Learning

At the end of the day we are living an AIESEC exchange experience so we supposed to have a strong professional experience, a cultural experience in a global learning environment. Unfortunately AIESEC US really sucks and there is no local committee in South Florida to support us on that. So we started to organize some activities by ourselves. Once we went to visit DHL Miami Gateway that was really cool to understand more about the company and create a better network among the interns.

Some weeks ago we had a learning event where we started with a Brazilian lunch and then a discussion about Brazilian culture. After that we had a very cool learning circle about the development model of the countries we had represented: Brazil, Russia, Mexico and Colombia and correlating with the development model of China, India and US. It is always amazing how much you can learn just by sitting and having a structure talk with smart people. We really need to take the opportunity to learn from the bright people we have around. To finish the day we had Russian desert and watched the Brazilian movie: ¨Tropa de Elite¨ all together. The movie shows very much about a big current issue in Brazil: violence. This movie for me is AMAZING !!!

Um dia de patrao !!!

One of our great friends here, Karina Trujillo, was celebrating her birthday last weekend. She invited all of the AIESEC inters and rented 3 rooms at Sheraton Miami. We went Saturday afternoon, set ourselves in the room and went to the swimming pool to drink some beers. We had almost private beach, beautiful palms around, the moon was full and we decided to go to the Jacuzzi during night before the party. We dressed up and went to a night club at South Beach called Macarena. At Macarena we had dinner, I eat an Argentinean dish and we had ¨free¨sangria for the whole night. After the dinner the party started: salsa, merengue, reggeaton!!! We had a great party !!! The next day, back to Sheraton, we were recovering beside the pool, enjoying the view and the landscape.

The interns here in Florida have a quite hard life… look the pictures!!! I am so happy !!!

Cooking

After moving from my home city (Belo Horzizonte-Brazil) I was cooking a lot my first months in Sao Paulo. The last two years I have been quite busy having no time for cooking but on these first months here in the US I started to cook again. The main reasons are that I have time and I would like to have a health life here, with is kind of hard in the US. The other big reason is because here I can find all the ingredients to cook Brazilian food, there is a huge Brazilian community and even Brazilian markets. Actually I can even have Açaí, Guaraná, Pao de quiejo, speak Portuguese in some places. There is many ways to be really connect with my country.

But the focus of this post is cooking. I am very proud to show you the picture of my favorite dish ¨Frango com Quiabo¨ or ¨Chinken with Okra¨. I found all the ingredients and I was really excited cooking and of course eating it. I also went to a restaurant called ¨Chico Mineiro¨ once where I could eat this dish at one Sunday watching a Brazilian soccer game from ¨Brasileirao 2007¨ at Globo. It was a very good feeling.

Once we did a Brazilian lunch and Pablo cooked ¨Feijoada¨ for us. Look how beautiful the dish was!!! We also had ¨Caipirinha¨ and some Tequila. Las week I cooked some beef, ¨moela¨, rice, bean, etc…

I am gaining weight J AEEEE

Volunteer experiences

I had two experiences going to volunteer with some NGOs here in South Florida. Both experiences were through DHL. First we went play and have fun with some kids Saturday morning . It was very cool and I supposed to play with them but the problem was that I don’t know how to play their games (American football, kick ball, baseball) and they don’t like to play our games (soccer, volleyball). I learnt a lot and I had a lot of fun with the kids anyway. They taught me!!!

The other opportunity was when I went to build a house in a poor neighborhood with the NGO “Habitat for humanity”. Our DH group was responsible to cover the roof with an impermeable material. This one was very hard. We need to put the material and stick it hammering some nails through a metal disk. It was very hard and physically demanding but we accomplished the task. Our fingers were hurt after hammering it many times.

Fortunately their concept of poorness is very different from ours. The house that we build would be a very good one in Brazil and here were a supposed poor house in dangerous neighborhood.

This week I subscribed to the disaster team at DHL. When we have some global disaster, like the earthquake in Peru, DHL send some employee offering your core competence: “logistic and transportation¨ to support the people. Let’s see if they will select me.

Love

Sometimes you need to travel very far to find a true love: Egypt, Argentina, Turkey. But we still have many places to go: USA, Ukraine, Brazil.

The most important is that we are together and in love. The future belongs to us.

Baseball game

Just to complete the American dream Elias and I got invited to a Florida Marlins baseball game in one of those suites in the stadium that you see on movies: free tickets, free food (hot dog, hamburgers, chicken, etc.), free drinks (beer, juice, wine, champagne, soda) air conditioning and cheerleaders. At the middle of the game the cheerleaders came to visit us and take pictures.

I also understood the rules of baseball. It is a Very interesting game. I am looking forward to go to an American football game.

My new car

Yes, I am really grateful, last week I realize a general boy’s dream.

I remember when I was a child dreaming about a red Scort XR3 convertible. I bought a Chrysler Sebring red 1999 convertible. Now I, Elias, Marcelo, Pablo and other trainees here can to work and go to Miami Beach felling the fresh air of sunny Florida!!! I am really happy, the feeling of driving a convertible, put your sunglass, look to the beach or take the highway is just amazing.

I couldn’t have a better life in any other place being and intern.

¨Live in South Florida once, but leave before it makes you soft¨ (sunscream)

International Conference in Istanbul – Turkey

The last 2 weeks of August I went to my 5^th AIESEC International Conference, this time at Istanbul – Turkey playing a completely different role. I was not part of AIESEC anymore; I was company representative… hehehe, very strange. It was the first time that I missed AIESEC and I realized that I am no part of it anymore but it is just the changing processJ.

