Thursday, March 31, 2011

Day 3

Day 3 was filled with workshops we signed up for. I signed up for social outreach and the healthcare workshop. The day started off though with a couple more speakers. Dr. Taylor W. Lawrence president of Raytheon Missile Systems spoke to us about his company an gave us some inspiring words as well. The are the largest missile company in the world however are working on an actual iron man suit that could potential be used by the military or in certain work forces. After him Magnus MacFarlane Barrow from Scotland spoke to us about his organization he created called Mary's Meals which is feeding primary school students all over the world food at school so they will go and stay in school and keep them out of poverty. After him a 13 year old spoke to us named Adora from the U.S. She is amazing! She has published two books and has soo much to say. She spoke to us about how much young people have to offer..she was so right and so intelligent if it wasn't for the box she was standing on to reach the podium I would have forgotten a 13 year old was speaking to us. They gave out awards for the top papers in each category after that. No I did not win but that was to be expected, there were so many awesome papers being presented! The presenters did however, all receive free laptops. So now I have another nice Thinkpad, a little nicer than the ones Wake gives us so after its programmed two year life span I shall use this free one I got. The workshops we attended were really neat, we had two speakers at each and then plenty of time for a question and answer session. The first workshop, Social Outreach was put on by Martin Davidson, Chief Executive of the British Council who spoke to us about the difference between communication and conversation. How do we really understand culturally what people mean by a set of words? Next Helen Stacy, a lawyer and senior Fellow at Stanford University spoke to us about her passions and practices reaching out to people who are affected by human trafficking, drug trafficking etc. She also is proposing an idea that I personally love which is to implement human rights into the education curriculum. The healthcare workshop was put on by Antonio Rendas, dean of the medical school in Portugal and Dr. Scott D. Stern of Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago. They gave us tips for leadership and also some solutions to the problems in medical education. A very interesting day. The afternoon we had free so I was able to take a breather and then head to the street festival at the Dubai Marina. It was interesting to see all the different kinds of food they were serving. I feel like Dubai has a mixture of different cultural foods. It does have its traditional middle eastern food but incorporates food from around the world very regularly. At the festival it was cool to just people watch. Literally every single person was speaking a different language but they all seemed to come together to watch the UAE and Pakistan soccer match. Soccer always unites the world haha. It was a fun evening out enabling me to see more of Dubai and more of the culutre and I was able to get a bit more sleep that night.

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