It’s amazing that the first week of our Global Consulting Project has passed already, after a flurry of exams and papers that closed off the Lent term. For a few of us (Jessica, Malte and myself), it’s our first time in South America while for Natasha and Belle, it’s a much-welcomed trip back home.
The kick-off meeting with our client was pushed to the end of last week, so we took the chance to do interviews with some local businesses to gather some research on improving advertising operations and scheduled client meetings for the upcoming week so that we could hit the ground running. Our first meeting with a large supermarket retailer has given us promising data on the potential of our project, and we’re looking forward to digging deeper into financials we’ll get from our client – all the Excel modeling we’ve done for financial management should come in handy!
One of the loveliest things about arriving in Brazil has been to the extreme warmth you experience, from both the sun – oh how I’ve missed you – and the people. Without fail, people have been truly open, kind and inviting; for example, when Belle and I sat down at a restaurant waiting for others to arrive and later learned that the location had been changed, the owner graciously covered the cost of our drinks and hurried us along to meet the others.
Right up there with the wonderful kindness has been the delicious food we’ve had the pleasure to eat; we’ve been having tasty meals that really highlight all the freshness you can only get from locally-grown produce. The colours and flavours of the fruit here are an experience in themselves; it’s a mystery to most of us how we’ve survived for so long without fresh squeezed orange juice and passion fruit every morning.
Team Photo: From left: Alinna (American), Malte (German), Jessica (American/Chinese), Natasha (Brazilian/Bolivian), Belle (Brazilian)
More to come soon …