This past spring break, students in Point Loma Nazarene University’s Fermanian School of Business embarked on a trip to Portugal to learn about international and small business practices within the country. The group was led by Frank Marshall, associate dean and professor of business, and Jamie Hess, dean of the School of Business. According to Marshall, he and Hess got in contact with a California-based non-profit organization called “Friends of Portugal” to host and plan their trip.
Marshall said that there were multiple goals they hoped to accomplish for the trip, including understanding Portugal’s culture, completing a service project and learning more about business entrepreneurship within the country. They took 18 students total, five of them being global concentration graduate students and the rest undergraduate business majors.
One conflict that they faced early on was weather issues at the San Diego International Airport, Marshall said. The flights were split into two groups: the first one with Hess and the graduate students, and the second with Marshall and the undergraduate students. While Hess’ group was able to fly straight from San Diego to the Humberto Delgado Airport in Lisbon, Marshall’s group had to wait out a four-hour delay for their flight to London. This led to them missing their connecting flight to Lisbon, resulting in an impromptu night in London.
This inconvenience turned into a fun memory for a group of girls who decided to make the most of the moment and Uber to different landmarks in London. One of the girls was Moshu Liao, a second-year business marketing major.
“We needed to go out after that 10-hour flight plus four-hour delay,” Liao said. “We Ubered to London Eye and Big Ben. We only slept like two hours that night because the next morning, the flight was at 7 a.m.”
The intense weather followed the group on their arrival to Portugal. According to Marshall, that had been the most rain that Portugal had experienced in almost 20 years. “Friends of Portugal” adjusted the itinerary, but the group was still able to visit places like Tomar, which is home to different chapels, ruins and the castle that was the headquarters for the Knights Templar during the time of the crusades.
“We [ate] at mostly family-owned restaurants,” Marshall said. “Giving back to the local communities [was important], and really getting to understand, getting a feel for what people in Tomar – or all the places we went to – what is it like to live, to experience their food and their restaurants and different things.”
Some of the students in the group are in BUS 4080: International Business together. In an assignment for that class, they had to research what the economy is like in Portugal and what the top industries are. The students talked to the owners of different businesses to complete this project and understand more about entrepreneurship in another country.
To attend the trip, students needed to apply through the study abroad office. During the fall semester study abroad fair, Marshall and Liao talked to people on Caf Lane about going on the trip in the spring. One person they talked to was Angelina Gomes, a first-year business management and entrepreneurship major.
Gomes, who was from Portugal herself, said she was able to get in touch with students at a high school they visited on the trip.
“I talked about the importance of being grateful for where you are, and how it’s easy to compare,” Gomes said. “But that they’re from a really beautiful town in Portugal … but it’s easy to think that other people have it a lot better than you. It’s better to be grateful.”
According to Liao, the trip’s planned and unplanned moments allowed the students to get to know each other better. This has prompted different get-togethers and hangouts on campus to continue the memories they made on their trip to Portugal.
“We definitely knew each other before because it’s a small school,” Liao said. “We’d known each other’s faces, but this time, we had time to just connect with each other deeply, and now we’ve become good friends. We hang out every week now.”
Emily Jones 
Tessa Balc