LTI Brazil, Day 9 - Dave

Hey everyone! Wow, what a big day for the program. LTI Brazil made a lot of big decisions today, but first let's talk about how the session activities went.

Our second mentoring team, composed of Arnobio, Mateus, Alice, Gabriel, Ricardo, and Enrique started the session off with an energizer called “Evolution” and then led the “Bridge Building” activity. In “Bridge Building,” each team has three sheets of newspaper and six inches of masking tape and must create the strongest bridge using only these materials. Students then test each bridge by placing weights onto their bridge.

The Pessoa mentors added an extra twist to the activity. During testing instead of placing weights until bridges broke, a cup of water was placed on each bridge and each team had to elect a team leader to stay under the bridge during the weight placement. If a team placed too many weights and broke their bridge, they would not only be disqualified but they would have a wet and unhappy team leader. Luckily, every team had a bridge that was strong enough and no one needed a change of clothes.

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Bridge Building

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Marcia, taking one for the team

After break we had our first batch of presentations for the activity “Teach a Passion.” Last week we told everyone to prepare a short five minute presentation on a topic of their choice—either something they know a lot about or are passionate about. Presentations ranged from baking instructions to dance lessons to Diablo sticking and there was even a presentation about yours truly complete with my date of birth, hobbies, and a whole slew of pictures (I’m guessing there was a whole lot of Facebook stalking).

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Yuri showing off a Diablo trick.

Finally, during the Exec-Planning portion of the day, the Programming, PR, Finance, and IR committees created action plans and timelines for everything that needed to be done before their first session. The managing directors (Arnobio and Paolo) met with the committee directors (Ricardo, Sacola, Carol, and Mariana) to decide on a starting date. I was very excited to hear their decision: feeling that they should take the momentum that’s been create with these two weeks of training, the directors wanted to start their program before the year was through and so they decided to start in the beginning of the second semester of this Brazilian school year (August 2010). This start date may be tentative, but it’s a huge milestone to have this date to work towards.

Although we ended session on such a good note, our fun together didn’t end there. Today was both Tina and Amanda’s 20^th birthdays, and we had a surprise party waiting at Julia’s house. The PESSOA students all quick ran off to Julia’s to set up while Michaela, Susan, and I stalled the two birthday girls. When we arrived at Julia’s, Amanda and Tina were completely taken by surprise when they saw everyone there. There was much merriment and celebration as we ate cake and Pao de Queijo. Amanda and Tina each got a stuffed animal-- a panda for Amanda and a turtle for Tina (their respective favorite animals)-- decorated with all of our signatures so they could forever remember their experience here in Brazil.

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The birthday girls