My First Brazilian Carnival

     The last time I blogged, I was focusing on my adjustment period at my internship, TORO Investimentos.  I can say to date that I have successfully adjusted and feel at home and integrated with my team of consultants at TORO.  I have a weekly task list of things to do, which keeps me busy but also gives me freedom to do my assignments as I see fit.  In other words, they have given me a sufficient amount of tasks to do while giving me enough freedom to engage in work I find most relevant to getting the most out of my internship.  For example, on days where the market is excessively volatile, I can sit in with one of my colleagues and observe how he engages in options trading.  In doing so, I have gained invaluable experience in terms of understanding the decision making of financial consultants.  Moreover, I have come to understand how financial consultants interject principles of finance and economics into their decision-making.  In addition, on days when my fellow consultants have meetings with clients, I occasionally help out in terms of putting all of the correct paperwork together.  Unfortunately, this constitutes a lot of filling in blanks in PDF files but I know the experience will only serve me well for the future.

     Furthermore, the Brazilian holiday Carnival (February 8-12) has come and gone since my last blog post.  For my first Carnival experience, I decided to go to a beach on the coast of Parana (the same state Curitiba is located in) with one of my host sisters, her boyfriend, and four of their friends.  On the night of February 8^th, we all packed our things and headed to the supermarket to buy all of the necessary food and beverage for the holiday weekend.  We decided to leave Curitiba at midnight in order to avoid the inordinate amount of traffic on the highway during a typical rush hour during the weekend of Carnival.  We made it safely in great time, put our things away, and rested up for the weekend ahead.  The next morning, everyone else arrived and the celebrations began. 

     Unfortunately, the weather did not serve us well and it rained off and on during our first two days on Matinhos beach.  As a result, we only went to the beach off and on during the first two days when the weather allowed it.  Luckily, our beach house was only three blocks from the beach so it was only a 5-minute walk, which came in handy especially when it started raining.  My host sister’s boyfriend, Eduardo, brought his fishing gear so we went out fishing a couple times and that was an experience to say the least.  It was my first time literally fishing off of a beach, a concept I could only laugh at when I first encountered fisherman casting off from the sand.  I had gone fishing before, usually on a boat but occasionally off a pier, so the concept of literally fishing from the beach left me in a bit of a quandary.  Having nothing else to do, I willingly went with Eduardo to fish off the coast, and even tried my hand it.  To nobody’s surprise, we came up empty handed and in all honestly I don’t think we had a chance from the get-go, but it definitely is a story I will be telling over the foreseeable future.

     Carnival turned into a much bigger learning experience then I had initially anticipated.  Despite the fact that my host sister and her boyfriend spoke a bit of English, their friends did not and as a result, I didn’t speak a word of English throughout the duration of the holiday.  There were moments in the various conversations we engaged in where I knowingly had no idea what was being talked about nor what was going on.  At the time, I felt as if I was in over my head but as I look back and reflect on those experiences, I realize that my Portuguese has gotten infinitely better as a result.  I didn’t experience the glamour of the festivities of Carnival, as one would expect to see on television emanating from Sao Paolo or Rio de Janeiro, but I am totally okay with that.  I experienced Carnival through the eyes of normal, hard-working Brazilians who just wanted to get away for the weekend and enjoy their time together on and off of the beach.

     After the first couple of days, the weather got much better and we had two fun-filled days at Caioba beach, just a few kilometers away from Matinhos.  At night, there were countless festivities on the streets in Matinhos and Caioba, celebrating Carnival, the holiday that celebrates the last few days Brazilians can consume meat before Lent commences.  We ended up driving home on Tuesday the 18^th, and I needed a whole day to recover on that Wednesday before returning to work on Thursday.  It was truly an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.  In all honesty, I hope to return to experience Carnival in the future to experience the lavishness of the festivities in Rio de Janeiro.

Reflections after Week 1 at Toro Investimentos

     Today I commence my second week at Toro Investimentos.  Thus far, my transition into working at Toro has been seamless.  Toro Investimentos is a small financial consulting firm that is located in Batel, near the center of the city of Curitiba.  There are only six consultants that work in the office beside me, which makes for an intimate environment to learn and work.  I have felt welcomed and wanted from the start and have been provided the proper tools to succeed and continue to learn the financial consulting business.  Upon arrival, I was given various literature from Toro about the various financial products that Toro sells.  In addition, my boss gave me additional literature to read about the firms overall strategy in investing for their clients and for their own personal portfolios.  One of my ongoing assignments at Toro is to read “The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America”, which is a collaboration of letters that Warren Buffet wrote to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway.  I have found the content to be extremely helpful in terms of understanding the mindset and thinking processes of arguably the greatest investor of all time.

     One of the biggest obstacles I faced in my first few days at Toro was to understand financial terms and phrases in Brazilian Portuguese.   Luckily, one of my fellow consultants provided me with a website that contained an English to Portuguese dictionary of financial terms and their appropriate definitions.  Although I still have a lot to learn in terms of both the language and business, I feel as though I will be given every opportunity to succeed and learn throughout the duration of my tenure at Toro Investimentos.  Furthermore, after I became familiar with the products and strategy of Toro, I was given additional tasks at the office.  One of my fellow consultants gave me a series of PDF files with the names of various clients with information about their accounts that I had to input into a series of Excel files.  In addition, I have been given tasks that must be completed on a weekly basis, mainly in terms of writing articles and blog posts on their website and a financial blog that accompanies their main website.  Last week I wrote a brief essay about the ten richest cities in the world, with accompanying photos and videos.  I initially wrote the essay in English and then worked with one of my fellow consultants to translate it into Portuguese.

     Furthermore, another one of my tasks during my first week at Toro was to compose and present a Powerpoint presentation about myself.  I initially composed the presentation in English and then subsequently translated the text into Portuguese.  The presentation provided a brief background of my education, past work experience, goals and objectives for my tenure at Toro, and my future professional goals.  I tried my best to speak in Portuguese throughout the presentation and my colleagues appreciated my effort and always corrected me when I made a grammatical or contextual error in Portuguese. 

     To date, I cannot complain one bit about my time in Brazil thus far.  I have been blessed with a wonderful and caring host family and a working environment conducive to learning.  My colleagues at work have been very helpful and understanding of the challenges I have faced initially linguistically and have given me every opportunity to succeed thus far.