On ways to keep yourself busy – Part I

Remember when I said that I was going to post more often? Well, not quite. I’ve been ridiculously busy lately. So here’s what’s been happening.

On May 28^th, Andreia went to Brazil and on June 15^th brought her parents with her to spend two months over here. It’s been great to be eating some real food for a change; neither Andreia nor I have much time to cook decent meals. The usual special at home is Frozen Food. But now we’ve been enjoying rice and beans, rice and steak (carreteiro), charcoal barbecue (it’s what is the closest to the Brazilian churrasco) and all the stuff that all Brazilians are fans.

During the weeks, we try to keep seu Orlando and dona Elza, my parents in law, busy. Since they don’t speak English and we work all day, we got an Internet package from TV Globo so they can watch Brazil news and our famous soap operas (which I hate, by the way). When we get home from work, there is usually some card playing or some board games action. Quite fun to do that with four people rather than two!

During the weekends we try to diversify. Here’s what we’ve been doing:

June 18^th

During the world cup, we got together with a lot of the Brazilians that live here. This particular game was Brazil x Australia, and after 90 minutes of plain agony, we were somewhat happy with the result. Even though we beat them 2 x 0, we didn’t play so well, but there’s always hope, right? The next few games would prove us wrong! Well, enough about soccer. :)

June 25^th

We went to a resort nearby called Wildlife Safari, and as you have guessed, you drive around it and see animals in their somewhat natural habitat. We love this place: it’s a 20 minute drive from home, the entrance fee is not expensive, and you can either drive around or hike through the trails that are there.

Driving around you can see elks, deers, pelicans, bears, wolves, cranes (a typical large bird from North America), pronghorns, and bisons.

The picnic areas are also great. Plenty of space, plenty of shade, a perfect spot for stop and some food. A great day to be outdoors.

Much more still to come… I’ll keep you posted.

On students organizations

While taking Business classes at SCC, I found out about this student organization called SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) and fell in love with it.

Just like AIESEC, SIFE is a student organization that provides opportunities to participant students to develop their potential so as to have a positive impact on society and on their careers.

AIESEC does that in the form of offering students exchange programs that enables students to live and work in another country. That experience is unique and enables the student to view things from a different perspective-the new culture he or she now lives in-which ultimately open the student’s eye to a broader understanding of different cultures, life, and everything. SIFE is a more hands-on organization, achieving similar results by having the students developing community outreach projects in 5 topics/criteria: Market Economics, Success Skills, Entrepreneurship, Financial Literacy, and Business Ethics. By working in teams to develop these projects, students acquire leadership and teamwork skills, ethics, and a better understanding of the business world; and at the same time, having an immediate impact in their communities; changing the world, one project at a time, as I like to say.

Having being part (in a way or another) of both organizations, I can vouch for both as top class, high quality group of peoples.

Our SIFE team at SCC is quite a unique group of people. I made some really good friends there, and since almost everyone graduated from the college it’s only fair to say that I’m going to miss all of my former teammates, especially Carlos, George, Kashka, Khush, Malika, Quanetta, Staphanie, and Vito. Big salutations to our fearless faculty leader, our Sam Walton Fellow Deb Gaspard (a.k.a. Mama Bear), I take my hat off to you.

If you want to find a way to get more involved in your college or community, if you want to have some volunteering experience in your résumé, if you want to meet successful people, or simply if you like to help others, check if your university has a SIFE team or an AIESEC team, if it doesn’t have one, help create one*.

On a side note, for some reason, I think that SIFE is more popular than AIESEC in the US, and AIESEC is more popular than SIFE in other countries. But that’s probably a false statement since it’s a generalization. I can only confirm that that’s what happens in Brazil (actually only in Porto Alegre). If you know better, please leave me a comment on this topic.

More specifically about SIFE now: Let me just say to you that there’s no way of not falling in love with this organization, other than all those things I just described above, you’ll also get a felling of accomplishment that you never felt before. On two particular projects I participated, I really felt that (which raises a really good discussion on how really altruistic a gesture is, if you only do it for personal accomplishment, but this is a topic for another discussion). Here are the projects that I’m shamelessly proud of: our financial literacy project, Money Talk$, we presented a workshop for abused women on the local Friendship home for battered women. We taught them the basic principles of banking and financial planning. Check me out in this picture creating a life line (I’ll live until 95, according to my plans =D ); and our World Day event, where we gave 4- and 5-year olds, college students, and faculty members, a initial contact with the economy and culture of a total of 10 different countries.

How SIFE can help your résumé? Easy! Every year there are regional, national, and an international competitions, where teams make a business presentations to judges, who decide who did a better job on applying SIFE 5 criteria to their projects. In these events, there are tons of companies that are there to hire SIFE students to their top positions (from management up). Companies like Walmart, Conagra, RadioShack, Kraft, BIC and many others are always there recruiting, because they know all the qualities and skills that a student gathered in being part of a SIFE team. Competition itself is a big thing in SIFE, winners get awards ($$$), and so forth. But even if you take off everything I just mentioned, it's a greate experience just being there!

Call me a dreamer, an utopian, or whatever you like, but I believe that there is goodness in everyone and that everyone can help create a better world. I like to believe that with SIFE I have helped at least a handful of people. Add what I learned in SIFE with what I learned through AIESEC, and I'm confident that I won't stop there. In specific, I have some good plans to Brazil, my homeland. I’ll write more about that later. I’ll leave you with some pictures of the awards ceremony/party in the final days of the SIFE National competition in Kansas City, Missouri, 2005 (I'll owe you some 2006 pictures), and a quote I read during the the 2006 ceremony:

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion - Thomas Paine.

*: if you are interested in starting a team, please contact me.

On not updating my blog as frequently as I wanted

What can I say? I’ve been busy, busy, busy. I’ve also been lazy, lazy, lazy. I’ll try to compensate by posting some two or three posts this week and hopefully, you’ll forgive me…? There are some good news coming up, and some old posts that I finally took the time to write, and some really cool pictures from cool places that I’ve been. Talk to you all soon.