Saturday, February 18, 2017

Friday February 10th. End of the student exchange in Spain

We started with a Spanish workshop taught by some students from Spain (teaching the main pronunciation and accent rules, before watching a funny video of the variety of this language throughout the world) we played a kind of “competition” game between teams (enterprises), in which you would lose or win some marshmallows (as if they were the organization profits of a company) depending on the choice you made between a red card or a green one in comparison to the rest of the teams, so there were different combinations. Basically we were divided into 5 groups with people of every country, and we had to agree within the groups to choose a card or the other, in order to get marshmallows or points. Or that’s what we thought. We were given the rules of the game and the goal was that all teams should win. So after a few rounds, we were asked to get approximately the same number of marshmallows for every group. Playing this game we realised that if we had decided to use the first combination (everyone choosing the green card) from the very beginning, we all would have had the same score at the end. So it was a kind of useful experience, coming from a “simple” game, which might help us to solve problems in the future,  for example if we work for an enterprise: it is better to collaborate than to compete. 


.After that, our language assistant Leslie taught us some interesting aspects of advertising, working with different advertisements so that we could see the different ways enterprises use to sell their products. And after theory, comes practice. We were shown an advert but we couldn’t see what  the advertised product was, so that we decided ourselves what kind of product (or service)  it could be, adding a name and a little slogan to complete it.
Again divided into the 5 mentioned groups, mine decided to propose an insurance service called Ouch!, whose slogan was Choose Ouch! so that you won’t have to say “Ouch!”.
Once the workshop was finished, we headed to a local start-up and the local business incubator residence for entrepreneurs, where we were given information about what they offer like training, advice and support. It is a building in which entrepreneurs living in Almendralejo, nearby or anyone coming from Europe can propose a product  idea and start developing it. Moreover, if their idea is selected  to be a potential product in the market, they are provided with accommodation for free in the residence for two years. They also have classes and are advised to make their products better and, maybe at the end, launch them into market.
In the evening we took part in our farewell party, where each country danced to typical music of their culture, inviting the rest of participants to dance together and have fun.

by David García Corbacho