Author Archives: Aaron

San Pedro Spanish School is Awesome!

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Today was my first day of Spanish class at San Pedro Spanish School in San Pedro La Lagunas near Lake Atitlan. My teacher is David and he is really smart and very patient. For four hours he spoke nothing but Spanish to me, and surprisingly I could understand most things. It’s incredibly intense to be speaking only Spanish here and having to think about everything, but I really want to learn Spanish and I’m committed to doing as much as I can in six weeks.

Here are a few pictures from the school:

A common area for students with a small restaurant.

Free Guatemalan coffee.

Plenty of tables and chairs.

A field for croquet or polo. Just kidding.

That little hut is where David is teaching me on a whiteboard (pizarron blanco).

Goodbye To CB&H

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So after almost 5 years, I’m saying goodbye to a great group of people at Cherry, Bekaert & Holland. My first real gig out of college, CB&H has been an excellent place for me to learn about marketing and business, and I was fortunate to share it with a great group of guys who make up the marketing department. I will definitely miss the folks of firm administration, the Richmond office, and my friends from around the firm. There are many memories from my time there and I consider it a great first start to my career.

As I’m moving on, I’ve compiled a list of things I’ll take away from CB&H.

What I’ll Miss:

  • Coffee in the morning
  • Ron’s award-winning carrot cake
  • Databases & Dynamics CRM (I can’t hide my true colors)
  • Madeline’s friendly smile
  • High Octane Marketing
  • I.T. guys that I can talk tech with
  • The firm managing partner knowing who I am
  • Plenty of parking
  • CBHU (I think we all miss that)
  • “Synergies,” “Leveraging” and “Thinking Outside of the Box”

What I Won’t Miss:

  • Vendors calling and obliterating any resemblance of the correct  pronunciation of the firm’s name.
  • Having to explain to people where I work: “I work for an accounting firm, but no I’m not an accountant. ‘Why does an accounting firm need a marketing department?’ We’re a huge firm, and I work in the headquarters. ‘So you don’t know anything about taxes?’ Nope.”
  • VA Blood services calling to ask me if I can donate
  • Excel documents that aren’t structured properly
  • The smell of toner in the production room
  • “Synergies,” “Leveraging” and “Thinking Outside of the Box”
  • Discerning if it’s really “final” when the file is called the “Final, Final, Final – THIS IS THE REAL ONE – Version 2”
  • Posting time (oh wait, mine was wayyy easy!)

To all my friends at CB&H, I hope you stay in touch!

Aaron@AaronRoth.net