Novemeber 11th- A Great Day!

Thursday the 11th was such a good day. Honestly, it was a day I was dreading for about 5 days. But it turned out really well.

In the morning I had to wake up at 7 to take the 7:30 bus to school, since it was rainy and cold and I am not biking anymore, to get to a community partner coffee hour for my program assistant job at the Office of Experiential Learning for undergrad students at Brandeis. It was great, I was tired but got muffins and coffee- Dunkin Donuts is so popular out here, it's madness. After talking to some great community organizations and some new professors, I ran to class- NGOs: Strategic Planning with the director and founder of the program who teaches it. It was a good class, then I went to the first Education Working Group Meeting at my school- which is great to be a part of since I want to focus on education. Then I stopped by a development symposium where some experienced development practitioners gave us some really great advice- asking questions is free, don't fear yourself, develop passion in others and whatnot-- very encouraging. After my 2 hour lunch break I had an ECON TEST! I was really not looking forward to this, but it paid off all the studying and I feel good about it. Then I went straight to a talk on Brazil by a man named Larry Rohter who is a Times correspondent and wrote The Rise of Brazil. Wow, did I learn a lot- like Brazil is the world's 7th largest economy and their major export to the US is planes. Also that 200 million people in the country are almost all formally incorporated into the formal economy which is why it has been growing so rapidly, and they now have a female president. Brazil is also holding the next World Cup and Olympics! Ok enough about Brazil- but I definitely want to learn portuguese now! Then I went straight to Planning and Implementation where we were doing an activity I did already in another class, so I left the class to see NOAM CHOMPSKY who was speaking on our campus. Then After P/I class I went to the Watch City Brewery by my house on the main street called Moody for a friend in the programs birthday and had a great time- then woke up and got to work at 9am the next morning!

A good day....