Our first day attending ConectaIFB. I was dressed in a fancy black romper to prepare for the EdUSA cocktail hour afterwards, but all of my students kept commenting how fancy I looked and I felt way overdressed. I spent about 7 hours at the conference event, so I listened to part of a roundtable discussion, watched an interesting dance performance with drums and two people acting to the music, hung out with my students and tried the passion-fruit ice cream, danced Just Dance twice with them and won both times, admired the puppies and cats up for adoption, and went into this huge bubble dome that was a Cell. I wanted to whack my students with the noodle and balls in there, but there was a professor inside, and the noodles were strapped down. Sad realization. I watched my friend Ana Julia present her poster research and then surprised her with a chocolate treat. The conference was a lot bigger than I had expected, and several floors and areas worth of presentations. I didn’t get to sign up for some of the cool hands-on presentations with foods and crafts, and I wish I had. I ubered with some students back towards the bus station and then I continued on to the hotel for the Cocktail event. There were about 20-25 people there, and most were University representatives and EdUSA members for the fair. It was lovely talking to some of the Embassy diplomats again and meeting the international recruiters. It did give me a ping of saudades for my recruiting days and we swapped stories. I met Secretary Caroline Casagrande and we talked for a few minutes about working for Fulbright and international travels. She is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Academic Programs in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). It was my first cocktail in Brasil, and it felt amazing to be invited to a working event like this! Adulting gone right.
My Program Manager and Co-worker on the IFB Brasilia Campus
They had a mini fair to walk around and buy goods
Ana Julia shortly before she presented her Thesis research
Yes, that is a chicken behind being used in one of the projects
Moments before Paulo tripped over a girl as she was taking a photo here
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