As both of my daughters would no doubt tell you, I'm obsessive about details and planning. So, this summer I an traveling to Brazil with my employer, IBM, for 30 days and then I get back in the U.S. and spend 2 weeks putting out all of the fires that happened in my absence both with my job and my family. Then I leave for almost 3 weeks traveling through the middle east with my daughter.
-sidebar- here's the interesting facts: My daughter, Lexie, is a senior in high school this year, she'll graduate next month. She spent her junior year attending high school in Taipei, Taiwan with the Rotary club's exchange program. She has friends that were also in Taiwan with her that have homes all over the globe, and a bunch of them in Europe. So one would assume that she would love to have a complete tour of Europe as her graduation gift, she can stay for free all over the continent? But no, she would never want to do something that pedestrian, she craves the unusual.... therefore, she needs to fully experience the middle east. When she came to this conclusion, I blessed the trip and added that she needed to find a traveling companion, because I wouldn't allow her to travel by herself in that region. And go figure, she cannot find any of her gang, anywhere, that would like to join her in Syria. I was kidding when I told her that even though the middle east wasn't on my list of places that I was dying to visit, that I'd accompany her if she couldn't find anyone else. Never in a million years would I imagined that she'd be willing to travel with her mom (yikes, I'm really, really uncool!) But she gave it a day or two to simmer and accepted my gracious offer. It helps a little bit that with me as her companion, she has access to my credit card..... coincidence? I think not.
Anyway, back to the compulsive planning. My team from IBM that is going to Brazil (we are Brazil2, as there's a team in Brazil now starting the work that we will complete, Brazil1) is 15 people who work for IBM all over the world. We get on a conference call once a week to spend some time getting to know each other and discussing teamwork, logistics and cultural awareness. So, when I get on the call at 6am Colorado time, Jumpei and Hocktoh are on at 9pm in Tokyo, ChuenWoo is in South Korea at the same time and Carol is in Brisbane, Australia at 10pm. Brazil2, our team, will be working with approximately 6 different organizations in Sao Paulo and we'll find out our assignments in May. Our hotel will most likely be the same one as the first group is staying at, in a really nice section of Sao Paulo (the 3rd largest city in the world!), the Jardins.... pronounced Zhar-zheens. Sao Paulo is 3 hours ahead of Denver, one time zone east of Eastern Time and it should take about 9 hours to fly there.
We will be provided with a local cell phone when we arrive, so that we can communicate with our projects if necessary, and we can buy an inexpensive phone card to augment our minutes in order to phone home. I'm desperately trying to master some of the courtesy phrases in portuguese, so that I can have a very basic understanding in my host country - but it's a total bear. I know enough spanish to muddle through a stilted conversation during my past mission trips with the youth group at my church: Guatemala and El Salvador, but portuguese is enough alike and yet dramatically different enough that I will garble it if I try to jump from poor spanish to hideous portuguese in my head. I bought the Berlitz CDs for portuguese and have been listening in my car, and there's some pretty terrific videos on YouTube, but I'm just praying that God will give me some talent to hear and speak when it's important.
So, just for a taste of why portuguese is so confusing, check out this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGjLYgA2gtA
And for the best clip that I've found for the quick courtesy phrases:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZUnOGvhqDg
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