Weekend 3 - Paradise

So weekend 3 I decided to take a little R&R for myself. Lots of the teams stayed in Recife to enjoy the night life, but 2 other girls and I decided to travel to one of the more remote beaches of the area called Carneiros. ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! 

Carneiros is about 2 hours from Recife, but absolutely a world of difference. Think of Recife as Miami Beach and Carneiros would be more like a deserted island off of Key West. I thought Porto was beautiful, but Carneiros beats it hands down. There is only one hotel on the beach, with a couple of restaurants spread out, but the beach and surrounding areas are pretty much isolated with very little civilization – so perfect in my book! It was a weekend of total relaxation. We got to Carneiros on Saturday morning and spent most of the day just laying out on the beach and taking walks around the area.

Our hotel: 

Our walks around the beach:

Imagine having to wake up to this every morning (yes, be jealous!):

On Sunday we took a bought trip around the area - basically the Carneiros beach is where the sea and the ocean meet. Our side of the beach is the sea side, so the tides are very drastic - low tides create sand bars way out into the sea and the boats take you out to hang out on the sand bars. Very, very, very cool:

These are the sand bars that the boat took us to (this is probably a mile out into the water from our beach):

One of the stops we made on the boat ride to some of the more secluded beaches:

One of the more interesting stops we had was when we stopped at a beach where a bunch of other boats had docked and we noticed people were gathering around these buckets of 'stuff.' People were rushing off the boat to get to this 'stuff' and then lathering it on themselves. We come to find out this 'stuff' is natural mud baths that are suppose to have special minerals. It was the funniest sight ever:

So when in Rome do as the Romans, right.. :-)

It was definitely the perfect weekend before a busy week of final presentations and wrapping up.

Week 3 - fun times

I am a total slacker! It’s been a while since my last post but there has just been sooooo much going on. First of all…it is HOT! HOT! HOT! We have not felt the heat like this before – it’s about 93 degrees, but feels like 110! You know I like the heat, but this has been pretty miserable.

So where do I even start (this is what I get for waiting so long in posting!). Last week we had two major events – 1) we did our community service day at Caza de Crianca and 2) I got to go to a Brazilian soccer game! Both were equally really great experiences.

Caza de Crianca is an organization that essentially builds schools in under privileged neighborhood to provide a safe and healthy environment for children that cannot afford to pay for schooling. We had a the opportunity to pay a visit to the 7-10 year old kids. The IBM team was broken up into 3 teams of 5-5-4, and each team had a group of about 50 kids or so. We did few activities with them such as teaching them the Old McDonald song, we brought postcards from each of our home countries to share with the kids, and we even got to play some American football and baseball with them (the US team brought footballs and baseballs). The kids just loved it. Their faces were just priceless in showing them such simple things, yet they thought the world of it. The kids definitely made my day, but more importantly, I think we definitely brought many smiles to them as well.

So the soccer game…Ummm, Brazilians definitely LOVE their soccer. You definitely have to experience it believe it – there is just no way I can do justice in describing the experience. We went to a semi-final match for the Brazil Northeast Cup between Sport (the Recife local team) and the Fortaleza local team, which is apparently a pretty big deal.  We were dropped off by the taxi a few blocks from the stadium, and we come to find out the taxi dropped us off on the side of the opposing team. Let’s just say that the atmosphere was definitely tense and not the friendliest. We did not know we were on the opposing team side, so when we got to the Recife team side it was a completely different environment. The fans were pumped up, chanting their team song (no clue what the actual words were), and just all around ‘in the moment.’ Again, not really easy to describe because it’s one of those things you just have to see to believe. 

So this is all before we actually got IN the stadium. In the stadium the atmosphere was just charged and unbelievably LOUD. There are no assigned seats – you buy tickets based on sections, so you basically have to claim a seat/section and defend it at all cost as some people just tend to pile in on the good seats. I am not sure why they even have seats in the stadium – mostly everybody stood the entire game.  Once the game started all I can say is – WOW! Talk about being passionate about a game – the roar of the crowd on good plays was just as loud as the roar of the crowd when a player would mess up. There was definitely nothing lost in translation with understanding how the crowd felt about team players, the plays, and most especially the refs (and I learned a few not so nice Portuguese words). To give you an idea on how serious Brazilians can get with their soccer games, during half time the refs are escorted off the field with a circle of police officers surrounding them with bullet proof shields – eek! My US family, don’t freak out – this is apparently just a precaution and obviously I am back safe and sound :-)

Week 3

As a result of my CSC assignment, is it bad to say how much I appreciate the little things in life. For example: WIFI! AC! Hot Water!

