Brazil – A Change of Plans

On Day 3, Melissa and her class were supposed to do some tours of local businesses. One of those was supposed to be the CNH facility down there. However, for whatever reason CNH cancelled on them (sounds like fairly last minute). I woke up that morning to find that I had several messages from Melissa asking that I get on her computer here at home to retrieve some information about a contact she had from work (JohnsonDiversey) down there. The school hadn’t made plans for them to visit JD, but seeing as CNH had cancelled Melissa was trying to pull some strings. The following email came to me from her later that night.

Thank you so much :)

One of the numbers you gave me was Milton's cell phone. He was on vacation today but came into the office to arrange a tour for our entire group. They were so wonderful and showed us all around the plant and the offices. I got to meet many of the people that I normally work with which was very exciting for me. Let me tell you I looked like a rock star. The Professor told me Sunday night at 11:00 p.m. that we were not doing CNH and asked if I could make something happen for JD in the morning. Well, I did it in about 2 hours - Go me! Since then, I have gotten many questions from the other students about what my job is and how could I have made that happen so fast? Much of it is thanks to you so - thank you!

We also went to Abbott today which was a good presentation. They brought in a lot of their upper management to speak with us. They explained about the operations in Brazil and took our questions. After they took us to lunch, I got to partner with one of the top guys - and he was very interesting. He gave me his card and said he is in Linked In if I would like to network with him.

Tomorrow I fly out to Forteleza in the morning. This is where I will be staying with my host family and will not have phone access. I am not sure what my internet access will be like. I did hear from my host family. She does seem nice. She has a poodle. She said I will be staying in her brother’s room (he just moved out). Forteleza should be nice. All the Brazillians have told us it is very beautiful. I have heard this is where they go to vacation.