Greetings from Sunny Rio de Janeiro!
First years on the Brazil International Experience trip made their way to Rio on Tuesday evening after various pre-trip vacations in every corner of South America.
We started the trip with celebratory caipirinhas (a traditional Brazilian drink made with sugar, lime and cachaca, which is a sugar cane liquor) as we reviewed our impressively full 10-day schedule of meetings, prepared for us by our fabulous 2nd year TAs, Priscilla Balla and Kalil Diaz. In the past two days, we’ve enjoyed candid meetings with top Brazilian executives in industries ranging from consulting to oil and gas to energy and beyond. But the trip hasn’t all been business: our group also had the unique privilege of touring the in-progress Olympic Park for the 2016 summer games, attended a soccer game in the historic arena that will host the FIFA World Cup Final in a few short months, and even had the opportunity to visit and explore the sets of several of the current iterations of Brazil’s world-famous television novellas. Tonight, the twenty of us are off to Pacheco Bar in the beautiful Jardim Botanico to meet with Yale alum and current World Fellows, who are in Rio on a separate trip. Boa noite!