Independance

Ahhh, the sweet smell of… independence! Whoo hoo! I just came all the way from USP home all by myself! Well almost. Truthfully, Maira rode the bus with me, but I asked her if the stop was just around the corner and she said yes, so I would have found it fine on my own. Then I rode the subway and walked back without even needing my map. Ok, I’m seriously proud of myself considering I was only taught how to do it once and I wasn’t sure I would EVER be able to get around on my own in this big city. Granted, I can only go to one place, but hey, it’s a start. And getting home is a very good thing to be able to do. Ok, that’s enough self praise for today ;)

Wed May 10:

Another fairly relaxed day, actually. After Monday I thought I would be worked to the bone within a week, but the last two days have been much slower. I got to the school and guess what, my name was still scratched out. But! Luckily I had seen Rubens on my way in, so I went back and found him and asked him to get the key for me. He also talked to the guy at the desk, who told him that Diogo couldn’t just add names but had to submit a whole new sheet of names. So I got into the office and hopped on the computer, uploaded yesterday’s blog, read other blogs and sent of my Canada presentation. The morning was sooo dead. I got there at 7:30 and aside from a few people coming in and out quickly, there was nobody there until almost noon. I did some reading, but I wanted people to come! Then Diogo showed up and I told him about the name sheet and we headed off to Japanese lunch! We went all the way to the Japanese area of the city, which was a 40 minute drive. I don’t know how he could afford that much time, but then again I read that Brazilians often take long leisurely lunches, and I had nothing to do anyways. I told him a lot about how we do things in Victoria, and he was surprised that we have no selections and applications and intense new member training. But I don’t think Victoria is unusual amongst Canadian LCs. After we got back, it was time to head home, because I promised Iza’s Mom that I would be home for dinner tonight. Diogo scared me because he said there was a meeting tonight and I was so sure there wasn’t! But he was mistaken, whew. Tomorrow and Friday I won’t be home for dinner. Tomorrow is the general meeting and I’ll be doing my presentation. Diogo asked me to keep it to 20 minutes. I’ll try! But the final product is 83 slides of Canadian goodness!

OMG what’s this? A short post? Well it’s only one day. And it’s nothing too too exciting. I’m just writing to kill time before dinner. Hmmmm… what to chose for today’s picture…? The AIESEC office! I should have taken a picture in the Japanese community, but I hate snapping photos when I’m out because I feel like such a tourist. But I will try to do better ;)

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Thursday May 11:

This morning I met up with Thays (pronounced Tayeece), my buddy, and we went for a campus tour. We headed over to ETA, which is Iza’s building and Thays’ former building (since she already has a degree and is on her second). She showed me where the cheap cafeteria is and then we caught the internal campus bus, which is not only free but very brightly coloured :P . So we took the bus around campus and Thays told me what the building were and I was the tourist taking pictures. Not the greatest pictures, mind you, since they were out the bus window. There are so many traffic circles at USP it’s crazy. I don’t think there is a single light, only round-a-bouts. We went almost the whole way around, and the stopped at the athletic centre. It’s quite the facility! With tennis courts and basketball courts and soccer (futebol) fields and such. We had a snack there and then walked back to FEA, the faculty where the LC is.

In the afternoon, the “oldies” had our workshop on the new LC structure. Basically Diogo explained it to us and I think I finally understand. Structure and stuff like this isn’t my specialty. I find that usually I just do what seems necessary and what works and I end up doing whatever structure there was supposed to be. This is a lot of theoretical stuff, and now that I understand it, it is a very interesting concept. But making concepts into reality is the harder part, and making this work in @ USP will be a challenge. This is a brand new structure that is pretty much untested. We are to have another workshop on implementation soon, after CONADE I guess. Another interesting note, Diogo analysed the structure by looking at who the members were accountable too, so the bottom up, whereas I looked at it as the responsibilities of the leaders, from the top down. He mentioned this different perspective in our meeting too, on Monday, saying while his focus when he was VPPD (VPMD) was to get the most out of the members for AIESEC, my focus was always to get the most out of AIESEC for the members. I don’t see this difference of perspective as a problem, but it is definitely something I hadn’t really thought about before.

