Back from Brussels...Final Weeks in Deutschland

Cologne, 4th largest city in Germany.  Also...main train station where we stopped on our way back from Brussels.  I had decided about a week before Brussels that I would go to Cologne on our way back.  I talked to some of the people from AIESEC Cologne who I had met in the conference a month and a half ago (so long ago...) and asked them for a place to crash, and people to hang out with.  One of the girls was awesome enough to let me stay at her place, and to show me around even though she had exams.  AIESEC...providing great experiences and networks, while lowering GPA's all around since 1948.

When I arrived, the girl whose house I was staying in picked me up at the train station after I said my goodbyes to the rest of my group, which was headed back to Koblenz.  We went straight to her place, and then went back out to do some walking around the city.  Cologne is a beautiful city, and I just got a little tour through the university and one of the main bar-heavy streets.  Then we went back and I pretty much fell asleep instantly because I was so damn tired.  Next day, I would be meeting up with Luisa, another AIESECer from Cologne, who would be giving me the proper touristy tour of Cologne.

I hoped to wake up around 11, but I didn't move a muscle until 12:30...at which point Luisa had already called me twice.  Oops...but oh well, after this we walked around the old part of Cologne, where the Cologne Cathedral is located.  This thing is...well...huge.  Largest cathedral I have ever been in by a mile.  We decided to go up all the way, so we paid and headed up the stairs...

Think this...533 times over

Vini, vidi, vici!

...so many of them...but finally...we made it!  533 steps.  The worst part was running into tourists who would say "You're almost there", when in reality, you weren't.  Eventually we made it all the way to the top and the view was amazing!  We took some pictures, took in the view, and then proceeded back down.  All the way back down the same 533 steps.  Now it was my turn to tell people they were almost there.  :)

All the way back the down we went...

After this, we moved to the delicious Chocolate Museum.  This was...omg so good!!!  The place itself is nothing too special.  They show you where cocoa comes from, blah blah, then they show you how they make it into chocolate, and then you get to the back and BOOM!  Machinery!  Chocolate flowing everywhere...delicious, yummy chocolate.  And then...KAPOW!  Chocolate fountain glory!

Seriously, if I could I would dunk my face in there and start chugging.  The nice lady with chocolate covered wafers was great enough to give me like 6 or 7 wafers (being nice gets you places), so I had a good share of chocolate.  Then, it was time to head back to the real world, where Luisa had to go home and I had to get my ass back to the other girl's place to get ready for the fireworks show that would happen later that night.  Dinner happened somewhere in between all that.  Nothing too special...hehe.  Oh yea, and I got lucky by rubbing the nose of these two statues.  No big...


Many much fireworks!


The end of my stay in Cologne involved a super cool fireworks show on the Rhine.  It's an annual show called Kölner Lichter, which means Cologne Lights.  Kölner is the possessive of Köln (Cologne), so it's intended meaning is something like "The Lights of Cologne."  We got to the riverside around 10:30pm, and we sat down with the rest of the people from AIESEC who were there.  It was a wonderful show!  It must have been even better for the Cologne people because all of the music was from artists from Cologne, and the songs were about Cologne, and it just felt like a very city pride huge deal.  They say pictures are worth 1,000 words, so I'll let the pictures do the talking for this part, 20,000 words' worth of it.

Imagine this for an hour and a half!  Impressive, right?  :)

It was time for some hanging out after the fireworks were over, but we were too tired for clubs so we hung out at the apartment.  Finally went to bed at 5:30am, and then spent the next day watching TV while I waited for my ride to call me.  Instead of taking a train I talked to one of the Koblenz students who lives in Cologne to drive me back on Sunday when he went back.  Roberto - 1, the system - 0.  I win, and I don't pay for the train.

