Kicking off this honeymoon

The first stop of our 3-week honeymoon was in Bogotá, Colombia. Bogotá, the capital of the country once known for drugs and mafias, is now a very big city where two worlds live side by side. It hosts almost as many people as the entire Portuguese population.

Bogotá is at the same time charming and decadent, organized and chaotic, colonial and modern, chic and slummy. As any big city in Central/ South America, the traffic is pretty bad and, in certain neighborhoods, you can feel the danger in the air. In the good neighborhoods, in turn, you get lost among very nice restaurants, trendy bars, endless rooftops, and stores of the biggest brands in the world.

We were staying by Parque 93, in a nice residential area with plenty of restaurants and good looking buildings, most of them made of brick and with pleasant rooftops. Our first dinner was in the area, as we arrived quite exhausted from the long trip (and still from all the dancing in our big day). We went to a very good Peruvian place called Cuzco. Highly recommended!

On Tuesday, we left the hotel reasonably early, after a morning workout and a breakfast of arepas and eggs. We took a (clandestine) Uber to the historical center, and spent the entire day in the area. We walked around the colonial callés, we checked Parque Santander and its catedral, Plaza Bolívar, the parliament, all the monumental Government buildings downtown, and we visited two museums: the National Police Museum (as Gorda wanted to know more about the drug situation in the country) and Museo del Oro.

To finish the afternoon in style, we walked to the bottom base of the Monserrate cable car, and took a ride to the top of the hill. Despite the rain and the clouds, it was more than worth it going there. The endless view of the city is gorgeous, and the warm tea with that view felt like heaven.

In the evening, we walked to Zona Rosa, a very lively and fun neighborhood, packed with bars, restaurants and many, many stores. We had dinner and drinks in Segundo Bogotá, which we highly recommend.

In a bit over a day, we saw most of what we wanted to see in Bogotá. We were sad not to have been able to check Zona G (Zona Gourmet) or Andrés Carne de Res. Next time!

We where especially impressed/ amused by some stuff about Bogotá:

• All the public infrastructures are super well maintained and in extremely good shape.
• Stores are organized by type, I.e. in certain quarters you see dozens and dozens of stores of the same type. In some places, you only find printer shops, in others you only find military clothing shops, and in others only book shops. It's nonsense and hilarious.
• Colombians are very, very friendly and welcoming.

After Bogotá, we moved to Santa Marta and to Tayrona Park, with which we deeply fell in love.

We stayed outside the city, in the seafront, where the best hotels are located. The place isn't the most charming, but the hotel (Mercure Santa Marta) was quite good.

Tayrona Park was heaven on Earth. We left the hotel around 6 am on Thursday, survived a 1h30 bus drive, and then explored the park for a full day. We walked 15 km in total, literally in the middle of the forest, just by the sea. We beach hopped, we hiked in the most humid climate ever, we had coconut water, rested in paradise beaches, and sweated quite a lot. It was literally our kind of day - with some kind of workout, close to the beach, with some culture, together. Our major stops where at: Miradouro, Canaveral, Arrecifes, Piscina Natural, Cabo San Juan de Guia.

After a long nap on our way back, and the best shower ever at the hotel, we went to the city center for a remarkable dinner at Lulo. The food was amazing, the cocktails were even better and, for a few hours, we saw tons of street performers while eating and drinking. We can't get enough of the food and the vibe in Colombia.

More and more, we agree that we made a great call picking this place for our honeymoon. It's been fun, and not boring at all.

Now, it's time for Cartagena!

Love,

The Amorins 

Mr & Mrs Amorim

When I created this blog, almost a year ago, the idea was to have a shared journal of my MBA experience at INSEAD. The name of the blog - mbaround - could either stand for "MB around" or for "MBA round", where MB and MBA stand for Marta Bento and Masters in Business Administration. As a consequence, this blog should theoretically be down already, as I am officially a MBA graduate now.

