First days of work

So I have officially started my job here in Medellín. My first day of work was yesterday, Monday Feb 28th. It definitely feels a little weird to be working and not in university anymore :( I definitely miss the student life, but my time here in Colombia working is going to be really exciting, and I can tell Im going to learn a lot.

My job is with El Centro para la Innovación, Consultoría y Empresarismo (CICE), which is a consulting firm within EAFIT University. EAFIT is a private university, and one the best in Colombia. Essentially I will be working in teams on different consulting projects for small/medium companies, and entrepreneurs. For these companies I will be doing a lot of research to complete different market analysis, business plans, exportation plans etc. My job is also all in Spanish, which is awesome but also challenging, as Im still adjusting to an all Spanish environment after 2 months of no Spanish while in Brockville, waiting for my visa. So Im slowly getting back into the swing of things, and learning a lot of new technical business vocabulary.

On my first day of work I met with my boss, Angela, her bosses, and the rest of my coworkers in CICE. Everyone is really nice and also relatively young. I'd say the average age of the office is probably 28-30. On my first day of work, my boss explained to me how CICE works, and who they work with, and the sort of things I can expect to be doing for different Colombian companies. Then I had a meeting with Angela, and two of my coworkers Lady and Sara. We had about an hour long meeting (all in Spanish), about why I chose the job, what interests me about the job, what sort of things I like to do, and then what kinds of projects are going on right now. It looks like the first couple of projects I will be working with are in the technology sector, which should be pretty interesting.

Here's what my days are like: I work from 8am - 12noon, then 2-6pm. Yes, that's right, I have 2 hours for lunch. Which is quite different from any job Ive had in Canada. Since I live so close to campus (right across the street), I come home, make myself some lunch and then have an hour long nap. It's wonderful. During the day with my coworkers we go to one of the many cafeterias for a 15-20min break around 10am to get a coffee or some kind of beverage and possibly food. Then around 4pm we go again. haha. My work environment is pretty relaxed, and social. Everyone is also super helpful, and very excited for me to be there. If I ever have trouble understanding anything they always break it down for me in Spanish, or tell me the word in English.

So far I've been doing a lot of reading. On Monday I read a large project proposal for a Colombian company which was written completely in Spanish. It took me a while to go through the document, since while I was reading it, I'd make a list of new technical words I was unfamiliar with. Then today (Tuesday) I was given a book to read (in english, yay), about new age business models that includes a bunch of case studies. Tomorrow I have 2 meetings with my coworkers, and the big bosses of CICE. One of the meetings is over lunch, so we have that provided. yummy.

So far Im really enjoying my job and the people I work with. They have great sense of humours, and are really friendly. So here I am ... I have officially joined the working world. Im very lucky to have a job right out of university that has so many qualities of my "perfect" job - for example: a) ability to work abroad, b) ability to use my Spanish everyday, c) job revolves around International business and d) is research intensive

:)