Summer Academy Wine Tasting


After a week of hard work, the following weekend arrived and we had a wine tasting event planned for our students.  Since the Summer Academy event planners handled this event, I had no idea what we were in for.  I'm quite lucky that I decided to wear shorts because the weather was pretty hot and we were going to be walking around 15 km.  We had to walk along the vineyard to stop every once in a while to try different wines.  I may or may not have had a little bit more than expected, which resulted in a very happy Roberto who was talking to everyone (so basically normal me except twice as happy and twice as excited about everything).  I've always said wine gets me in the best moods out of all kinds of alcohol (vodka and Jägermeister are at the bottom...which is why I refuse to drink them), so it was a nice little walk back to town, and then we got on the boat that would take us back to Koblenz (we came in by train).  The boat ride was very nice, except for the fact that my camera died while we were there, which is why I have no more pictures since then.  I have continuously forgotten to buy batteries...so no more pics from here on.  I need to get some from others.  All in all, good day, except for the fact that wine from the Rhine is mostly white, and I'm a red wine kind of person.  Oh well...I'll have to open a bottle of red sometime soon.

It's the Final Countdown!

The final week of the Summer Academy is finally here.  I would have to say that the program itself can be divided into two parts: Pre-Brussels and Post-Brussels.  During Brussels I feel like I got to know a lot of the students very well, so after we got back we really bonded and now I have to say goodbye to them.  We had the goodbye BBQ on Friday, and it was a great time because everyone was there.  At 10pm we closed up, and everyone went to the bars around 10:45pm.  Since I had to clean up I couldn't go, but one of the students stayed with me and he told me we could go to the bars after.  We went to the local Irish pub, and a group of about 30 people was there, a combination of international and German students.  It was great!  We kept hopping to other bars, and before we knew it, 4am had arrived.

I have a gift.  It involves befriending restaurant/bar owners and getting everyone to buy more drinks after the bar is closed.  At the last bar we were in, they had last call around 3:30am, but one of the guys decided to do a round of drinks after this.  I told him "don't worry...I'll find a way", and I talked to the bartender, who directed me to the owner.  One minute later, and the round was mine, as well as 2 more rounds that I got on the house.  I got  3-4 drinks and I paid for 0 of them.  :)  Sweet talking people really does get you places...I need to do this to get myself a job next year.  Oh, and talking about my job...my boss said I am done officially on Tuesday.  This means I get a full week of hanging out in Koblenz, sleeping, packing and doing some last minute sightseeing in the city.  Life is good.

However, as happy as I am about this being over, I am having very mixed emotions at the moment.  I am very happy because I talked to a lot of the students and they were incredibly happy with both the work I had done and the Summer Academy as a whole.  I am actually pretty proud of the job I have done, and I definitely would love to do it again if I had the chance.  Maybe I'd do some things differently but I would do it again.  On the other hand I'm really sad at the fact that I'm now all alone in Vallendar again.  The first two months I got used to being alone on the bus, reading and listening to my iPod, but then the students arrived and I saw them every time I got on the bus.  I barely had times when I had no one from the Summer Academy around me, and now for one more week I'm going to have to get used to not having them around once again.  This is sad, but at the same time I am very happy that I got to meet them all.  The whole point of exchange through AIESEC is to further develop individuals, and if what I have gone through these three months isn't development, I don't know what is.

What's left?  Just two more days, in which I have to create a report about the Summer Academy.  Not many of the feedback forms have made their way back, but at least I've talked to many of the students and I have good action steps that can be taken by next year's team to make sure the experience is even better.  The final report will probably be posted here...we'll see once I finish.  But for now...let's rejoice in the good things!  I'm about to start thinking about this report...kinda crazy about going home in 9 days.

Sprechen sie...wait...parlez vous...ahhh!!! Englisch? Anglais?

Mind you, this post is about a week overdue.  I've been really busy, so I haven't had time to write anything.  But this is good, since it means I'm keeping myself doing things.  Can't wait to get home soon...14 days.  I miss home and home 2.0 (aka Ann Arbor), so I have two dates that are making me very excited.  August 2nd I go to Puerto Rico, and September 1st I go to Michigan.  Woohoo!