I think that the modern version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs would definitely have WIFI right up there. But it's all part of the adventure and experience - except when I want to throw my iPhone across the room because I can't Skype with the boys. Somebody should definitely film me when I am trying to get connection in my hotel room, waving my phone in the air, hopping on one leg, while standing on the bed. Knowing me, it's a miracle I have not fallen down and had some sort of accident. At one point, based on a the suggestion from another team member, the best WIFI connection I got was in the bathroom, but that lasted about 2 seconds because it wigged me out too much working in the bathroom.

I can't complain though that I get to have a view of the ocean everyday, I get to hear the ocean sounds everyday, and best of all - I have a bakery 2 blocks away with my favorite treats that I know from when I go to Paraguay (dulce de leche! guava! crema!). I will definitely miss that part!

Work has been going really well. We presented to our clients drafts of some of our short term solutions and they are really happy. I am really grateful we got to work with NACC because we get such a huge sense of satisfaction knowing that we are leaving behind valuable tools that will enable their mission in providing assistance and support to these families in need. My IBM team is a well oiled machine - I am working on automating and consolidating all of their financial spreadsheets (will I ever get away from excel??), Rue is the IT Specialist and he is working on creating an online form for purchase requests, and Marina is working to consolidate all our findings, research, and recommendations (she totally owns PowerPoint!). 

So some more catch up pictures:  This is Brazil Team 16 (plus we picked up a local team member :-)

Another picture of Olinda: This is me learning how to use my panaromic view option on my iphone...pretty impressive.

Below is a picture of my IBM team and some of the NACC staff members.

Weekend 2

This weekend we spent around Recife to explore the surrounding areas. I mainly did Old Recife and the town of Olinda. Both were just gorgeous, as I love all of the historical buildings and the character of the areas. So rather than bore you with words, here are a few pictures (plus some catch up pictures that I could not post before because of wifi issues).

OLD RECIFE

 

Town of Olinda (about 15-20 min outside of Recife). Amazing little town that sits on a hill top overlooking the ocean. 

City of Recife (in front of our hotel)

This is the beach on weekends - a sea of people, umbrellas, and beach chairs:

This is the SAME beach at night (amazing how they clean up!):

This is why you DONT swim in the Recife beaches and are only allowed in the water at low tide behind the reefs (see the brown barrier in the picture below - those are natural reefs of the city, which is what the city is named after)

And this is why I am in heaven every day for breakfast (even though I am missing my lattes :-)

End of Week 2

Wow, week 2 is over! It’s a little scary that we only have 2 weeks left to complete our projects, but a little happy that I am that much closer to seeing my family again. So rather than update you on every little bit this week, I was collecting the major events of the week into one entry as we are mostly working on researching and documenting our project deliverables this week.

The good news is that our client, NACC, is 100% on the same page as us in terms of what we can delivery in 4 weeks. Most of the time the clients want the moon and stars and it’s our job to show them that we may not be able to get them to the moon and stars in 4 weeks, but we can steer them in the right direction of how to get there. Part of our challenge on these CSC projects is making sure we have realistic expectations on what we can deliver in 4 weeks to our clients that will have long term value for them. We don’t want to do some research that we document in a presentation that the client will then just shelve and collect dust.

Our job at NACC is to deliver a long term roadmap for them on how they can go about implementing a financial management system. Thankfully my team is a well-oiled machine :-) We have split up our tasks for the week so we can get more coverage and are right on schedule for our deliverables.

My team: Rue (from Malaysia), Marina (from Spain), and me.

On the fun side, we got to spend one afternoon with the children at NACC. If you recall, NACC is the equivalent of the Ronald McDonald house for children with cancer. So our office is actually in the NACC building that houses the families. As part of the NACC services, there is a common/ rec room area that the kids gather in during the afternoons for afternoon snacks. NACC actually provides 6 meals a day for the families staying there. The NACC staff was kind enough to also invite volunteers from the “Dr. Happiness” support group, which is essentially medical students that provide entertainment for sick kids (songs, dancing, magic, etc.).

It was so much fun and so very special spending time with these children. Many of the kids watched from the sidelines as they were too sick or too weak to participate, but they were entertained by at least watching. For those did participate in the songs and games, you could see the physical effects of their treatments, but nothing was stopping them from having a little fun. It was humbling to see that despite the difficulties facing these young children, there was so much life and mischief in their eyes.

The funny part was that when we first went to the rec room, there were about half a dozen kids there. My team brought chocolate for the kids and after announcing on the loud speaker that there was chocolate for the kids, we had over a dozen kids show up. Nothing like chocolate as an incentive for kids - no matter what country you are in :-)

Hands down the best day of our assignment so far!!