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Finally it was Friday, me and Mario started to wait for the CDM participants, who were going to spend 2 intensive days in Brussels this weekend. We hoped they knew what was expecting them. Robin and Ivonne, other CD members who are one of the few people with me who is left in ‘ the Big Brothers house ‘ , used their experiences from the previous visitors visit, and started printing out information for the visitors about using the sink, the fridge and the general rules in the house, most importantly about our 4th character in the house, the mice:)
The participants started arriving. Having free time till the evening, most of them already left for Brussels to see the city, using their few leisure time to see Brussels. At 5 pm all of them were back, ready for the introduction round and the games. They all introduced themselves, and got a small introduction from the idea holders, and the facilitators, meanwhile getting to know each other better. After some games, Prisca delegated tasks for cooking schedules and sent the first group to shopping already for groceries for food. After cooking, everyone enjoyed a nice dinner with pasta, having an Italian in the house:)
After some more drinking and chatting, people started falling asleep.
The next day, we were all waken up by Julia and Iyad at 07.00. The first thing I remember was Fotis telling me ‘ I m in the line for bathroom ‘ while he was still sleeping. After a 4 star hotel quality breakfast, we left the house for our conference, a 2 minutes walking distance, used as a classroom regularly. We started the sessions, creating, brainstorming and presenting new ideas, sometimes with very hot discussions, which was cooled down by nice energizers. At the end of the day, all the room was full of papers with ideas, which we managed to summarize at the end of the day. After 7 hours of brainstorming and different methods, we have made a collage of the idea ‘ Beyond Europe ‘ with pictures. After the evaluation round, now everybody is at home, tired and waiting for dinner….
To be continued…