CONADE: Brazilian National Conference

MAY 15th to MAY 20TH
So CONADE started off early for me because I had an early afternoon flight the day before the conference started. I spent 3 hours after arriving in Sao Paulo at the airport with another member teaching him English and he taught me some Portuguese. It got a little frustrating when after explaining things 3 times and I still couldn't get my message across. I learned a lot that day though. Many words of which I can still remember now and try to use. At night we stayed at this guy Diago's house(Duncan was there too). All 20 of us from AIESEC Brasilia were there. It was a party. We had 3 air mattresses where 10 of us were sleeping. Diago's mother made us enough food to have left overs even after everyone had eatten. Oh the mango chocolate dessert was one of the most amazing things I had eatten in a long time!!!!

So the conference, we were late for opening plenary by 2 hours. So we didn't get to present. We had this dance that they found by a group here called "Gangus Kong" The whole song basically said "Moscow" a million times. It was hilarious learning it. I have a video that I might post later. So after an hour drive up the cutest mountainous town we arrive at the conference. There were about 600 members there. It was pretty crazy. I missed the feeling of knowing you'll see your friends and that excitement but soon enough I saw Melissa and Eric. I was so excited. I just wanted to be able to speak English and joke around like normal. I didn't have a room at first because I had paid yet, so I was apart of a group that had to get buses to another hotel. OMGOSH, this place was like a prison!!! It was so disgusting! Bars on the windows. 8 bunk beds to a room. A big washroom with 2 toilets and 3 showers, all just in open space. It was fun showering in my bathing suit! I bonded with a lot of the people there because of this though. One of my favorite people at the conference, Diana was a trainee from the US. Without them, I probably would have been crying instead of laughing at the awfulness of the place. The worst thing was here, they have their banquet the first night. So I had to get ready in this tiny room with 10 girls and we had like 30 mins. We decided we didn't deserve to stay at this dump when we paid the same price so we packed all our things and went back to the site of the conference where everyone else was staying. My friend was really nice and I ended up in another room of 8 girls but this time I got my own mattress on a clean floor. So finally we went to the banquet with my wrinkle dress 1.5 hours late. Most of us ate dinner on our laps. Classy. It definitely doesn't compare to our lovely banquets!

PLP day:
The second day was all about leadership development, we had a lot of good discussions on how to be a leader and situations on what leadership traits you need to bring out in situations and how a leaader with deal with some of the situations. I learned a lot from today. I was still kinda annoyed with not being able to understand everything but I met some amazing new friends that were all very willing to translate everything for me and so I was still able to participate. The party tonight was "light out". Everyone dressed in black and we all hand glowing bracelets that were different colours and represented different things. Green=available, Red=Unavail., Yellow= cautious, Purple=grab me, orange= exchange of fluids.

International agenda:
So all the trainees and CEEDers were given a separate agenda where they spoke English (Thank God). We had so much fun together. We did that game that Kelly did with us at the pre-departure weekend. One girl didn't know the rule of the game and threw her cards down when she was supposed to win hehe. We had people from all over, Colombia, Holland, the US, Mexico,Peru, India, Slovenia, Tunisia, Morocco and Canada. We all bonded really well, we did presentations on different cultures to understand their cultural norms more. I think I want to do a traineeship now just from hearing about everyone's experiences.

They had a workshop on matching. I learned SO SO much. I'm so excited to put my knowledge to use! I learned a lot more then I did at NLDC at this conference so it was worth all the trouble getting to this conference. They have this really cool form on Excel that lists all the different people listed on aiesec.net and you can search people according to their specific major of study or experience. I still have to bug people to get it. But it is so useful! Everything's just right there! Does Canada have this. (sorry can't find the questions mark on this laptop.) This night the party was Festa Junia, (June Party). You dress like a country girl and they had corn and sausages and everyone puts their hair in pigtails and freckles on their face. They have a dance called Forro, just for the party. It was super fun! You dance in partners most of the time and lucky me I got a guy who stepped on my feet like 20 times. Thank God they were closed-toe. Eric and I brought out the Faci song to the conference tonight and EVERYONE loved it! Its like their new favorite role call! Everyone keeps asking us to play and dance for them. We made HISTORY:)

The last day we went to Sao Paulo together for a study tour. We went to a catherdral the pope was at last week. We ate lunch at this opened market which had this really yummy sandwich with a huge layer of ham and cheese and also all the fruit you'll ever want to have.

All in all the conference was at par to my first NLDC. I really enjoyed it even with the language barrier. I was really annoyed that things were always like 1 hour late to start or end. One night we ended at 1am!!!! That's why most parties end at 4am here. They sure know how to party.
The last night was the Global Village and I was so in love with representing Canada with my Canadian ware. Thanks to Melissa we had an awesome Canada table. I met a lot of new friends from all over Brazil and have a lot of places I could stay at if I went to visit their cities.