8-1-2009

After our first day of the program, we went to our hotel and Lauren and David’s bags had finally arrived. So, we went swimming in the hotel pool to celebrate. The pool is outside and it was a little cold but we swam anyway. At MIT, there is snow and here in Tuxtla, we can swim outside. How cool, no? Last night, we talked one on one about our lives and it was really fun. It seems to me that by the end of this month, we’re all going to be close.

The second day of the program went very well. We did more activities to get to know each other and ourselves better. We began with a game called “Splat”. This game is very fun because you have to remember everyone’s name very quickly. It seems to me that the students liked the game very much. After, we did a survey that showed us what type of personality we were and after we had a discussion about our different personality styles. Finally, we made blogs for each person in the program where we can write daily about our opinions on leadership and ourselves. Today, we wrote about our reactions and opinions on the survey “Social Style Inventory”. At first, there were many technical problems but everyone successfully completed the activity. So, everything is good.

After the blogs, the students left and the mentors from MIT and the facilitators of Casa Telmex did an activity called “Extreme Mentoring”. This activity is a role-playing game where there are some mentors who pretend to be kids who don’t pay attention, are misbehaved, or are very quiet and the rest of the people are the mentors. This activity is very difficult but at the end, we had a very good discussion. I think that everyone learned a lot about how then can overcome obstacles with kids.

For lunch, we went to a restaurant called “Casablanca” and we had tacos. We spoke a lot with the facilitators and it was really fun because they were very nice and interesting. Some of them speak a little bit of English too. At the end of the day, it seems to be that this is going to be a good month with the students and other facilitators.

After Casa Telmex, we went to the markets in the center of Tuxtla. We bought a lot of delicious fruit like mangos, kiwis, and an avocado too. We found food in the market and it was delicious. Lauren asked our waitress if there was a bakery nearby and we went there, we found a ton of delicious pastries. We walked around in the center of the city we ended up at the Parque de Marimba to listen to the live music that plays there every night. Dave and Lauren danced a little and all the Mexicans were confused because they swing danced to the latin music. We had a lot of fun and after, we returned to the Fiesta Inn to prepare for day 3 of the program.

Maletas: 5/5

YeSeul: tortillas - 22

Taylor: tortillas - 7

Lauren: tortillas - 23

Dave: tortillas - 24

Kyle: tortillas - 26