However, I found out that mbaround can also stand for "MBA round" - Marta Bento Amorim round. Say what? I have an excuse to keep this blog alive! And, to celebrate such decision, I wanna try to write about our wedding. What a wedding!

On Wednesday, the 19th of July of 2017, Mom, Dad and I drove south to Vila Nova de Milfontes. Most of the pre-work was done, but we wanted to be in situ to help solving last minute issues and make sure everything was fine. Gorda and his parents drove down later that day too. My family stayed at Herdade do Freixial. His stayed at home, of course.

We hang out all together for a few days, talked to every neighbor apologizing in advance for the upcoming noise, bought some last minute supplies, supervised the guys putting the tent together, received suppliers of food and drinks, talked to the police, decorated the church... And welcomed our friends and family that literally came from all over the world. Inês from Australia, Luísa from Brazil, Dan, Sofia and Miguel from California, Chantal from Lebanon, Thomas from vacay in Bali, other Berkeley and INSEAD friends from all over Europe, and it goes on...

Gorda was a bit stressed out, although he does not admit so. Other than that, the days went pretty smoothly.

On Friday, my bridesmaids met Mom, Dad, Mico and me for dinner. The girls and I then left all together to Herdade da Matinha. They spent the night with me in the place where we were going to get ready for the big day and where I would spend the evening with Gorda after the wedding. We gossiped a bit and discussed which dress each of them could wear. Yup, Catarina brought 6 potential outfits, Carolina 4, Alice three, and Maria 2. Thank God there was a normal Brazilian in the room, who just brought one dress with her. Hehe. I then took a Zyrtec and slept like a baby for 6/7 hours.

Day D then arrived. I got up around 8:30 am, and put my workout clothes on. Did plenty of push-ups on my own (yes, I wanted my little arms to be as fit as possible) and then Maria joined me for a quick HIIT workout. In the meantime, Catarina attempted to do some yoga (didn't really do anything), Alice filmed herself and us for her weekly vlog, Carolina laughed about us, and again the Brazilian was the only normal person in the room. Alice started getting ready earlier than anyone else as she would be our hairdresser for the day and had no time to lose.

Breakfast was great. There were gluten and lactose free stuff, decent coffee, good fruit, and enough eggs to feed me. Herdade da Matinha is the cutest place too - charming and laid back at the same time, you know? At breakfast, Lu gave each of us a small souvenir: a fridge thingy with an image of the church.

The make-up artist, my irreplaceable Annija, then arrived. Things were getting real!

Alice kicked off with the hairstyles while Annija started working on the make up, and, one by one, my bridesmaid became more and more gorgeous (if possible). Mom and I where the last ones to be taken care of. Around 3 pm, my Grandparents, Mico and Dad arrived, but I made the men wait for me to be 100% ready. I wanted to create full impact. And I guess I did: both dad and me cried when he saw me for the first time.

Before heading to the church, Rui Valido and Sérgio - one of our photographers and our camera man - took a few pictures and clips of us all. Herdade da Matinha is cute a nice setting for any photoshoot. I am so looking forward to seeing those pictures and movie!!!

People started leaving to the church. Dad and I where the last ones heading there. When we arrived at the center of Vila Nova, and I saw the church and everyone standing there, I felt butterflies in my stomach and my heart beat increase quite a bit. We stopped for a few minutes, made sure that my bridesmaids where inside and that the photographers where ready, breath deeply, and stepped out of the car. Carolina made sure that the doors closed before I got in, and that created an even bigger impact on my entrance.

The unbelievable choir led by Miguel Cunha Monteiro started singing "Can't help falling in love with you", the Luka Bloom version, and we walked to the isle. I could hardly stop smiling and putting my shoulders up, as a sign of excitement, and Gorda got slightly teary. That was a first. Dad and I actually cried - getting teary was not enough for these tough but highly emotional Bentos.

