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Brazil 2019: A Working Spring Break

The Destination: Brazil
The Cities: Sao Paulo, Sao Jose dos Campos and Rio de Janeiro
The Mission: Meet with our Business Consulting Client and figure out what they heck they need to do better to actually generate some cash
The ACTUAL Mission: Work with our client for 3 out of 8 days, while trying to pack in 9 official days of Spring Break fun into the remaining 5 days.
Status: COMPLETE.

Surprise surprise, but I can now say that I have officially done the most basic thing ever, and went on a school class Spring Break trip!

As part of our semester long coursework, the MBA program here at Illinois has all of it's students signed up for an International Consulting course, where we get to work with different companies doing different things over the semester, and then we make strategic recommendations for them at the end of the term. Last semester we did a local consulting class for businesses here in the US, but we got the opportunity this semester to go international. So basically right up my alley.

As part of that, the program selected Brazil, of all countries, for this course, and found ten companies that each get a team of 5 student consultants from my class that work with them over the semester. It's generally a good system because the companies get cheap labor that usually ends up being pretty useful, and we get experience of dealing with real business problems that we can talk about it in interviews and stuff. As a former heavyweight puller for group projects where I was usually the lone worker, I wasn't really a believer in it at first, but after seeing how much we got done last semester as a team (because my team was AWESOME), I've definitely come around the seeing the benefits of this type of learning/working project.

The problem, of course, with international companies is that we usually have to conduct most of our work or communications with the client by phone, which you might think could give you as good of a view of a company as being there in person, but it really doesn't QUITE do it. To mitigate that problem therefore, the MBA program organizes for all of its students over Spring Break to go visit their companies over three days, and then merges it with a cultural trip around whichever country they visit for the rest of the Spring Break. Normally I wouldn't really be up for traveling with a lot of people that I'm not really friendly with (basically people that aren't family) but the program offered to pay all expenses outside of some food and plane ticket to and from the country, so I couldn't say no to THAT. Plus, I've technically never been to South America, so a new continent!!!(:

The itinerary for this trip was pretty confusing too, so heres the basic gist:
- Day 1 - Arrive in Sao Paulo
- Day 2 - Wake up in Sao Paulo, transfer late afternoon to Sao Jose dos Campos with our client (SJdC is a smaller city a little north of Sao Paulo)
- Day 3 & 4 - Work with the client in SJdC
- Day 5 - Work till late afternoon with the client, then drive back to Sao Paulo, where we catch a flight to RIO DE JANEIRO!!!
- Day 6 - 8 - Basically just live the life in Rio, seeing sights, hanging out, partying late into the night, basically just having a good Spring Break time
- Day 9 - Fly out of Rio and back to normal life.....

We saw this little monkey on the top of the
Sugar Loaf Mountain, and he was SO CUTE
Boring stuff first: working with our client was actually hard work! Our company is a pretty small startup that has these water purification blocks for larger bodies of water (for manufacturing plants or factories) that basically breakup larger chemicals in water bodies, and then enable the natural bacteria in the water to eat away at the chemicals in the water. It's not necessarily a purifying solution for making water drinkable, but it's for preparing water to be rid of most of the major contaminants or chemicals before they are used in manufacturing consumer goods. Their big selling points though are that their technology is completely devoid of chemicals, so the water purifies itself basically through a 100% natural process. It's pretty cool actually.

Our team with our clients at a pond they treated

Most of what we ended up doing turned out to be being part therapist for the two company directors, and part consultants for figuring out potential new ways we could suggest the company going. Interestingly enough, over the past two semesters I've figured out that being a consultant is more about figuring out just what recommendations you CAN make to the client that they'll be most likely to implement, and not necessarily what you think is the best recommendation. That was kind of the therapist part of this process. Turns out the one guy who is the face of the company (Luis) is from a rich family, he's got money to blow and time to waste, and is really just the spokesperson who kind of wastes time. The other dude (Joel) is personally strapped for cash, doing like 90% of the work, and is quickly losing steam in terms of working for this company. Their biggest problem right now is just finding one big client/fish that they can use to get their foot in the door with other customers. Ultimately, we ended up just talking with them about what ideas they would be receptive to to help grow their business. It was low-key, but also stressful just because it was two days to try and understand everything they've done in the company so far. Ultimately though, we all thought it was really productive.

The rest of the trip though was WAY fun!