Now for the stories of Brussels...

You would normally think that not being able to speak one language or another is the same thing. Well, I thought the same until I went to Brussels last week. Everyone around me was speaking French, and I have grown so used to not understanding German that French sounded incredibly strange. I was in Brussels for 3 days, and the language barrier was a bit less than with German, but it felt so weird to be speaking French.

Now, why was I in Brussels in the first place? The International Economics class from the Summer Academy was going to Brussels to see some of the European institutions. They needed someone to go along as a representative of the Summer Academy staff to organize the transportation and accommodations so...it was me and my co-worker without my boss. Overall it was a great trip with beautiful scenery. Brussels is truly an international city. I hear so much Spanish being spoken there...which was pretty nice because no one speaks it in Germany.

Day 1


Anyway, the first day we arrived there and we made our way to the hostel. We got a bit lost, and when we got there we had to assign rooms. My co-worker took care of this, but it kinda turned into a shitshow, which ended up in me having to sort the whole thing out. Ended up that one girl didn't have a bed because all the girls rooms were full. Lo and behold, I was tired so I moved to a room with 6 guys and gave the girl my single. Actually worked out really well because I got to meet some really cool Germans that I've been hanging out with since.

We had about an hour or two before we had to leave, so of course I went to do some sightseeing.  Important thing to do in Brussels:  eat a waffle.  Now...I thought...waffles, I've eaten these before.  Absolutely not.  This was beyond heavenly.  I wanted to cradle this waffle and take it home with me as a pet, so I could breed more of them and eat them daily.  I will probably dump all the Brussels pictures into another post later today.

Excuse me while I go eat ten of these...

After the wait we went to the Representation of Rhineland-Palatinate (the German region where Koblenz is) at Brussels. We had a slight overview of how German representations differ from other countries' regional representations. Because Germany is a federal republic, where each of the states has a lot of political control, the representations actually have a bit more political power than they would in a non-federal government. The representation was beautiful.

damn mirrors making me think there's another room...

beautiful garden in the back

who are those sexy people in that other room?  oh, wait...it's another mirror!

After this, we left to go to the hostel.  I had another waffle and then we ended up going to the bar part of town.  Prices were pretty much exorbitant, so I decided to go get food with the professor's 15 year old son and a couple of Germans.  On my way to the place where we were eating, I saw a little shop with drinks in it.  Mental note, made...

Second thing to eat in Brussels: fries.  Belgians have a science about making fries, which I don't really understand but they tasted great.  However, drinks were super expensive.  What to do?  I bought food, ran back to the little shop, got myself a beer for 1.50 that would have cost me like...2.50 at the place where we were eating.  Economics, for the win.  Now, we got back to the bar, and then some people realized that we had found really cheap beer at this little shop.  Therefore, like 6 of us got up and went back there.  We got some beers and just hung out there, then 1 more person joined, then 2 more.  We started joking that everyone would show up, and lo and behold, 15 minutes later even the professor joined us (even if it was only for 15 minutes or so).  The night finished with us going back, some people staying in front of the hostel drinking and me going straight to bed.  Waffles and fries and that much walking make a man tired...along with a couple of Jupiler.

1.50 for this, 1.80 for a Stella Artois.  Woo!

Day 2


Now, it's really cool when you get to wear a suit in a group of students who are all wearing jeans.  Makes you feel like you're the boss, which was really cool.   As I may have told you before, I was the one who had been in contact with the European Commission, planning our trip and the sessions.  It was really great to finally get to meet the famous Judith Jakab who I had talked to via email and Skype multiple times.  It was actually a pretty long day, since we had five hour-long sessions back to back to lunch to back to...you get the picture.  Lunch was really good: two baguette sandwiches each (I managed to get three cause I'm awesome) and some Coke.  The sessions were about 50-50 on the boring/cool scale.  I felt like I was gonna die for a couple of them, but the others were quite good.  And then there were the microphones...