Then the ceremony was beautiful. Our priest - Padre Ricardo Gonçalves Pinto - is young, modern, and knows us well. He talked very well and briefly enough. The texts read were beautiful and the songs and choir performance made the ceremony even more magical. Most of our guests noticed how cute we where throughout the ceremony, and they made fun of how many times Gorda kissed me. Hehe

We left the church in an old open body dark grey Defender, sitting in the back. We cheered with a beer and a cider, and everyone clapped to our happiness. Salvador Colaço, the other of our photographers, came with us and made a small photo shoot before we headed home for the cocktail.

The cocktail went by pretty fast! As soon as we arrived, most people came great us. In the end, we had a small photo session with the most important people: family, best men and bridesmaids. In between, we briefly ate (I don't really remember what was served as finger food!!!) and drank, and we had the chance to talk a bit with our friends. Somehow, in the middle of the cocktail, a bee managed to sting my back. How fortunate...! It did not ruin the cocktail a bit, though.

Around 8 pm, the wind became stronger and stronger and we decided it was about time to move inside the tent for dinner. The best men and bridesmaid gathered the bride and groom and all of them, and they made me wear a costume of a super muscled man and gorda wear the costume of an old fat lady. The initial plan was to get inside the tent dancing to the sound of "Can't stop the feeling", from Justin Timberlake. However, Zé Maria Spínola (aka Spike) had a last minute idea of us going inside to the sound of "Call on me", with me pretending to be their fitness instructor. It was EPIC! And so appropriate. The names of the tables where fitness exercises, and the table markers where hilarious pictures of gorda and me "performing" them. Props to another of our best men, Zé Diogo Lucena (aka Zedi) for handling all the graphic work for the wedding - save the date flier, invites, website, table markers, ceremony scripts, and so on. We cannot thank him enough.

Dinner was super yummy, the yummiest I have ever tasted. The caterer wais our old friend Francisco Amado. Everyone wants to meet him now! He served a seafood vichyssoise as a starter, and then a marvelous self-service buffet with plenty of options: cold seafood salad with wasabi, peppers filled with codfish, beef with mustard sauce, roasted lamb, Arabic rice, crispy chips, taboulleh, grilled vegetables, plenty of salads, and so on. There was a buffet for desserts later as well. During dinner, we managed to toast with each of the 34 tables. Some where louder than others. Props to the INSEAD tables and to the TDJ ones!

Just before we cut the "cake" - 3 levels of palmiers do Careca and tortas de Azeitão -, Dad made a brilliant speech: short, funny, personal, emotional and universally understood, addressing both Gorda and me, his family and mine, and all of our friends. Cutting the cake was again a cute moment, we both of us truly happy and cute.

As a last event before we opened the dance floor, ours bridesmaid and best men prepared us a hilarious movie making fun of Gorda and me, in the format of a talkshow!

Then Dad and I danced the valse, followed by gorda and me. I would dare to say we did pretty well. The dance floor was then open and, until after 5 am nothing stopped us - not even a electricity blackout and the police complaining about the noise. We danced literally non-stop - at the dance floor, at the upper level where our table was, by the buffet, around the tables. Our friends where super into partying too. By 5:10, when we left, there was still so many people partying with us, even though the sound was less loud than desirable due to the neighbors complaints. Props to Chumbinho for killing it as a DJ, and to our friends for partying insanely.

It's been a few days already and we still cannot stop going back to such a perfect day.

Special thanks to our parents for letting us have the wedding of our dreams, and to Tudo é Festa for making it real. Special thanks to to our bridesmaids (Alice Trewinnard, Carolina Perry, Catarina Calha, Luísa Schettino, Maria Raimundo, Sónia Teixeira da Mota) and to our best men (António Amorim, António Menéres, António Monteiro de Barros, Diogo Mourão, Francisco Amorim, Francisco Empis, Francisco Pena Monteiro, José Diogo Lucena, José Maria Spínola) for all the help.

Official pictures coming up in a month!

Graduation day

Last Thursday, I officially graduated from INSEAD. It was a good, emotional day, despite the heat. It was happy and sad, tiring and energising, short and long - all at the same time.