The best thing about the conference was to see many friends from all over the world that I was not expecting to see them again and be together with Svitlana. The worse part was please those senior people from the company with many silly requirements but the experience was great. I learn a lot about these senior people and I could meet some from different big companies.

Other important chapter of my business trip to Istanbul was going to the FORMULA 1 RACE. It is unbelievable how noisy the cars are, how great is to attend a world sport event as formula 1. We were just in front of the start point with gold tickets. Filipe Massa, the Brazilian from Ferrari, won the race and I bought a t-shirt from Ferrari with his name and the Brazilian flag.

The country is very different from what I was eexpecting. After going to Egypt I was expecting an Islamic conservative country but what I found was a very open and modern country. The city is beautiful and full of people with western clothes, behaviors and mentality. See the golden gate, the bridge which connect the European and Asiatic continent were also very interesting.

The fun part !!!

I live with 6 people in the house. Elias and his wife Fernanda, Daniel from Colombia, Adela from Czech Republic and I share a room with Marcelo from Brazil, a very good friend. The people are very cool and we have a lot of fun together. We did 2 Brazilian barbecue, one in the house and one the beach that were very successful, we went to the most amazing nightclub complex called Hard Rock, we went to movies, we went to Saw grass Mills many times and of course to the beach !!! We also get together with trainees in Kraft Foods in “bigger social events”. They are very cool people as well.

I can have fun in simple conversations at home, remembers funny stores in MC time in Brazil together with Elias, remember good parties and Carnival in Brazil, and just making jokes from our daily life. The house environment is quite cool and funny.

I am doing many things that I really like that I didn’t have time before. I am reading a lot, have time to reflect, time to write a blog and communicating with friends, call my family, taking care of my personal life.

Everything is exactly what I was looking for in this experience !!!

How does it look like living and working in the US, specifically in Florida

The place is everything I have dreamed about in terms quality life. First of all the work culture is quite different from Latin America and from the one I used to have in AIESEC. Before I used to work between 10 to 12 hours a days, lead an average of 150 to 200 people, work at almost all weekends, do not have time to eat and sleep properly.

In the US people really respect the 8 daily work hours and if you stay more than that you are seem as not competent enough to finish your task on time, unfocused or workaholic. So I work 8 hours a day, I never work at weekends, I sleep minimum 8 hour a day and I have breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday !!!! I have much less amount of task and I can go to the swimming pool after work at home.

So in the first month I was 4 kilos more and all people that saw me was really impressed how I was recovered, looking more healthy after jut one month. I am doing acne treatment, using professional shampoo and when I buy my car I will start the gym with a personal trainer. But it doesn’t mean that I am becoming a metro sexual.

The life is very convenient and the prices and incredible good. So you can do less effort because you have machines to do everything for you in a very accessible price. Also all the fancy branded clothes are very accessible so after more then 2 years without buying clothes I am changing my closet.

The weather is very hot as I really like, the sun is always shining, the beach is close and you have air conditioning in every place. The palms and lakes are everywhere, the houses are beautiful and everything is clean and organized. These are specificities from Florida, the Caribbean in the developed world !!!

My profesional internship experience at DHL US

After almost 5 years working at AIESEC aiming to provide leadership experience, a learning environment and professional exchange opportunities to young talented people I went to my next step: go for a professional exchange experience myself !!!

I was planning to go to Europe but a very important person in my life, my mentor Elias, was the one who called me on Friday to talk about other issue and mentioned the opportunity at DHL in the US. It was not Europe but it was in Miami, in the beach, living in a house with a swimming pool, big and very interesting company, HR, I would still be somehow related to AIESEC and go to International Conference. So I decided to apply on Sunday as many people decided but fortunately I got the job.

I am responsible to coordinate the internship programs in the US that are four: the local internship (estagio normal), the MBA program, the Coop program and I am also responsible to coordinate the AIESEC program in the whole Americas region.

Until now I love the job role, the company, the people from my department and specially my boss. People are very suportative and very welcoming. Together with corporate responsibility HR is the subject I most like in business administration so I am sure this experience will be very rewarding and decisive to my future.

Bellow you can find some pictures that illustrate my professional experience.

The building that I work and me going to work in front of my new house !!!

The first step

I did not imagine how hard it would be to create a simple weblog. I am mixture of two profiles called "hurry up", which means that I want to do things very fast in less time possible, and also "be perfect", which means that I need to have things fast and very well done. It is hard to find this profiles but these are one among others thousands definitions that you can find about me.

Just to have an idea how hard was it, to decide the name it would show in the blog I took a while. I was trying to identify which groups of friends would be the "target" of my blog. I could be called Boca, Jussy, Marcelao, Marce, Marcelinho, Celo, BH, etc.... I am a mixture of many things, many experiences.

Maybe you could say that I have many different faces, I am not one person, I am Geminis. Actually it can be true. Is true in the sense I am very adaptable and flexible to deal with many different group of people, to live different situations, in different countries. Some of you know me going to the budist spiritual retirement, some you may know me enjoying the best of Carnival in Brazil, some of you may know me as the funny most extroverted guy in the group, some of you may know the serious team leader, some of you may know the workaholic team player, some of you know the smart strategist, some of you the tireless implementer, some of you the soccer player, some of you the dancer, some the poor guy from Ipanemao, some of you the no-immigrant citizen living in South Florida in a house with swimming pool, some of you know me speaking Portuguese, portuñol or funny English, etc....

It was always hard for me to define myself or use this mass communication channels as orkut, linked in, facebook, mailing list or blog because of the different "target groups". But I am pretty sure about my essence, the core that do not change, the values that is the base of my been, my beliefs, my goals, my opinion and step by step I am shaping my mission that contributes to a better world.

So let´s start this new virtual communication experience and exercise myself reflecting while writing in this blog.