You might be able to see that we have microphones every couple of seats.  Well...they sounded like the announcers at a supermarket, so some of our students started having some fun with them in between sessions.  It was hilarious, needless to say.  He was saying it in German, but the effect was the same.  Crazy how humor can break language barriers so easily.

Later that evening we returned to the same bar that we had gone to the day before.  This time, however, we were prepared and we didn't even sit down.  We went straight back to our little shop, got some beers and then went to walk around the city.  Turns out that on that day there was a parade and show of sorts, so we stood around for hours watching the parade, talking and stopping at various little shops around town.  We had fun...

Drinking legally on the street while sitting on a police car...classic

We're quite the international group: Lithuania, Morocco, India, Germany, USA.  Boom!

Two of the girls in front of a dragon.  Someone has a group picture with the dragon...

We later ended up at a club, which was pretty much empty, so it was just our group dancing there.  It was ok...but then it was time to go home around 3 or 4 in the morning.  Seriously...Europeans party way too late, I don't know how they do it.  But...alas, it was bedtime, and time for resting up before the big finale.

Day 3


Welcome, everyone, to the European Parliament...

and to the hemicycle...

and the outside view...

Ok, you might be thinking "Cool, Parliament"...but seriously, the session could not have been more boring.  Institutions everywhere need to understand that someone who knows a lot isn't necessarily someone who is good at speaking, especially to students!  If you have a monotone voice, I would rather not hear you speak.  Institutions like this need to be able to find better speakers so that they can keep my attention for more than half a second.  Interesting topic + boring speaker = nap time.  Boring topic + good speaker = amusement.  The speaker makes a world of difference!  Get better ones!!!  And yes, this applies to everywhere, not just Europeans (I'm looking at you, US Capitol tour guides!).

[EDIT]: One weird thing to note about the Parliament.  Representatives are not organized by country, but by political parties.  I thought that was very interesting, especially considering there are like 5-6 parties.  In the U.S. it's simpler because there are only two major parties in the Senate, whereas the House doesn't even have assigned seats.  One would assume they're coordinated by country like the UN.

After that painful hour or two (or 100 days, cause I'm sure that's how long I was in that room) we got to go outside and take a group picture in front of the flags.  Thankfully, there were better cameras than mine.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get a hold of these pictures.  They'll be up when I have them.  I got to say my goodbyes to Professor van der Beek, who was leaving for University of Illinois that day, where he will be until October.  Maybe I'll see him if I go visit AIESEC Illinois, which I probably will.  That same day we took our train, and we went on our merry way.  I would be staying in Cologne for the weekend, and everyone else would be continuing to Koblenz.  Great trip, good friends made, life is good...

A Tale of Two Cities...and Four Really Full Stomachs

XXXL Trip

As I have mentioned in the past weeks, every time I eat here I am never quite full.  I could probably eat another whole portion of food and be fine.  This is what I call “European full”.  I haven’t been “American full” in 2 months, which is that point which we like to call a food coma.  However, my friends know of a restaurant in the state of Hessen which specializes in XXXL food.  Last Thursday we took a trip there and let me tell you, I was…pretty damn full.

We ordered two dishes for four people.  The first one was a 30cm burger.

As you can see, this is enough to make one person explode if they eat it.  However, I think I could tackle it if I really wanted to.  It would be tough but maybe…

In addition to this we also ordered a 1kg schnitzel.  

Schnitzel is basically a thin country-fried steak, or “bistec empanado” for those of you reading from the Motherland.  Now…since we started with the burgers my friends quickly realized that this might have been too much.  However, we had ordered and started eating so I said

Challenge accepted!

I’m pretty sure I ate about 40% or more of the scnitzel, just so we could take a lovely picture after we were done and rejoice that we won against the food, and we didn’t have to use the “loser foil” as my German friend called the aluminum foil used by people who don’t finish their meal.

