LTI Brazil, Day 2 - Michaela

Today was another beautiful day in Belo Horizonte. All of us Bostonians are enjoying the warm weather (t-shirts in January!) as well as the friendly hospitality of our Brazilian hosts. After a breakfast of bread with requejiao cremoso, a soft Brazilian cheese, the day kicked off with a fun energizer activity called Huggy Bear.

Later, we learned more about each other in a modified version of Walk About, Talk About, an activity in which students engage in a series of conversations on meaningful topics such as “What is you greatest fear?” and “Who inspires you?” In this version, students paid special attention to posture and body language, maintaining an actively engaged appearance as they listened to their partner speak.

We also ran one of my favorite activities, Paper Towers. In this activity, teams of students construct towers using only 40 sheets of ordinary 8.5’’ x 11’’ paper. One trap students often fall into is starting to fold before their team has agreed on a design, thereby wasting many sheets of paper. However, drawing on lessons learned during yesterday’s Helium Hula-hoop activity, all of the teams discussed strategy before building. By the end of the exercise, every team had a tower of greater than waist height- an unprecedented success!

Later in the afternoon, Dave gave a presentation on logistics and programming in LTI, and the Brazilian students brainstormed how these things would be handled in their own chapter. They had LOTS of ideas- what was intended to be a 20 minute presentation ended up lasting over an hour due to the thoughtful questions and discussion that it provoked.

After session, we went out for a dinner of Brazilian pizza with students Mateus and Paolo. This was definitely not the pizza us Americans were used to. Served all-you-can-eat buffet style, the pizza featured toppings that included potato stix, apples, and even a chocolate pizza for dessert!

Overall, it’s been a tiring day, but an exciting one. I can hardly believe it’s only the second day of session. Stay tuned for more adventures to come!

-Michaela