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Published: July 15th 2011
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Once again, I woke up early due to my jet lag. It is honestly hard to adjust your body to a 9 hour time difference. What has been in the back of my mind though is that as soon as I get used to this time period, I will have to leave back to Washington and I am going to have to readjust all over again.
After breakfast, we had a scheduled meeting with Arturo Dovalina. He is the CEO of Meazcal Entertainment. This is a wire that mainly focuses on Mexican celebrities and personalities. What I liked about Arturo was that he used all of his experience from previous jobs to form what his company is today. It seems that he has worked for almost everyone in the news business. He was employed with BBC London, Preforma, a Mexican newspaper, Univision, an American news company and many others. What was also great is that he used all his previous coworkers as resources. That really stuck to me. It kind of showed me that its sometimes good to start at the bottom because the people you meet on your way up can help you stay at the top in the
future. Arturo also gave us some advice on how to reach a wider audience. He said that the key is to making a community with the readers. The stronger the community is the stronger the paper, television program or whatever you want. Arturo, who seemed fairly young, also seemed very wise for his age. He actually inspired me to maybe push forward with communications a little further.
After the meeting, all of us decided to go to Retiro Park. All I can say about the park is that the pictures online do it no justice. The park was astonishing. When we first got there, a couple of girls and myself decided to row a boat on the pond/lake. At first I was somewhat nervous we were going to fall over, but once we got in and I got the hang of rowing, it was quit fun. Some of the statues in the park were mind blowing as well. In the middle of the pond I got a great picture of this group of statues. My favorite thing about Spain so far has been these detailed and beautiful statues. What is so great about them to is that they are everywhere. In the park I also saw a lot of detailed water fountains. Most of the time, the fountains were embroidered with angels. We all decided that we are going to have to go back again during the trip because of how beautiful it was.
Later on we walked to a PR firm that is about 30 minutes from the hotel. Ironically, the guys name was Arturo as well. His firm was called Llorente y Cuenca. What I liked about him was that he was a very intriguing speaker. He kind of showed us the ins and outs of a international PR firm and what they do to solve problems. He actually made me want to be in PR a little more. One thing I found kind of cool was when he told us about how his company solves international problems. The biggest thing international company’s face is the culture differences with other countries. For instance, Americans were “disgusted” by how his firm conducts business sometimes. This was due to eating and discussing business at the same time. The problem didn’t lie within eating and doing business, Americans loved that; the problem lies with that during a two hour period they would only use the last 10 to 15 minutes to discuss the business plan or problem. This is accustomed to the Spanish, but for Americans it is looked at being lazy or unprofessional. Fir me this was a great way to kind of get the inside scoop of what PR really is and how it is applied not only in the U.S., but the world.
After the PR firm we decided to take the Metro down town and grab some traditional Spanish food. Cesar end up taking us to this one little restaurant that was delicious. We had to order in at least two, and it came with three courses. I really enjoyed when they brought us a full bottle of wine out. In a sense it just made me feel cool. I ate some salmon that was phenomenal. The biggest difference in Spain in food I have noticed is that the food is very fresh. I also had a rice dish called Papya. I really enjoyed it. It kind of reminded me of jambalaya. Once we were done eating we attempted to go out, but that was a fail because the club we went to was not so great. So we all had one drink and headed home. Another great day in Spain!
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