However, this was not the end of our trip.  For the first time since I’ve been here I got to sightsee in another city.  Last weekend I went to the conference in the town of Simmerath, but we never got the chance to sightsee because we were always in the hostel.  After finishing our food frenzy, we drove the Audi down to the cities of Wiesbaden and Frankfurt.  It was rainy and we didn’t have much time, so mostly we took in the cities by car (and we didn’t feel like walking since we’d just had the equivalent of a small whale in food).  We did get out of the car to see the casino in Wiesbaden…

...and to walk around a small festival in Frankfurt…

…where we got to see the city from the top of a shopping mall.

Students!  Students!  Students!

My excitement level is pretty high at the moment.  I was awoken abruptly this morning by my phone ringing.  Turns out that one of the students arrived early in the morning and needed me to give him the address of his accommodations because he hadn’t written them down.  Sigh…but oh well.  All is well because students arrive today!  And tomorrow!  I’ve been at the Main Train Station (Hauptbahnhof) since 11:30am, and it is now almost 6pm.  I will be here until 8pm at least, and then I get to go home.  As tired as I am right now, it has been an excellent day.  I’ve met Bulgarians, Greeks, and will be meeting Russians and Ukrainians soon.  I am very proud of my work, because I feel like they are here due to my efforts organizing the program.

My home for the pick-up weekend

While I have been at the train station all day, the students have been leaving with my colleague in her car.  Great teamwork has resulted in…actually a good amount of me being alone in the train station.  But these guys are actually quite nice, and I am looking forward to hanging out with them in the near future.  Yes, I am the organizer for their program, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get to have fun with them either.  Most of them are around my age (20-24) and will very likely want to go out and have a good time, which I am more than welcome to help with.

Now it turns out that the last guy to arrive today was delayed an hour, so I get to wait here until 9pm and then Meike, my colleague, will drive me home.  I ended up spending about an hour with three Ukrainians, which was pretty fun even though we were all exhausted and just wanted to go to bed.  They got to leave…I got to stay.  I’m sure I will see them soon and they seemed like they wanted to go out soon, or at least hang out in the accommodations (which is not allowed, so we’ll see what happens), so I’m sure we’ll have our good share of fun.

The second day went ok, except that some of the students got off to a bad start with me.  I’m a very patient person, but I hate when people are rude to others, particularly wait staff at restaurants or bars.  As a great wizard once said,"If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” (Sirius Black in Goblet of Fire, for those of you who can’t quite quote Harry Potter) Since I have already had unpleasantries with this student via email, this only made me feel worse about him. I should not have to be apologizing to waitresses for the behavior of others. Other than this it was quite a good day, and everyone is now here! All my hard work has paid off!

Summer Academy Week 1…GO!

The first day of the Summer Academy started off well enough.  However, once classes started we realized that the tent that we had set up outside was NOT going to work.  The problem: temperatures were reaching 85-90 degrees and the A/C system was not big enough to cool down the tent.   The second problem: there was too much natural light and the projector could barely be seen.  Thankfully, by Wednesday we managed to get a bigger air conditioning and the temperature also went down to the mid 70s.  The problem with the projector, we have realized, is pretty much unsolvable, though we tried to buy some curtains to attempt to block out the sunlight coming in.  This was a failed attempt cause the curtains were too small for the tent.

Now we are moving on with smaller details that we need to plan, such as a couple of student ID’s we have not received and some reimbursements that need to be issued.  In addition, there are a couple of details that need to be resolved regarding the trip to Brussels, Belgium next week.  The class International Economics will be going and my coworker Meike and I will be going as staff representatives.  This is great because I get an all-expenses-paid trip to Brussels.  We leave Wednesday and come back Friday.  After this I might stay in Cologne for the weekend with the new friends I made at the conference.  We will see what happens, but I’m sure it will be a great week.

Hamburgers and Romans are fun!

It has been a while since I posted here.  However, when there are long periods of silence it usually means I've been busy, so once I get to actually writing something I will have some good stuff!  Therefore, I have good stuff right now that I want to share with everyone.