It was good to see everyone on campus, even people who had spent the whole year in Singy. And it was even better to meet everyone's families. How cool is it that meeting someone's families can explain so much about that person's personality, traits, and even body language?

Mom, Dad, Gorda and Mico arrived later than most families, so the Viana Baptistas adopted me for one night. They took me out for dinner in a very good and quite charming Parisian restaurant called Basilic. Thanks VBs (and especially António VB) for that. Do you know the feeling of meeting with Portuguese friends or acquaintances from home when you live abroad? Some kind of connection/ relation/ family feeling? It's unexplainable and it feels great.

My family arrived around 1 am on the graduation day. We all met in our trendy hotel in Champs Elisées. Mico, Gorda and I shared a room. We woke up early on the following day, and had breakfast at the hotel. We had a busy day ahead.

It took us over one hour to arrive in Fontainebleau. I wanted to show my family around campus, pick my cap and gown from my locker, explore the INSEAD store, and take a few pictures at the INSEAD sign. We did it all.

Around 12 pm, we were at a restaurant in front of the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the venue for the graduation. As per Miguel Moura's idea, we gathered all the Portuguese Mafia and their respective families for lunch. There were 21 of us at the table. It was SO nice!

Around 2 pm, we were at the Chateau, together with almost 500 colleagues of us, taking the official graduation group picture. And around 3 pm, the ceremony started.

The ceremony was long but meaningful. The Dean of the MBA program even mentioned our wedding in his speech. He said that we were about to close a chapter, and to open a new one, as we will meet for reunions, birthdays and weddings. And he knew that our wedding is coming up VERY SOON. Our graduation speakers included the Dean of the MBA (Urs Peyer), the Dean of INSEAD (Illian Mihov), one of the founders of INSEAD (Claude Janssen), an alumnus that is now a successful business man (Michael A. Butt), the president of the Student Council (Martin Vera), one representative of the students (Murali Akella), and that's it. There were awards for best teachers, and my favorite professor of all times - Sujin Jang - was awarded, of course. There were almost 500 of us graduating at the chateau so the full ceremony took long. Each of us went to stage to collect our diplomas. The temperature was well above expected. However, regardless of all that, each of us enjoyed the ceremony in different ways. We left it with the feeling that we were about to finish the best year for our lives, regardless of it being (or not) the best year of our lives. So far, it has been the best year of and for my life.

Following a ceremony, there was a nice cocktail in the chateau. Then, most of our best friends and their families headed to the Portuguese Mafia Headquarters (aka our house) for a barbecue. It was a very nice way of saying goodbye to Fontainebleau,

Real life, I am very ready for you.

Grad trip baby!

Yup, this just happened. 5 days in Croatia, celebrating our upcoming graduation from the number-1 business school in the world.

Last Thursday, about 400 of us travelled to Sibenik, Croatia, for grad trip. The meeting point was at the beach club, by the sea, with very loud music, a salty swimming pool and many drinks. And this is how you can picture our grad trip. That’s it. Bye.

Not really. There was a bit more than drinks, sun and loud music at our graduation trip. And here’s a (as per usual) detailed description of how it was.

We stayed at an humongous resort in Southern Croatia: Solaris. It was the broadest resort I have ever been to, as it had from decent hotels (more than one) to camping parks, from spas to swimming pools, from marinas to mini golf courts, from cosy restaurants to bars and clubs. It was big enough to fit such a big group like ours, and plenty of other guests as well, but it was surprisingly well done. I mean, my expectations were quit low as I knew we would need to accommodate plenty of people, and the resort definitely exceeded my expectations.

On Thursday, as I mentioned above, the party started right away. We all met at the beach club. There was sun, loud music, rose wine, cocktails, and many beach (or not so beach) bodies. People were happy to be back together for one last (official) time. From the beach club, we moved to a buffet dinner of… meat with meat with meat, and also some potatoes. The venue was cool but the dinner was meh. And then, it was time to party some more at one of the clubs at the resort. The club was not fancy either, and I decided to party moderately and be in shape for Gorda’s arrival on the following day.

