Wow, the past few days in Miami have been so great. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and quickly found a shuttle to my hotel, which cost more per night than I spent per month in Brasil and more than I make in a week. It was a beautiful hotel and I saw a Lamborghini and a Ferrari in the parking lot as the super shuttle pulled in to drop me off. I quickly found my room, noticed the ocean view, took a shower, got changed and went downstairs for the reception for all of our Latin American and Caribbean guests as well as the Goodwill Board of Directors. The weeks conference was both a Goodwill Board of Directors Meeting and a Latin America and Caribbean Goodwill members summit. I was invited to the conference largely as the interpretor, I was expecting to interpret just a few things and perhaps to have someone else there to do the rest, but I ended up spending the whole conference pretty much just saying everything that was said in English in Spanish and vice versa. As the reception started I used soccer as small talk to get to know the people from two of the countries as I chatted with a couple from Costa Rica and two other people from Uruguay about the crucial World Cup qualifiers, it is amazing how often my love of soccer is useful in meeting new people and just starting conversations. I continued to meet everyone and then there was a dinner for all the parties involved. I ended up sitting with 2 board members, the President/CEO of Goodwill South Florida and a few other people. As the dinner started I first translated a little speech from the CEO and then another from the Chairman of the Board of Directors. The next day I spent the morning translating country presentations for the Board of Directors and the afternoon translating a variety of presentations on different opportunities for the Latin American participants. Throughout the conference I had a great time to get to know the Latin American and Caribbean affiliates of Goodwill as well as the CEO, COO and Chairman of the Board of Goodwill. It was truly an amazing experience for an intern that has been at the organization for about 6 weeks. They were all pretty impressed with my translating and just comfort in front of people and it gave me hope of possibly being able to stay on with a full time job that might let me telecommute for a time from Brasil. I even discussed with the person who would be my VP of that possibility and he didn't completely reject the idea. At one point, one of the Spanish speaking participants went on for about 2 minutes about a complicated diagram without allowing me to jump in with the English, I did my best to understand the diagram instead of remembering word for word what she was saying and upon finishing my explanation got a round of applause from the audience.
All that to say, I don't mean to boast or anything, but it is the first time that I have had any "career success" and I felt good about the experience. My CEO even said that I was "CEO material" for whatever that's worth. I continue to pray for guidance and to take steps of faith and know that God will work things out for me.
Some of the conference participants
the view from my room
