Workshop at the OECD

Today I was able to attend a workshop that Fundacion Ethos put on at the OECD office in Mexico. Ethos just finished a publication on tax expenditures (basically benefits/incentives/tax breaks and their effect on economic development), so they had an expert on the topic come from France for two days to present and talk about it with the actors involved in the tax process here. Since I'm so into development and economics, it was really cool to be at the OECD office with people from the World Bank and the Mexican Ministry of Finance.

I have been busy helping organize the visit all week and was happy to have a chance to sit and listen for a while. Even so, it was an exhausting day! While I understand most of the Spanish, it is tiring to translate in my head and try to catch every word people say. Unlike with English, if I miss a word of Spanish I usually lose the whole meaning of the sentence.

Some quirks of the day (all related to traffic):

• My supervisor picked me up at 6:50, hoping to beat the traffic which was apparently horrendous yesterday. We beat the traffic and got there an hour before everyone else and two hours before the workshop finally started (no one else beat the traffic). He took me to Starbucks to make up for it.

• Our taxi driver fell asleep at a red light. We had to wake him up.

• It only took 20 minutes to get to the OECD office, but it took an hour to get back. My colleagues were going out to lunch to talk about the publication, but wanted to go somewhere close to where I live so I could walk home. We left at 2:45 and traffic was so bad we didn't get to my neighborhood until 3:45. I ate lunch at 4:00.

• I ate a big lunch.