The End is Near.....

So here I sit in 40-degree temps in Sao Paulo, putting off my final paper for Managerial Accounting. The end is near. Its Wednesday night and I am heading out of here on Friday night (God willing!). It's not that I'm excited to leave - Sao Paulo has grown on me. I'm excited to get home. I'm also nervous....they shut down the airport today because someone was broadcasting a pirated signal over Air Traffic Control. Add to that a Customs Agent strike, and I'll be lucky to get out of here. Only problem is that I must get on my flight on time - I land at 5:30am in Chicago and have a final exam at 9:00am. If I miss it, I'm going to be hurting.

So as for Sao Paulo updates....lets see...we've had a lot of class this week, along with working on our final projects. We've had some funny Brazilian issues this week, starting off with our field trip leaving 60- minutes late with no explanation. Brazilians are notoriously late, and it's been rubbing off on we Americans. The second lesson was in Brazilians inability to say "no". Once you know what is going on, it is the funniest thing to watch.

The field trip we went on was to a high-end cosmetics company named Natura. They use only sustainable (renewable) products from the Amazon. Their facility was amazing. It was very contemporary with poured concrete walls and fluid shapes....lots of elevated walkways and skylights. They had lounges designed with feng shui in mind. They also had on-campus daycare, gymnasium, soccer stadium (of course), cafeterias, CD and DVD rentals, and 32 coach buses that picked up employees from all over Sao Paulo state. All of that was FREE!! All told it was a great trip, until we had to stand outside in the cold and wait 30 minutes for our bus home.
(Photos below are L-R: Brazil tree, exterior of Natura, Natura walkway w/childcare on right, Feng Shui garden)























Alright....I suppose I should get started on my paper. Barring something pretty fun over the next day, this will probably be my last posting from Sao Paulo. We'll see how this blog carries on - I'm sure I will have lots of other fun things to write about over the summer! I can't wait to see everyone very soon. Thanks for the emails and for reading my babbles. I'll see you very soon!

-Kevin