Some of the highlights below:




1. As always, running: If you didn't know, I've come to love running in foreign places or countries. It started during my summer internship in Riga, where I started running so our defunct shower that didn't have hot water wouldn't feel so cold, and it's morphed now into running all over the place. I've run in Ireland, Iceland, Russia, Mexico, among other places, and now Brazil. For me at least it's nice to just get my bearings a little better in the area, but especially for this trip, it helped pump me up for our client visits, helped me acclimate to the slight time difference when I first got there, and got me to appreciate apparently one of the most famous beaches in Brazil, the Ipanema beach in Rio. Thankfully for that last one our hotel was actually situated right between the two most famous beaches in Rio, so it was quick and easy access.
And unlike many of my runs here in Illinois, I had friends to run with too! In Sao Jose dos Campos I ran alone, but in Sao Paulo, I ran with Gorica, one of the MBA program coordinators, and in Rio, Gorica and I added two of the military guys, Tom and Pat, from the program for our beach run. For someone who doesn't like running with other people unless it's Daddy or Ethan, it turned out to be pretty fun! It was exploring places as a group, and strangely enough for these groups (especially considering the military guys are shredded), I found myself on the faster side of the spectrum with Gorica. Most notably for the beach run, Gorica would randomly say that we should "push it" at random intervals, and Tom and Pat had trouble keeping up. Granted, they got to the midpoint of the run and proceeded to use the monkey bars on the beach to do ~25 pull-ups each, but I was STILL faster(:


2. Partying sans alcohol: A comment I kept getting over the whole trip was how I could dance so well and with so much enthusiasm, and not drink alcohol(: We have a whole contingent of Korean guys in the program, and somehow I must have told one of them and then they told all the rest, but they just kept coming up and saying how they thought I was the best dancer, and yet they couldn't believe I didn't drink. THAT'S RIGHT BABY. I'M AN AU NATURALE CRAZY GOOD DANCER(:

Our first night in Rio, the MBA program rented out a boat and we
had a LEGIT dance party
The thing about this whole trip,  was that basically every night the group was all together in relatively the same place, we would just hit up different clubs in either city. And one night we took a boat out into the bay with just the MBA program and had a dance party. And it was AWESOME!!! We got some unique takes on Western music, we had nights of just straight Western American music, we got some live music, and one club just played straight reggae ton/Brazilian jungle music all night long. And yep, not to brag, but I was a dancing MACHINE. The whole reggaeton/Brazilian music was an especially interesting experience though, because (for all you musicians) instead of with most pop or hiphop music where the emphasized beats are on the upbeats (2 & 4), the emphasized beats are all downbeats and the third beats of the measure, and the rhythm is kind of on the back of the beat. So it ends up feeling a LITTLE slower than it actually is, but the beats are intense. Solution: you have to step WITH the downbeats. You might think that would feel normal, but next time you hear some normal hip hop playing, just try to step to the 1st and 3rd beats, and you'll see what I mean(: Short to say though, the clubs were DOPE, drinking water and Sprite was AWESOME, and the music was sweet. 10/10 would recommend.


3. Is it really fun to do if it's not slightly life-threatening?: Before the trip, our trip coordinator Prof. Noonan (who's also a member of the church, btw) said that he would try to schedule an activity outside of the prescribed activities of the trip that would be a little more adventurous, and be outside of the legal jurisdiction of the school's trip (So basically we had to sign away our lives in case anything happened to us on the trip). What we ended up with was he arranged for this hike into the Brazil jungle, that would lead to a cool waterfall with a natural pool of water that we could swim in. Sounds already like a fun trip that is the right level of adventurous for a Kennedy-type jaunt.
Closer to the hike though, a couple things came up that made people wary of going. 1. The hike would leave at 8AM. Considering the group went out every night and was out until like 3AM, waking up at 8 for a physical activity wasn't what a lot of people were interested in. Of course I'd been waking up at 7:30 every morning after staying out till 1 or 2AM the past couple nights for early morning runs, but even then, that start time was a little rough. 2. The weather in Brazil for most of our trip usually involved some type of rain throughout the day, and hiking a mountain in the rain and the mud deterred a few people from coming, and 3. there had been reports that on a similar trail not close to where we'd be hiking, but similar to ours, people had been held up/robbed of their stuff. Prof. Noonan tried to encourage people to come, but the night before, I wasn't really sure how many people were going to come.
We literally had to climb up that rock face. It was AWESOME.
Turns out, the wariness of people was a HUGE plus, cause it meant we got to take a smaller group, and therefore have MORE fun. I personally woke up, saw that it was NOT raining, and figured that this adventure, considering it's iffy description and higher likelihood of being harder than advertised, was a Kennedy-worthy adventure. Turns out only half the people who signed up for it thought it was worth going to, and that was PERFECT.
The hike itself was EXACTLY as I'd pictured it, and probably my favorite part of the entire trip. It had a healthy dose of adventure, a sizable milieu of danger, a dash of potentially-bodily-injuring feats, and a WHOLE lot of fun. At one point we were basically climbing up a 15-20ft rock/vine covered wall, or traversing a 45 degree angle slanted rock face with a shear drop at the bottom if we fell. BUT once we got there, it was AWESOME!!! The water was deep and cold (but once you got acclimated to it, it was the perfect temperature), the waterfall turned out to be huge and super fun to stand under, there was a river/waterfall downriver to explore, and the smaller group size was perfect for the pool. PLUS, we got two adventures for one because we exited a different way than we had come in, so we got to basically follow the river/waterfall down instead of hiking up and around it. Pictures below tell a better story for sure.


