. If I don't hear anything before the training in Toronto, I'll talk to the coordinators at AIESEC Canada.

I'm not really that worried... but I'd really like to talk to them. I already have so many questions! Most of the other CEEDers have been talking to their host LCs. I don't want to get in their way if they are really busy, but I will keep trying!

Learning the Language

Tonight Igor taught me some Portugese! I wrote out all the pronouns and we picked a regular verb and congugated it. Then I picked some other regular verbs and applied the congugation pattern. I actually figured most of them out! Then he taught me some useful verbs that didn't follow the pattern, like TO BE and TO GO. Now that I could say things like "I want...." we wrote out some useful nouns, things like "bus", "car", "house", "carrots" :P. Then I learned the numbers to 20. I almost have them memorized, but for some reason I keep getting stuck on eight @_@.

There are some similarities between french and protugese. On one hand this is helpful because words are similar and therefore easier to remember since I still remember a fair amount of my french vocabulary. On the other hand, it makes it tricky because I try to pronounce things as I would with French, and it's wrong. Like "er" at the end of a word is actually pronouced as it looks, and not as "ay" like in French. It will take some practice to avoid that.

Obviously I am just barely scratching the surface, but I'm looking forward to learning more. I haven't studied a language for several years, but as long as there's no homework or marks, I'm set!

Here's some first attempts*:

Eu quero treis pizzas

Nos gostamus arroz

Ele come alface

Eles compram batata

*sorry for any spelling mistakes and the lack of accents...

AIESEC Ski Trip!!

OK, so this isn't directly related to CEED, but hey, it's AIESEC!

Yesterday my LCP Dave, our Brazillian CEEDer Igor and I went skiing! It was an absolutley glorious day!



I headed up to the top of the mountain in the morning and took WAY to many pictures of the gorgeous view.



Igor really liked the snow covered trees. I like to call them whipped cream trees, because they look like they had a good dousing.



Teaching Igor to ski was fun. He did amazing well! I was so impressed! Of course there were ups as downs, literally :P



After skiing we went tubing. That was awesome. We all went down in a big group. I took a video of one of our runs down.



I'm really glad we decided to go on this mini road trip. It was totally worth it!


*definetly not the best pic of me.....

The Beginning

Yesterday I recieved an e-mail which said I had been accepted into the CIDA CEED program through AIESEC and that I will be travelling to Brazil this summer on an exchange. I was so excited I ran across campus to tell the other AIESECers and continued to jump up and down for the entire day! (just ask my roommates...)

I am really honoured that I will have this oppoutunity and I am so excited!!

For those of you who don't know me, I am a third year anthropology student at the Universiry of Victoria. I joined AIESEC in Sept 2004, and have since become and AIESEC addict. This past year I was the vice president of member development and I was on the organizing comittee (OC) for Coastal Conference, a 3-day conference for AIESEC UVic, SFU and UBC. Now, I am the vice president of Logistics for our Global Village that will happen in October of this year. I have been to 5 AIESEC Conferences and I will be going to two more in May!

AIESEC has really had an impact on me. Through AIESEC I have made some of my very best friends and met some truly amazing people from all over the world. I have been enriched through this experience and I still have a lot to learn.

I really wanted to participate in this CEED program because I have always wanted to experience living in a different culture and South America has always interested me. I have done a bit of travelling before, to the Carribbean, Egypt, England, the US... but I never felt I got as much out of the trip as I wanted to. Especially in Egypt, I felt trapped in the role of tourist. I wanted to learn about the people and the culture and the history, but all I could see was the "tourist" spots. I realized that just travelling and visiting a place is not enough. One must live there to truly understand and experience it.

Outside of AIESEC, I'm really interested in archeology and paleoanthropology. I also have a passion for environmental studies and I've worked for the past two summers in the field of environmental education. Brazil is currently a world leader in environmental innovation and I'm really excited about learning more about it.

As of right now, I don't know any Portugese. I speak fluent english and a little bit of French. However, I have asked Igor, our CEEDer from Brazil in AIESEC Victoria to teach me a little, and I will try to learn some on my own. I am a pretty fast learner, so I'm hoping to be able to pick up at least the basics fairly quickly. I definetly want to learn. I'm very jeaulous of all my multi-lingual friends.

I have been in touch with the two other Canadians who were selected to go to Brazil, but to differet cities. One is from AIESEC Edmonton and another from AIESEC Toronto. I'm really looking foward to talking to them more and seeing them in Toronto for our training in two weeks. I also need to get in contact with my host LC in Sao Paulo and the Brazillian MC.

The purpose of this blog is to record my experiences as a CEEDer in Brazil. It will be open to anyone who wishes to read it. Please feel free to post comments and ask questions. I don't know yet what will happen, but I'm eager to find out!!