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

Reading Don Quijote @ Jardín Ayau – D51

Because we left early today, along with Isa, Pablito, and Grace, we decided to read Don Quijote out loud. We went to the Jardín Ayau and had a pleasant evening, enjoying the wonders of Miguel de Cervantes’ masterwork. We started reading from the beginning that was the prologue, then some sonnets, and finally the first four chapters. Don Quijote is something really enjoyable that leaves you a lot of teachings and anecdotes. It’s the story of human nature so every reader would have his or her own Quijote.

After the reading, we went to the MPC and encountered with Chacho, and with Isa had a very nice dialogue about many topics, including the culture building of the MPC and some fun stories about each of us. It was a very nice time for sharing and knowing a little more of each other. We left at around 8 p.m.

*This is my entry #100!

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?

Euclid’s Propositions (7 – 10) – D46

At 9:30 we circled up to demonstrate this week’s propositions. I was in charge of taking out the papers to chose who was presenting and the first one was Majo for Proposition 7. At first, I thought she was doing it good, but then we realized she wasn’t really prepared and we she stood in front for an hour trying to understand the proposition until she kind-of got it. I assume it was terrible for her, I mean it also happened to me but only for 5 minutes or so not an hour. The good thing was that she realized she needed more preparation and to make a better effort in understanding Euclid. She agreed to start Euclid again from Proposition 1. Then Kata volunteered to make Proposition 7. Javier T. did number 8, Isa did number 9, and Mabe did number 10 (which she wasn’t prepared to do it). There was a lot of feedback, especially in Kata’s and Mabe’s presentations. Isa and Javier did a good job. 

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.

Debriefing, now more calmly – D45

The debriefing was very good. It was a nice way to end our stressful day and to gain more energy for tomorrow. We clarified many topics that were wandering and needed to be addressed, and everyone committed to refocus and behave according to our standards. One of the things I liked the most was Isa’s letter regarding the troubles we’ve been having as a group, the reasons she believed to be the causes of these behaviors (which I agreed with, mainly frustration and having too many things on our plate (which is also our fault)), and some recommendations to improve on this. I don’t want to get into too many details, but I can tell you that it was a very productive debriefing. One thing I apologized with was my reaction towards Pablito earlier today, because I was a little angry that everyone wasn’t listening (they were hearing but not listening) and somehow he interrupted me (not precisely when I was speaking but after I asked a question) so I just said to him “No cerote”. I didn’t notice it until someone told me I said that, so I apologized immediately with him and then after in debriefing. Seeing it in retrospective, it’s kind of funny though haha. In conclusion, a very nice way to end up the day. We even ended the debriefing at 7:15 p.m. Carla and Helmuth joined us for this part of the day.

Presenting the Liberty Project and some more of Emerson – D29

After lunch, Isa, Alejo, Pablito, Marce, and I presented our idea on forming a liberty club, and I must say that it didn’t went as we expected. Many of our classmates misinterpreted us in many things of our project and reacted in a negative way towards it. After some intense dialogue, I found it helpful to see other perspectives and actually decided as a group that it would be better to implement some suggestions they gave us and substitute them for what we had before. After the discussion, we were able to improve our project in order to do a better work.

Later, we read some more of Emerson’s essay, which we are finding the true meaning of what Emerson is trying to tell us. I found this essay very interesting and accurate in his ideas. I’m also starting to think that Emerson is quite a libertarian for the way he writes and what he claims on individualism.

Carmen's look during the dialogue

Just dialoguing

How to advance liberty workshop with Alexander McCobin – Saturday 20

SFL Workshop @ Acton MBA

 Just for you to know how much we like liberty, seven of the MPC’ers (Isa, Marce, Mabe, Alejo, Franz, Pablito, and I) went to a workshop this Saturday (Revolution holiday) to a workshop about student group organizing with Alexander McCobin. He told us many useful tips about organizing and spreading the libertarian ideas. Also, we made a brief workshop in which the MPC’ers decided to work as a team to create a club or organization to reach this goal in Guatemala. We concluded we would start a kind-of-club (We don’t know the name yet) and make the Liberty Café. Our goal is to, “Engage others to achieve their own understanding of liberty.” This we would achieve by three major means, Le Sticky Method, a webpage and a fan page, and the Liberty Café. Le Sticky Method consists of creating stickers, buttons, and pins with questions about relevant daily topics such like, The Social Healthcare would fail, want to know how and why? The objective of this is to encourage people to ask you this question and start an important conversation anywhere you are, whether a cafeteria or the street. After this conversation, you can invite them to the Liberty Café and offer them to visit our webpage, in which they may find all resources needed to be prepared for the dialogue tables. These resources would include videos, essays, books, and other important ones. Finally, the Liberty Café consists of round table dialogues about important topics. We found this project very interesting and easy to replicate in other places starting in universities, and we even got contacts from Alexander for funding this project!

Excuses are like elbows...

MPC'ers working as a group