In the evening was the general meeting. Turnout wasn’t as good as it could have been, but I was told it was pretty good. I was supposed to do my Canada Presentation so I brought my laptop and my maple candies. However, there was so much other stuff to cover, like CONADE and learning circles, that we ran out of time. So I’ll do it at the meeting after CONADE. I’d rather wait and do a good job than do a rush job anyways, since I spent so long making a good presentation.

Then I went home entirely on my own, and at night! And it was fine.

Friday May 12:

One week in Brazil! Crazy. I have learned SOOOO much in this short time. This morning I met Ju Japa (the Japanese Julianna) on the bus ride in to USP. We stopped off at the bank to get money for CONADE and then she gave me another little tour of some areas I hadn’t seen the day before. Then we headed over to the LC (it’s starting to seem normal to call it that :P ). I still can’t get the key, so Ju Japa got it instead. I checked my e-mail and did some general stuff. Several members came and asked “Where’s Koge?” because the money for CONADE was due today. So I was the bank until he arrived, collecting the money and double checking everyone names. My pronunciation is terrible though, and one who gave a chuckle was Patrick. I said it like I would my own name, and he though that was funny. He says it very differently, like Patreeky.

Then Koge gave me a portuguese lesson. I practiced some verbs. He made me a worksheet and on the first one, I got more than half wrong…. But then on the second sheet I only got one wrong. Woo! Then one of the members started putting post it’s with the portuguese name on items around the office. Pretty soon everyone who was there was putting up stickies :P The office is covered! But it’s cool! And they loved it. They were writing things like “cool guy” and putting it on themselves.

Then I had a learning circles meeting. These are in preparation for multiple PBoXes (Projects Based on Exchange) that Diogo is planning. Knowing next to nothing about PboXes, this is a learning experience for me too. I couldn’t help too much with the project planning because I don’t know the reality of Sao Paulo, but I could help with the practicality aspects as an AIESEC project. There were some really good ideas thrown out, but sometimes the members got carried away and starting making plans that were not really feasible. So I hope I helped. Sometimes they switched to Portuguese, if they had something they didn’t know how to say in English. But then, sometimes they forgot to switch back, so I was a little lost in the conversation. I hate asking them to switch though, because I don’t want to be a hindrance.

After that meeting, I had my own meeting as team leader of the infrastructure task force (ooooh, doesn’t that sound cool!). We did a little icebreaker and then some brainstorming and them made an action plan. I tried to structure the meeting like a proper AIESEC meeting to help the new members get an idea of how it should be. They seem excited about the ideas we came up with, so I think this will go well. Then I wrote out all the output and sent it to everyone.

Then some other people showed up, one of which was Renato. Since he dances professionally, we tasked him with coming up with our opening plenary dance. And today we got to start learning it. Wow. It’s quite the dance. Not like a typical @ dance. It’s tricky! It look us an hour and a half to master 1 minute of dance. Good thing that’s all we need to know! But it’s also very cool. Now we just need to teach the other members. It was cool though, there was about eight of us dancing around the LC. :P We are gonna knock-em dead at CONADE!!

After that, I hung around for a little while and then headed home, taking the bus with Koge. After I got home, we watched a brazilian soap opera (I had no clue what was going on…) and then ordered pizza. Pizza in Brazil is VERY different! And apparently Sao Paulo pizza is the best in the world, or so I’m told ;) I dunno about that, it was a little too much for me. One was covered in brazilian white cheese, but it was TOO cheesey, yes even for me! Like your mouth is glued closed cheesy. And the other pizza was covered in tomatoes. I tried it, I really did. And I truly just do not like tomatoes.

I’m so excited for the conference, and for Rita coming!! I have so much to show her and tell her! It’s gonna be great J And on Monday I don’t have to get up at 6:00 am! But on Wednesday we have to MEET at 6:00 am which means leaving the house at 5:00 and getting up maybe 4:30. Wish me luck >_<

This weekend looks to be fairly mellow. It’ll be nice the sleep in and maybe wander around the city a bit or something.

Things I noticed: Brazilians don’t seem to have answering machines. The phone just rings and rings… and they are never in a hurry to answer it either, haha. The phone will ring a couple times before they even acknowledge it, and then they wander over and answer.

my neighbourhood