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Published: December 6th 2010
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My last weekend in Uruguay included a couple highlights which most would consider mandatory for any anyone visiting the country. Somehow I made it through the first month of my trip without doing either. The first was a trip to Punta del Este, which is an upscale beach resort town a little over an hour outside of Montevideo. People from all over the world come here to vacation especially in January which is the middle of their summer. The weather hasn’t been really warm up until the last week so it really would have been pretty empty if I had gone earlier in the trip.
What made this trip really cool was that the group that I went with included 2 Uruguayans, 2 Portuguese, 2 Columbians, and a Canadian. The 2 Uruguayans, Alejandro and Anita, were from Endeavor and they planned the trip. The 2 Portuguese, Joao and Rita, are out here for 6 months working for companies sponsored by Endeavor and the Colombians were both Alejandro’s friends that are working in Brazil and were visiting for a long weekend. And the Canadian, Jen, who I’ve mentioned before is out here with me from Ernst & Young. So we basically
had 5 countries on 3 continents represented in the group, which made the conversations interesting. It’s really impressive to me how well everyone in the group spoke English. In fact, it made me realize how sheltered I was in school from learning a foreign language. Most of the group started learning English in their first year of school. My first class in Spanish was in high school, so from the beginning I was 8 years behind the group on even attempting a second language. The two from Portugal were fluent in Spanish in addition to Portuguese and English. Plus, I picked up on the Uruguayans speaking a little Italian, so you can imagine why I felt like an underachiever.
Anyway, on Saturday we went to a couple beaches and just lounged around for most of the day. I went swimming for a little bit which was freezing, but there is no way that I would have missed an opportunity to get in the water after well over a month away from the ocean. Late in the afternoon, we headed to a famous resort that is located on the peninsula called Casapueblo. The hotel is built into the cliff and
the structure has blue designs of the sun, faces, and other odd shapes painted on the walls. Alejandro said that this spot is famous for its sunsets, which is probably evident by the pictures.
That night we ended up eating asado and chorizo around midnight, as usual, and went to a club on the beach where we partied until the sun came up. Actually, when the sun came up Alejandro decided that we needed to go to another bar to get Champaign to finish the night off. I don’t how that seems like a good idea at 7 in the morning when your eyes are burning because they’re trying to adjust to the sun, but whatever I’m a visitor so I just go with the flow.
Then Sunday night was the biggest soccer match of the year called El Classico, which is a matchup between two Uruguayan clubs Penarol and National. It is the longest standing soccer rivalry outside of England. To give you an idea of how big of a deal this match is, the Penrol side of the stadium sold out in 7 minutes and the stadium holds around 70,000 people. We barely made it back from
Punta del Este in time to catch the start of the game, which I’m glad we saw because it was a crazy celebration with everyone singing, yelling, throwing confetti, and even fireworks. The fans pretty much stand and cheer, yell and curse the entire game but the beginning was the craziest part. The game turned out to be pretty boring since it ended in a 0 to 0 tie, but it was cool to experience the energy of the crowd.
In my final week of work, I gave a presentation to the board of directors of LynkOs explaining the forecasting model that I built and discussing the valuation metrics and considerations that would be important when negotiating with venture capital companies. The presentation went well and I spent some time afterwards talking to them about financing options, but all of these guys are really intelligent business men with investments in multiple businesses so not much explanation was required. Federico seemed happy with the results of the project and we ended up celebrating that Wednesday night with a big BBQ at his house. It was also the night of the Uruguay vs. Chile soccer match so a bunch of his
friends that came over to watch the game. It was a good send off with a bunch of whiskey and food. As it turned out I ended up having 2 more farewell BBQs before I left Uruguay, one with the entire LynkOs team and one with Endeavor.
Montevideo was a great place to spend a month and a half working, but the thing that really made the trip great were all of the people that I met along the way. Without everyone’s eagerness to show me around and make sure that I experience certain things that are special to them, it would have been a lonely and boring trip. I don’t really know how I’m going to pull it off yet, but at some point in my career I’m going to have to do another project like this. Time seems to go by so quickly that I’ve realized how important it is to seek opportunities to break the standard daily routine and try to learn something new or just be somewhere different. I can’t imagine enjoying living anywhere as much as I do Southern California, but sometimes you need to see something else to remind you of that. I
don’t mean to get all deep about things especially since I still have one more stop before I get back to the US. I decided to spend a week in Costa Rica surfing. I will cover that in my next entry.
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