A month in Brazil.. 13 years later!

I left Brazil and moved to United States when I was 18 years old. I wanted to see the world. I moved to the US to go to college but mostly motivated by the overwhelming passion and love I felt for my boyfriend at the time. He was cute, he was nice, he was everything I needed.

13 years later, I find myself back home - Brazil. I did marry the boy so that is super cool but the coolest thing of all is that life has somehow brought me back home.

Since I left Brazil when I was 18, I really didn't have an adult life here. I grew up, and became an adult in the United States of America. My other home. The states has been all I know as an adult. I've visited my family back in Brazil throughout the last 13 years but not until this January that I had experience living, working and being an adult in Brazil.

And yes, it has only been a month... So it's not fair for me to say I've seen it all, but I have seen so much this month, and I've lived so much this month that I can't help ... I have to share!

First and foremost, I'm very blessed to have a gig that challenges me at the same time as it provides me with the opportunity to be in my home country.

I arrived in Brazil, January 7th, and I've been here since. Today, January 30th, I'm heading back home. It's been 23 great days of hard work, family time and lots of living.

My goal for this month was to design a system with 20 to 30 people that throughout the month were coming and going into our meetings as needed.

I am please to share that everything went great.... No I'm not making it up or exaggerating ... It really did go great. We had people from Brazil and Chile traveling into Rio Claro a small city in the interior of the state of São Paulo. We did not loose anybody, no one was delayed, everybody participated and was fully engaged and we even had some good old fun some of the days when we finish up early.

Our days were long and intense - we were discussing the design of a system, but for the people there, we were really defining how their lives would be - they will use this system everyday all day once in production so this is serious stuff for them. The systems can ease their lives at times and at other times can make life hell. Some of them were gaining, some of them were loosing. But they were all engaged and ready to contribute.

Throughout these sessions I had the opportunity to meet some really great people. People from different places, different cultures and different life stages.

And I'd like to share some of the experiences I take back with me....

I will be sharing with you over the next few blogs some of the highlights of my month (Jan/14) in Brazil...

- Personal space, Physical touch and Forró
- Grandma's Stories
- Driving to Rio Claro
- Sisters vortex
- Customer Service in Brazil
- Campinas... Taquaral e muito mais!
- Meeting someone that gets it
- Swimming with an imaginary friend
- Stopping to smell the roses, and watch the stars
- The coconut, mango metaphor...

Hope you enjoy it!!! I certainly did...