After a few hours of sleep (not so many but probably the most I got per night during the entire trip), I left the room for a HIIT workout. Luckily enough, Tony joined and we killed it together. Breakfast was surprisingly good. The rest of the day was… interesting! We were promised a yacht trip, but ended up taking a ferry boat, where we could hardly fit. We “sailed” for two hours. The views were very pretty, and it was pretty cool to hang out with so many people. If the grad trip organizers had managed our expectations well, we would have further enjoy it. We stopped by Krka National Park, and had grilled fish (or chicken) still onboard. The biggest surprise of the day was when we left the boat and realised that there were literally thousands of tourists in the park. We hiked for a bit, some people dived in the waterfalls, and a few of us (the smart ones) took a taxi back home, which took us 15 minutes instead of 2 hours on the boat. Later in the afternoon, Gorda arrived. We chilled with our friends, ate and drank some wine, and then decided to move to the city (Sibenik) for dinner, before the biggest party of the trip. Grilled fish in Croatia is good for Portuguese standards (meaning, super good!!!) and eating by the water is always charming. And then the party… One of the best we’ve had. DJ Spotify (aka Constantin) taking care of the music, and we danced all night long. Rami Hakim danced so much that he broke his foot…

The next day was… tiring! And lots of fun! I woke up early enough to enjoy a yummy breakfast and lead a workout with the Brazilians. At 2 pm, the Beach Olympics started. My friends and I decided to create a tacky all girls team (if I am not wrong the only 100% feminine team in the games), and we had a blast. Chantal, Inna, Laura, Stef and me put on tacky t-shirts saying “Gimme danger. Great things never came from playing safe”, as well as red lipstick and small bathing suits. Somehow, we managed to win our volleyball, water challenge and beer pong game, and tie the football one, making it to the second stage. “Somehow”. We just screamed all the time, and played it slightly dirty. haha. For instance, in the beer pong game, we would twerk our asses to our competitors while they were playing. One hour and a half later, we were called for the second stage and it was a true disaster. We lost our football, rugby and volleyball games. But not everything was bad about this second stage. The 6 Portuguese guys (Gorda, João, Jalles, Miguel, Thomas and Zé) were the champions of the Beach Olympics. Way to go Portugal!

That evening, Gorda and I went for dinner by ourselves. Somehow, I convinced him to do so. And it was great. We still met some friends after that but none of us had enough energy to party.

The next day was chilled. I led a workout for 12 people (look at me, becoming a credible personal trainer) and then chilled at the beach until the weather became worse and worse. After a long lunch, we eventually moved inside the hotel to avoid the rain. A white party was planned for that evening at the beach club, but had to be moved to indoors. We could have been luckier with the weather but ended up having a great evening.

The cherry on the cake was the cabaret. For over 2 hours, some 17J performed in front of the entire class. We had epic stand up comedy by Vishal and Raza, joking about many people, we had BOYS-SEAD dancing like a boys band, we had Desi dancing, some singing, and even some jokes about professors. Good to know that these future leaders of the world have some undercover skills. Buffet dinner and party followed the cabaret. Gorda and I left early as he had been having drinks since lunch time.

And then we came to last day! And Gorda and I decided to visit Spit for some culture before heading back home. We went to the city center with a few couple friends, we had a very nice seafood lunch in town, and then walked around the city center for a while. It’s a nice little city, Split. I am glad I got to spend the afternoon there.

And this is it. Gorda went back home to work for two days, and I came to Fonty for the last goodbyes. Tomorrow is graduation time!

But before I go… Let me tell you that there were lots of logistics behind the organisation of the grad trip. My favourite one was Secret Crush: a log in to select up to 5 people that each MBA candidate would like to ‘get to know better’. Needless to say that I did not play the game. It’s funny how we learnt so much at INSEAD but still managed to get more and more childish everyday. People actually had lots of fun with this app.

I am so ready for real life that you cannot imagine! It’s time to go back to routine.