A very busy week!!
The rest of the training with the other Team Leaders went really quickly, in serious discussions spent sitting in the grass in the sun – even though it's winter here and the nights are UK-style cold the days are still very warm, and as we're in the mountains the air is always fresh, the sky blue and the sun bright.
We spent Saturday in a training session and in the evening went to Sao Paulo's best samba school, where we'll hold a massive party for 600 delegates, 200 alumni and around 50 external guests during the conference. The school is called Mocidade Alegre (Happy Youth) and has a wonderful atmosphere – as well as being an award winning samba school, it's also a community centre and gathering place, meaning there are lots of excited children running around and families watching the world go by too. After spending the evening there we went to pick up some of our teamsters, who were arriving in a steady stream at this point!
Sunday night was spent in Brazil's answer to the Wild Wild West – Itapecerica da Serra was hosting a week long rodeo, and Sunday saw a gaggle of 50 gringos descend upon the madness to take part in all the fun. There were many shops selling very large cowboy hats, and we even saw one that was devoted solely to oversized, diamanté studded belt buckles. We were treated to some bull riding which saw me biting my nails not for the men but for the bulls which were being really badly beaten and provoked before going into the ring – this in the end resulted in one man being thrown off, and tossed around like a rag-doll on the horns of his suitably enraged bull for a good 30 seconds or so before anyone could rescue him – we were assured that he was OK, I can't imagine him wanting to 'get back on the bull' very quickly though! We then went to a stand selling caipirinhas...
Very foolishly, myself and my friend Bruna disregarded the (expensive) 10 real price tag, thinking it was just the inflated rodeo stall economy. No, 10 reals was the price for a caipirinha served in a plastic cup roughly the size of a pint glass. So, off we merrily went with our buckets of cachaça sweetened with passion fruit and a liberal heap of sugar, to dance at the disco and take many humorous pictures of ourselves kissing the stuffed bull heads on display on all of the stands, before going to watch some 80's style Brazilian cowboy music and getting the bus home.
So on Monday the hard work with the teamsters began! As some people are learning about International Congress and their role, it's been almost like running a conference this week, preparing sessions, doing lots of get to know you activities and partying in the evenings! We're now at the stage of assigning responsibilities for the different tasks, and I'm lucky enough to have an incredibly experienced and motivated team – so everything so far has been very smooth and efficient – we're getting through things really quickly and there's a really cool team vibe already, which is wonderful as the time is flying by so quickly!
This weekend I'm going to head into Sao Paulo with my friend Bruna (who is Brazilian, but has lived in Spain for years and Ireland for the last year so now speaks perfect Spanish and English with a strong Dublin accent!). Looking forward to actually getting to see Sao Paulo – have bypassed it almost altogether until now and am looking forward to the wide-eyed feeling being in such a vast city inspires...
The rest of the training with the other Team Leaders went really quickly, in serious discussions spent sitting in the grass in the sun – even though it's winter here and the nights are UK-style cold the days are still very warm, and as we're in the mountains the air is always fresh, the sky blue and the sun bright.
We spent Saturday in a training session and in the evening went to Sao Paulo's best samba school, where we'll hold a massive party for 600 delegates, 200 alumni and around 50 external guests during the conference. The school is called Mocidade Alegre (Happy Youth) and has a wonderful atmosphere – as well as being an award winning samba school, it's also a community centre and gathering place, meaning there are lots of excited children running around and families watching the world go by too. After spending the evening there we went to pick up some of our teamsters, who were arriving in a steady stream at this point!
Sunday night was spent in Brazil's answer to the Wild Wild West – Itapecerica da Serra was hosting a week long rodeo, and Sunday saw a gaggle of 50 gringos descend upon the madness to take part in all the fun. There were many shops selling very large cowboy hats, and we even saw one that was devoted solely to oversized, diamanté studded belt buckles. We were treated to some bull riding which saw me biting my nails not for the men but for the bulls which were being really badly beaten and provoked before going into the ring – this in the end resulted in one man being thrown off, and tossed around like a rag-doll on the horns of his suitably enraged bull for a good 30 seconds or so before anyone could rescue him – we were assured that he was OK, I can't imagine him wanting to 'get back on the bull' very quickly though! We then went to a stand selling caipirinhas...
Very foolishly, myself and my friend Bruna disregarded the (expensive) 10 real price tag, thinking it was just the inflated rodeo stall economy. No, 10 reals was the price for a caipirinha served in a plastic cup roughly the size of a pint glass. So, off we merrily went with our buckets of cachaça sweetened with passion fruit and a liberal heap of sugar, to dance at the disco and take many humorous pictures of ourselves kissing the stuffed bull heads on display on all of the stands, before going to watch some 80's style Brazilian cowboy music and getting the bus home.
So on Monday the hard work with the teamsters began! As some people are learning about International Congress and their role, it's been almost like running a conference this week, preparing sessions, doing lots of get to know you activities and partying in the evenings! We're now at the stage of assigning responsibilities for the different tasks, and I'm lucky enough to have an incredibly experienced and motivated team – so everything so far has been very smooth and efficient – we're getting through things really quickly and there's a really cool team vibe already, which is wonderful as the time is flying by so quickly!
This weekend I'm going to head into Sao Paulo with my friend Bruna (who is Brazilian, but has lived in Spain for years and Ireland for the last year so now speaks perfect Spanish and English with a strong Dublin accent!). Looking forward to actually getting to see Sao Paulo – have bypassed it almost altogether until now and am looking forward to the wide-eyed feeling being in such a vast city inspires...
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