More Classes, Ana and Sundays

If my International Supply Chains class on Tuesday was a great start to B-School at FGV, the first of my two classes on Thursday - Living The Entrepreneurial Challenge - was not quite so inspirational.

The main problem is that it seems to be just be a revision of subject matter that I already covered at Queen's in either Kelley Packalen's class or Elspeth Murray's class (or both). The course outline was not distributed prior to the first class, so there was no way to come to that conclusion without actually turning up.

In the first half of the class, questions like "What characteristics do you think are important for an entrepreneur?" were followed by "Do you think these can be taught, or are people born with them?". It was very deja-vous. Then for the second half of the class we broke into groups and did exactly the same paper-airplane construction exercise that we had completed at Queen's in December. So I'll investigate options for either switching or dropping the class.

Fortunately, I think the second class on Thursday afternoon - BRICs and the World Economy - is going to be much more fun. The prof is really engaging, and the content seems to be an interesting mix of micro- and macroeconomics with emphasis on how they are impacted by (or impact) the four BRIC nations. There's also a really good set of readings, cases and assignments.

After spending Friday doing prep work for an interview that I have coming up this week, Brenna and I caught up with our Queen's classmate Ana for lunch on Saturday. She had just returned to Sao Paulo the previous week, and came to meet us at our apartment building which was very nice because it is a LONG way from her house!

We had lunch at a local restaurant that is one of Ana's personal favorites, and I can understand why. Apart from the spectacular surroundings (the whole place is essentially built around a living tree) they have a Saturday lunch special which is a buffet of about a million different types of traditional Brazilian pork dishes, rice and beans. In addition there is an incredible selection of desserts. I tried, but failed miserably, to sample all of them.

We were too stuffed to move after finishing lunch, so it was good that Ana's father came to pick us up and drop us back at the apartment. Hopefully we'll get a chance to see her again in a couple of weeks, and spend a weekend down at her beach house!!

Today was Sunday, which is rapidly becoming our favorite day in Sao Paulo. An amazing number of little markets open up all over the city on Sunday, selling different types of cooked food and fresh produce. So we had breakfast at a street market a couple of blocks away from home, and then a mid-afternoon meal at a market in a park up on Ave. Paulista. In between it absolutely poured with rain, which seems to be a feature of the weather here! Mostly sunny interspersed with torrential downpour.