Catching Up - Part II

Since starting the IMBA at IE, I have not had too many opportunities to really go out with my fellow students. I did go out, but only to some small get-togethers, or just a couple of us at a time. And I certainly have no documentation, read uncriminating evidence, from those outings.

So here we have another picture of my classmates living it up in Madrid, and there is no shortage of diversity although I think in the case of this picture there is only one person from Europe, the blond girl, she's Croatian. The rest are New Worlders, I think. There's two Mexicans, the other girl is from Trinidad and Tabago and the other guys I think are from various Latin American countries. Sorry guys, I don't know you're names. At any rate, we were at this place called Lolita near the Real Madrid football (soccer) stadium.

Since we had a holiday on thursday, Friday was the Bar of the Week day. The negotiated prices make a real difference in how much your wallet gets beat up! Flash that IE student card and the prices drop like a rock! The other strategy, followed by many, is of course the pre-game.

Also, one of my classmates has started a Friday poker game that's a pretty good time. For the sake of security I can niether confirm nor deny that I have taken part or if the game actually exists, but according to my sources it is a good time!

More to come, stay tuned!!

Catching up- Part I

So it's been a while since I posted but here goes. This is a picture of us at the Team Building workshop at the Estudiantes gym. The Estudiantes basketball team is famous in Spain. Our coach and trainer was a team member of a champion team and was a professional player in the Spanish leagues. It's not the NBA, but he did get paid to play. There aren't too many people that can say that.

It was a great experience because it made the week shorter and I got a chance to spend some time with my teammates outside of a work enviornment.

My team is in Blue in the picture. We called ourselves the IE Bouncers, not the best name but I liked it. We did fairly well in all of the events. I have to say it actually made us a better team.

Speaking of teamwork, it's not the easiest thing in the world! There was a real crisis in our group over our performance in some of our classes. But I'm lucky with my teammates. They are all over 25 with real work experience, that gives them a professional outlook on things and makes us much more effective. This is not the case with everyone. I have a friend with the opposite, only one of the team is over 25. Lucky for me I have my team until the end of the second term. Well, lucky for now. The workload is supposed to increase substantially and there are some issues to be worked out as the time gets crunched.

In addition to the increased workload, we also lost a team member. He got an offer he couldn't refuse from his employer, so he deferred to next year. Good luck buddy, he owes us all jobs!

r_m