Goals going forward

Walking through town today I realized I have totally neglected blogging, whoops.  The program I am getting credit through has suggested journal topics, so I figured I would write about one as well as give you an idea of what I have been doing.

So, goals for my internship.  I have actually been thinking about it a lot because my internship is largely what I make of it.  I'm not required to work a certain amount of hours (although I have to work at least 20 a week to satisfy funding requirements), but beyond that it can be as little or as much as I make it.  My main goal is to come out of this internship with a good understanding of the following:

1. Startup culture and what startups need to succeed through elementary stages (seed funding, etc)
2. Latin American Business Culture

I feel like that is the most valuable part of the internship here, to learn as much as possible and get work experience that I wouldn't be able to back in the United States.  Besides that, I want to help startups here and the organization I am working for as much as I can by producing the best market research I can (my main project), and working to promote Startup Buenos Aires to my best ability.

My other goal is to be able to communicate in Spanish well.  The vocabulary and the accent is very tricky, but I have gotten a lot better in the 3 weeks I have been here.  I have no problems in stores, restaurants, or even "small talk" with locals.  The hardest stuff to talk about seems to be work stuff, which really sucks.  It's mainly because I didn't know a lot of the startup jargon people use in English, and translated to Spanish is even more confusing.  I'm getting the hang of it though.

Other than that, I have seen a lot of the city by now.  The food here is amazing, and the world cup has been really exciting to watch.  The bars are always packed, especially during Argentina games.  Work here has been way less productive during the world cup.  With games at 1pm and 4pm, work can end at 1pm depending on how good the game is.  Excited for the U.S. game tonight!

Running red lights, food, drink, and my internship

I have noticed that when cars run red lights here, they run it before it changes to green, not as it is changing to red.  It has really thrown me off, and caused me to almost be hit a couple times.  It's probably because the light changes from red to yellow to green, and as soon as the yellow turns on, cars / buses floor it.  You are way more likely to get in a car accident if you start crossing the intersection as it changes from green to yellow than red to yellow.  Such a weird phenomenon, but I have always had a strange affixation with stoplights.  I still believe that I could design a stoplight that was way more efficient for almost any intersection; maybe that will be how I make it big someday.

Over the past week I have ate and drank at some pretty good restaurants / bars.  It's actually way harder to find a more casual place to eat that has quality food than a fancy restaurant here, that is the continual challenge.   Yesterday I went to a beer bar with one of my fellow interns (he interned at Startup Buenos Aires last summer, and now he is studying abroad as well as helping out in his free time).  They have some damn good beer here.

I started really getting to work on my internship this week, and I'm really excited about it.  I'm getting exposure to a lot of things I am very interested in: Market research, consulting based work, startup culture, and networking / educational events for startups.  I'm going to learn a ton this summer.

Tomorrow I'm going to walk around the Northern part of the city, which I have yet to explore.  Hopefully I'll have some good pictures to post soon.

It's been a week..

Well first week is done.  I have successfully figured out how to use the subway system, where I can shop for food and get an actually selection (more about that later), and have started to get used to the heavy accent down here.

The subway system is actually pretty nice, just kind of dirty.  There are people trying to sell you things or begging all the time, but they don't seem to bug people too much.  I feel lucky that I am racially ambiguous enough to not attract much attention; I have seen a few very white couples who get a very different treatment than I do.  The only time this is problematic is when they immediately assume I can speak fluent spanish, and start using local slang.  Then I just can't follow; hopefully I will be able to pick up on that.  I do know one thing though, if my Spanish improves as much as I hope from this experience, I will be speaking Argentinian Spanish, which sounds kind of silly to me right now.

I saw a decent amount of the city this weekend: La Plaza del Mayo, La Plaza del Congreso, and many other historic landmarks.  There isn't a lot of "green" space down here, but the parks they do have are pretty nice.  Lots of roads and dirty sidewalks; something to get used to.

I'm starting to get a lot of work for my internship and I think it's going to be a lot of fun.  My boss is traveling right now so I haven't met her yet, but I get to meet her sometime at the end of this week or next week.  She seems pretty cool, she was recently named one of the top 100 most influential tech women on twitter.  Anyways, she is giving me access to a lot of networking and startup events, so I will definitely learn a ton from this experience.

That's all for now.  Feel free to shoot me an email or message me if you want to hear more.