Observations #1

I ended my last post with "we shall see..." regarding the conference. Well, we saw... And it wasn't such a great view. It was certainly a cultural and eye-opening experience though, in terms of how conferences are done in other countries.  Ummmm... where do I even begin? I have observed many things over the last three days, both at the conference and just in general, but the greatest observation has been the vast difference in presentational style between home and here. Wow!!! For starters, sessions last at least an hour and a half, and the breakout sessions can last up to 2 hours and 15 minutes!!  The topic of the sessions have been varied but, in all honesty, not extremely practical, and most of the session speakers have... READ THEIR ENTIRE "presentation" to us.  I have learned that it is pretty much impossible for me to listen to someone READ a conference presentation for over an hour, and very difficult for me to pay attention to a non-read education presentation in another language. At least I'm learning something about myself, right?

Another big difference between home and here is that nobody pays attention to the speaker!  Granted, it could have something to do with how long and drawn out the sessions are, but still.  People talk, get up, leave, sleep and make all sorts of noises throughout the presentations...it's astounding!  I must admit that I'm guilty of not paying attention (I wrote this blog during one of the sessions), but I don't get up, I don't leave, and I try at least to be quiet.  And if I do talk, I keep it to a whisper.  Anyway, it's amazing, really, and has left me utterly speechless.

The third observation at this conference was the way they took attendance.  Each attendee was given a little booklet - a "passport" they called it - with the schedule.  At each session we would receive a stamp in the passport, and on Monday we turn in the passport to our advisor and that way our attendance at the conference is verified.  Great idea right?  Well, it would have been a not-so-bad idea if the hostesses at the door hadn't given you TWO sessions worth of stamps when you attended the first one, thus giving people an out if they got too bored and didn't want to stay.

Needless to say, these last three days have been long, tiring, rather boring, and seemingly unproductive.  Now that I think about it, the whole experience was rather bizarre.  I guess that they just do things really differently here....

My row at one of the conference sessions - don't we look excited?