JavierP’s Morning Meeting and Sharing Linkage P4 – D54

Javier Parellada facilitated today’s morning meeting. We did two activities. The first one was that he would touch the shoulder of someone and he would be the “liar” and the rest of the group would have to guess who that person was. We did this two times and to our surprise, the first time no one was the liar and the second everyone was the liar. It was very ingenious and fun to see the different reaction and corporal language each of us had. The second activity was more of a prank to Bert. One person was supposed to go out and when he or she got back everyone would moo, but only one would moo louder and that person would have to guess whom it was. The prank didn’t go quite well but it was funny.

We took the Agora time to continue our activity of sharing linkage. Today, the ones who shared were Alejo, JavierT, Majo, Grace, Bert, and Chacho. 

Lucía’s Morning Meeting and Sharing Linkage P3 – D52

Lucía facilitated today’s morning meeting. She did two activities, both in pairs and to make us more aware of our senses and emotions. The first one was to guess an emotion the other person was supposed to show only with his or her eyes. Isa’s emotion was excitement, which I thought but I guessed it was more happiness than that. My emotion was surprise, and Isa guessed it very fast. The second activity was that one of us (me) would be blindfolded and I had to guess what I was tasting. The first one was an Oreo (I guessed it was a cookie, but not an Oreo), the second was “leche condensada” (I guessed correctly), the third one was a fruit called “granada” (I guessed), and the last one was linseed oil with lime, which was disgusting (I guessed it was oil). It’s fun to realize how much we use our senses to associate things like food, and when we loose one sense, in this case sight, we have a hard time finding out what are we eating and that makes us find other characteristics we take for granted like texture.

The second part of the morning was about sharing linkage. This was the third time we did this, and today Ingrid, Isa, and Carmen shared it with us.

Isa's face of excitement

Debriefing – D50

We started today’s debriefing by sharing our perspectives of the Euclid class, and most of them or all, were very positive. We are all happy with this new method of going with a group that you can follow according to your standards and capacity of learning. The other thing we discussed was about commitment. It started with Isa’s interjection of stating her frustration and unhappiness with some MPCers, since they are not showing commitment at all. The discussion was long and exhausting because some, especially Lucía, when pointed out of their flaws reacted in a negative way, not accepting the feedback and making up excuses. I must congratulate Chacho and Alejo, because the three of us were, I think, the most sincere people when talking to another MPCer. It surprised me a little when Chacho said that Lucía was sinking our boat with her lack of commitment and respect, and that she should reconsider staying on the MPC. Alejo’s intervention was mostly the same when he said that if she was not willing to give her best, then it would be better for her to leave to a cruise she was planning on applying. My intervention was mainly because of her lack of respect during most of the dialogues she is in the outer circle and some even when she is in. Also, when doing other activities. But I mainly focused on her actions during today’s dialogue of Words and Rules, because she was not being real by being on her phone and constantly leaving the room and getting back in, showing her disinterest and disrespect on the dialogue. She tried to counter argue by saying we (Chacho, Isa, Alejo, and I) were not perfect and she mentioned some actions we did that were not correct. That really bothered me so I told her that those comparisons were not near correct, because of the difference in the times we committed them (almost never) and her constant failures. This is how it ended, pretty rough but feeling very good that we said it and that some us are thinking alike for improving our culture.

By the way, I thought I was going to rest some today since we were leaving early (at 3:20 p.m.) but I found out I had this Logo called Domando al Cocodrilo. It’s about psychology and how can we control our brain. I think it would relate a lot with Thinking, Fast and Slow, and Consilience. I leave at 8:30 p.m. nice, ha?

Gaby’s Morning Meeting? And Sharing – D50

Gaby was supposed to have facilitated today’s morning meeting, but she has been absent so far. Instead we decided to make the roster rubric so we are on the same page when a group is in charge of the chores of the week. What we came up with was the following,

Every assigned group must:

• Bring goodies, snacks, 2 pounds of coffee, 1 pound of sugar, 1 box of tea. All due on Monday.
• Clean all the common spaces.
• Open and close the windows.
• Have coffee ready at 7:45 a.m. 
• Take out the trashcan and empty it. 
• Pick up the water (garrafones) at Atención al Estudiante. 
• Check that the projector and lights are shut down before leaving.
• Charge the iPad. 

For the Agora time, we followed the sharing activities by telling everyone our linkage. Yesterday, or should I say today, at 12:00 a.m. made a Prezi presentation of my genealogical tree. It took me about an hour and a half, but I was very pleased with the result. I found a lot of fun facts, and the most interesting one for the MPC is that somehow somewhere, I’m related to Amable Sánchez, although not by blood you may say. He was married with a sister of the wife of the brother of my grandfather (of my father’s family). Cool, ha?!