As part of the hike, we also rode the vans up the mountain a little further and got cool views of the city.

Which one of these is just like the other? (Got to teach everybody how to do both a selfie pano AND a same-person-in-the-shot-twice trick in the same picture)

And again, which one of these is just like the other?

My classic "Abacaxi" juice(:
4. Because everyone always asks, the food: Brazilian food is really good, honestly! Now thankfully I've had a very rich experience with food in other countries, so I can say that compared to the emotions I feel eating authentic German Wienerschnitzel, or eating chowder soup or fish straight from the ocean in Isafjordur, Iceland, the Brazilian food we eat was decently good. Not the best I've ever had, but really good. Up in Sao Jose dos Campos, we went to a fish place, and thanks to the fancy investor (Newton) who is working with our company now on making it into a money-producing machine, and his Godfather-like conversation with the owner of the restaurant, we had delicious local fish served on skewers. Or our final night, we ate at a Brazilian steakhouse, and it was basically unlimited meat dished out on, again, huge skewers they would just bring straight to the table. So really good food of course, cause meat is the bomb. The best though was ordering fresh pulped juice, specifically pineapple juice. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but one day we were ordering drinks, and between asking for translations and hearing cool words, I understood the word for pineapple juice as "socos de Abacaxi" (which is pronounced A-Bah-Ca-Shi). I ordered it that first time just cause it was such a unique word and I remembered it, but just kept ordering it because 1. it was delicious, and 2. saying that word lended me a little more authenticity than the average American with the waiter(: The surprised looks on their faces when I'd drop THAT word was always a good thing(:

Notice the skewer; it's a popular method of meat
transfer in Brazil, and is DEFINITELY cool(:
Also, side note, but when a tourist, I find it really interesting that one of the biggest things you need to know in the foreign language is how to order food. And funny enough, it usually only involves learning some really simple words like "I would like" or "May I have", and then reading off the name of the food on the menu, and then adding a "please" at the end. It's super easy, and gives you so much more street cred with the waiters. Of course, if you're going to keep that up, you usually also have to limit your choices to foods that don't have any other add on questions that would then shatter that cred, but sometimes that kind of limitation makes you branch out to other foods right?(:

Streets of Sao Paulo
5. Finally, the country as a whole: Brazil overall was very unexpected in how much I liked the country itself! I had expected something kind of like Mexico, with really dark, short, fast speaking people trying to push touristy stuff on me at every corner, poor infrastructure, people coming up to your dinner table to try and make some money playing a song for the table, or just being really rough around the edges. And it was SO not like that. I would say the best comparison for it would be a city like Warsaw or Gdansk, but with more greenery and jungle around it. Like it had good infrastructure, it functions as a regular city that doesn't necessarily cater just to tourists, and it has a few rough edges, but they ultimately lend authenticity to the place. And the people are super friendly, and really nice looking. Even when my classmates or I would speak English with local Brazilians, there never seemed to be any judgement of foreigners for not speaking Portuguese (a welcome relief from Eastern Europe for sure). If anything, the Brazilians would just start speaking to us louder, but somehow just as fast in Portuguese, hoping we'd understand them now(: The cities though, coupled with the people, gave off a really good vibe for the whole country(:

The day before we headed out for our client visits, we went to a Brazilian soccer game, and it was DOPE. Not as many people as Michigan (obviously...) but I could swear it was louder... And our team won(:

A view of the cables for cable cars traveling up and down to the Sugar Loaf Mountains. It's the Christ Redeemer Statue, and then these as the biggest features of the city apparently...


 Overall, 10/10 would recommend Brazil as a place togo back and visit, for sure(:

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