Clase, clase, e mais clase
In case anyone was wondering why there were no posts during the week, I was crazy busy. Each day, class would start at 8 and would end around 7 or 8. Then, we’d go to dinner and have a few drinks, and get back to the hotel around 11 or 12. There wasn’t even enough time for me to get my 8 hours of beauty sleep, let alone post blog entries. Here is the brief description of my week of class and plant visits. I learned all about how to do business in brazil and visited Embraer, GM, Banco do Brasil, and Natura to see their manufacturing facilities and listen to presentations by company executives. All of the plants were in towns surrounding Sao Paulo, so we would take the bus to them. Let me just say that even on a good day, getting in and out of Sao Paulo is miserable. After our tour of GM, Sao Paulo received more rain in two hours (66mm) than they usually receive all winter. Since the government filled in most of the wetlands and rivers to build roads, several highways were completely submerged. This led to 195 kilometers of back on Sao Paulo’s roads, which was the worst since they began keeping records 40 years ago. Needless to say, we spent a few miserable hours on the bus. While I will miss the Paulistas, the school, the food, and the caiparinhas, I will not miss that miserable bus.
Two nights during the week, the program sponsored dinner and drinks out. Wednesday night, we had pizza at the Skye Bar at Hotel Unique. The hotel itself is a concrete structure with several large, circular windows in a non-traditional form (see pictures). The hotel is located in the middle of the Jardins neighborhood, and is the tallest building around for miles. On the top floor, there is a bar, restaurant, and patio with spectacular views of the entire city. The whole city just rises out of the trees of Jardins in all directions. It was quite a site. The only other detail of note from the Skye Bar was my classy exit. We were on our way out at about 11, when Patrick stopped me, pointed to my watch, and asked if it was broke. "I know you aren’t going home this early." My classy reply was, "Let’s just say I have other interests right now" as I grabbed Sten’s ass. Classy.
