zondag 28 november 2010

Working at Electrolux - Trabalhando para a Electrolux do Brasil

Dear friends,

It`s been a long time since I gave attention to my blog, I`m sorry but I`m still alive and kicking! 

My average working day in Brasil is probably not really comparable to a European one. But what do you expect, 10,000km away from the fast moving, consumer- oriented capitalist Belgium...

My average working day looks like this. I get up around 7am, take a quick shower and I leave for work around quarter past 7. I take two busses to go to work and I spend around 45 minutes. I arrive at work around 8:15 and the first thing I do is go for breakfast. I start working at 8:30, after half an hour we have a fitness exercises, an initiative to promote sports and exercises within the company. The company also has a fitness room, a football field and a basketball field. After this I work until 12:15, we go for lunch at the Electrolux restaurant for about an hour and we start again around 13:15 latest. At 4PM there’s an afternoon snack for trainees (local as well as international). After this 15 minute break we finish the necessary stuff for that day and end between 5:30 and 6:00 depending on the work load.

Electrolux do Brasil - Curitiba - CIC
I will soon start my fourth week of working with Electrolux do Brasil. In the beginning it was very calm because my department had several end-of-month deadlines to meet. During this first week, my predecessor, Cagri showed me how the databases work and what he does on a daily basis. In the second and third week I got a lot of trainings from Jaqueline, my colleague and made my first reports & analyses! These trainings are mainly on the job trainings so facing real problems, it`s something else then boring theories in classes and this is very motivating for me.

So trabalhando para Electrolux do Brasil, eu gusto muito!

The next blog about my second trip is coming soon! 

dinsdag 2 november 2010

The first weekend - the first trip

Hi everybody!

My second AIESEC meeting was a lot of fun afterwards we met up with some OGX people and I got introduced to the X-flow! I will also be helping some people from the ICX team in upgrading the reception booklet & a promotion movie for hosts.

In the afternoon I went to see Thiago play American Football, lots of fun and I almost got run over because I was a bit to close to the back-line. At night I joined Thiago's family to a family party for his aunts' birthday, we had Guarana' (a typical brasilian drink) and brigadeiro (a very nice dessert). After we were dancing for quite some time and had lots of fun(pics on facebook).



Sunday morning our brasilian friends went voting and then we took the car and drove to the praia! We had an amazing weekend! On the first day the waves were so big that we were almost surprised by the power of the sea. In the afternoon Liege went to buy fish that we BBQ'ed at night. We spent the rest of the night around a fire at the beach. Monday and Tuesday were the same: lazy days at the beach, eating fish, enjoying the company, getting a bit of sun, having fun in the sea with waves up to two metres, ... On Tuesday we also visited the old part of the city of Paranagua'. It was very beautiful and I had a very good fish menu there. Thank you everybody for the amazing weekend, special thanks to Liege & Bea for driving and to the parents of Liege that we could stay in the beach house. I love the brasilian hospitality! My host parents were a little bit worried about where I was, they thought I was coming home on Monday but plans changed and we came home one day later. So I'll have to think about this in the future. Sorry Thaïs!

I ended my first week in Curitiba with a "bolo de banana" = banana cake. A perfect ending of an even more perfect first week in Brasil!

And tomorrow ... is the big day!

Electrolux do Brasil ... here I come!