Thanksgiving Lunch and Debriefing – D48

After a tough week, we got a little relief by having a Thanksgiving lunch. We invited the people who are supporting us and have been close to us, those are, Giancarlo Ibargüen, Helmuth Chávez, Carla Hess, Kassandra Rugg, Kyle Passarelli, Dylan Evans, Gabriel Calzada, Juanma Bonifasi, Daniel Herbruger, Adrián Ravier, Tony Ung, Kira Martins, and Ana Isa Gadala. We also invited Amable Sánchez, Sam Bonis, Moris Polanco, and Zach Caceres, but they couldn’t join us for lunch. Of course, all MPC’ers were there as well as Bert and Ingrid. We had a great time eating a lot of food and having great conversations. I sat with Giancarlo, Juanma, Mabe, and Alejo, and we had a nice conversation about knowledge, the mind, psychology, the MPC, ants, economics, freedom, and the history of Thanksgiving (it started as a celebration of private property and freedom!). Everything went great and as planned, and everybody loved the sweet potatoes with marshmallows and nuts I brought!

For the debriefing, we read what everybody wrote on our Thanksgiving tree (I’m thankful for…), had some laughs, and talked about the good things of this day. Nice way to end the week…

I’m thankful for… – D48

As I already told you, we decided to move the Thanksgiving activity for until everybody was at the MPC. We gathered and circled up at around 10:30 and started to say what we were thankful for. It was a great activity, very emotional, and there was a lot of crying (only the ladies). I liked it a lot, and it made me reflect of what I’m truly thankful for. It was kind of difficult to put it into words, but when I finally said it, it was great. Just seeing everybody share what they are thankful made the environment a very trustful one.

What I said was this, “Well, I’m thankful for being me, for having the capacity to actually think for myself, the capacity to make decisions, and with what Javier just mentioned, I mean I was trying to put this into words and I think you explained it very very well. I mean this series, I don’t know if I can call them coincidences, but as Alejo was saying, I mean we were studying economics and we were only three semesters from graduating and while as different from Alejo I did started the semester, but then we encountered in the faculty and we started talking about the assignations and all that stuff and he mentioned the MPC, and then while, I mean, the whole Deirdre McCloskey dialogue was like a huge coincidence for me, because I then realized that when I saw you guys and the group, I knew it would be a great group, so it encouraged me to actually make that move from what I was studying and get to the MPC. Well, actually it was the whole day. At first I attended the conference of Deirdre McCloskey and then went to the dialogue, and after it… I mean, I was working with this idea of education the whole year and when we had the dialogue (although it was not the best one (laughs)), but after I was talking with Bert, I mean it was just a, I don’t know if a coincidence of events that led me to actually make the decision that I was going to get to the MPC. And of course, for my family for supporting me. I’m thankful for that. And yeah, I’m thankful for being here, for having the capacity to reason, and to I mean, practically live with you guys and learn from you and from the people around me.”

I say a lot “I mean” haha. 

The Morning Meeting was an Illusion (guided by Javier T.) – D46

For today’s morning meeting, Javier Tabush showed us some pictures that could be seen as in 3D. He told us that he used to do this because his grandmother gave him books about this and he practiced a lot. It was cool, but many of us couldn’t see the hidden 3D images in the pictures he showed us. It reminded me of a similar exercise I saw on 9gag, which was very cool so I found it and posted it on MPC at UFM. Follow this link if you want to try it. 

During Agora, we decided to know each other more, so we circled up and everyone told, in 30 seconds, something important about them. Most of us told the basic stuff and some fun facts. I told them something like this; “I was born in January 10^th, 1992 in Guatemala. I’m the youngest of two brothers and one sister. I studied at Colegio Internacional Montessori. I have practiced karate and I’m a black belt on it; also I used to love to cook but now not so much. I’m used to be more afraid of aliens so for me, E.T. was a nightmare (laughs). Also, my grandmother was from Lebanon (Javier Tabush’s family is also from Lebanon).” It was a very enriching experience.

Later, we had individual work, time I dedicated to read “Words and Rules” with Isa.

Prezi is guilty for our frustration! – D6

So far, this has been the worst day at MPC. You could breathe frustration in the air. It was a very exhaustive day, full of emotions and almost fighting discussions. It all started because of an apparently simple task Bert gave us. “Get into your groups, find connections with the texts we will be reading, and then, with everyone, divide the work to organize those texts with the table of contents in a Prezi presentation.” Apparently simple. We got into our groups and within a few minutes everybody started to work by their own, on Prezi! It was a total mess that led us nowhere. After all being frustrated, we discussed what happened. We decided to do it all over again with a more organized group work. Did we save the day? Freaking no!!! After lunch, there was more discussion, everyone was tired, and it didn’t helped that much. It was just a really bad day. I had to remember once again, Goosfraba…