Module 3 update

Watching the elections in Sao Paulo will be an experience I will never forget. My classmates both republican and democrat surrounded by Brazilians, and hotel guests from Germany and else where..watching the numbers role in on the Hotel's outside bar TV-was exciting and fun.
Cheers-Clapping-Boos could be heard from each announcement on CNN (the first Chanel we could find broadcasting the results-the rest of the channels broadcasting just regular programming). Everyone was making early predictions, asking each other about the process in early voting for each state-how some classmates couldnt vote -as early voting opened the day some left and the lines were too many hours long for them to make their flights to school...the sacrifices they made.
some people left the night early like around 9pm (which is 3pm PST) while I stayed till 1am with the last troupers. By the time I feel asleep-it was clear Obama won.
The next day, it was strange to be in a foreign country-it seemed only our class was obsessed with our election and outcome. Maybe the silence I experienced from the hotel guest was just lost in the translation and poor eavesdropping skills I have. I lived vicariously through through social media -and US newspapers to feel a bit more of a connection to the event.
~
Class ended on Friday in Sao Paulo and by Friday night we hopped a flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
We had class early on Saturday morning. And sometime in the morning I came down withVertigo. The most obnoxious sickness -where the world just starts moving and I just got nauseated and dizzy. I laid down and the school called a doctor. I was given medicine and was told that due to elevation change, the late night traveling and change in altitude that the cause was more environmental than anything else. Which was good--as my body acclimated -the vertigo ceased. It's funny to get a new illness in a foreign country. Never knowing what to do, where to go, the panic for a second steps in. Thankfully, my GEMBA family is exceptional. Within a minute of talking to my friend about what I felt I had a pharmacist (who is pregnant and has a small cabinet of medicines for any miss calculated experience) and a medical doctor -both classmates of mine-diagnosing my symptoms and prescribing me medicine. Talk about the richness of resources on our adventure. But like I said, the school had a local doc come by and do assessment just in case. After a few days though the vertigo was gone.
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My professor Pedro said there are four types of countries in the world:
-rich
-poor
-Japan
-Argentina

Japan having very limited natural resources yet is quite successful and then Argentina which is a country with ample of resources, and yet not doing so well.

Argentina is Beautiful! The sun, the people, the old architect. Being in Buenos Aires you feel like you are in any European city! I could live here in a heart beat. It feels comfortable. Sao Paulo on the other hand is not a city I would want to live in-too ugly and horrible traffic.

Right now we are doing a business simulation-computer game if you will-where you put in variables like price, factory location, capacity, advertising, etc...and you add in your values for each simulation and see hw your group did in the market place. Kinda fun in a geeky way-but to
totally stressful in another-no one wants to be that group that defaults. But weird though huh-playing simulation "games" in grad school just seems odd-but I much prefer it to writing papers.  Anyway that is hat my last days in class will be-combing the Supply chain operations, Marketing, and Global structures classes into one long "real life" experiment. Wish my team well!


Love you!
Lizzie