Hamburgers...and I don't mean the German city of Hamburg


Last week, me and Daryl had the incredible craving for a burger.  However, we went to the supermarket and burger buns just weren't up to par.  Neither was regular cheese, so we decided to go a little differently and try to Germanize our cooking a little.  Instead of burger buns we each bought a different type of bread roll and we got some cheddar made in Germany.  Turns out that Wisconsin cheddar is about 10,000 times better than German cheddar, but we made some amazing burgers.  Fortunately for all of you, I have decided to start taking pictures, so...we have evidence!

And I give you...EVIDENCE!!!

Mine is on the left on a ciabatta roll.  We each had two.  It was great.

After eating this I was pretty much in a food coma for the rest of the day.  It's surprising how used I've gotten to smaller portions, but I cannot turn down a good, big meal if I can get my hands on it.  This really hit the spot, since we were desperate for a meal that would fill us up to an American level.  We...mostly did.  Mission Success!


It's an AIESEC life!


Finally, the chance has come for me to come to an AIESEC conference outside of the US.  I could not have been more excited, and on the way there we got pretty lost because my friend didn't feel like asking anyone.  One and a half hour drive took three hours, so by the time I got there I was starving.  Fortunately, dinner was wrapping up so we got to have a good dinner.  The conference was in the small town of Simmerath, which apparently only has a couple hundred residents.  This means that while we were there we were about a third of the entire city's population.  CRAZY!

The highlight of AIESEC conferences is the new people you get to meet and the crazy parties that ensue when you put 100+ college students in a hotel (or hostel in this case).  You get to have a day of leadership development and great, inspiring sessions, and then you get to kick back and...well, you don't really kick back, you just party until the next morning and then maybe get an hour or two of sleep, then go do more soft skills development and intercultural awareness seminars.  I love AIESEC...

There were AIESECers from 7 different cities in Germany, all of which combined to make the Wild West region, which Koblenz is a part of.  I had the opportunity to participate in the Talent Management track, which was particularly focused toward transition from the outgoing VP to the incoming VP.  Since I had already done my transition in May, I didn't get as much from the sessions as I had expected, but I am very glad I got to meet all of the people I met.  I will be visiting some in the next weeks, and maybe some will come visit me in the US.  And of course...we need a picture, and the first party was one of the funnest I have been to in a while, certainly the most fun in Germany so far.

Of course, as always, leaving the conference was the hardest part.  After sleeping four hours each of the two nights, I was pretty sleep deprived but I definitely miss all of my new friends.  However, God bless the Internet and Facebook.  After getting home, the usual friending frenzy began, and I came out with a bunch of new friends.  Gotta love social networking.  The best part about leaving, though, was riding in my friend Robert's car.  He got to the conference on the second day, so we got to ride back to Koblenz in his dad's Audi, which he had borrowed.  And let me tell you...that car is amazing.  In this car I went from the airport to Koblenz the first day I arrived, but I was so sleepy I couldn't fully enjoy it.  This time...wide awake!  Cruising down the Autobahn at 240 kph is pretty sweet.  That's almost 150 mph!  Perfectly legal...

Work, work, work...like an ant


After this great weekend, I had to get back to work.  Things were getting a bit hectic in the office because we are on our last week until the students get here.  Therefore, we have spent a lot of time finishing up our planning and putting the finishing touches on all of our things.  There are 30 students arriving from various countries, and we get to have our first meeting on Monday with all of them.  I will be at the train station most of this weekend to make sure they arrive well and then my colleague picks them up and takes them to their accommodations.  This will be great because I get to meet them, but it sucks a bit cause I waste my weekend at the train station.  I have a feeling this will involve a lot of me being on my computer playing video games during the time in between arrivals...we'll see.

Now I will have to cut off here, and I will include my other adventures from this week in the next blog post, which will most likely go up sometime in the middle of next week.  I have some good stories, and hopefully will develop more over the weekend when I meet all my students.

P.S. The Welcome Booklet is ready and can be accessed here.

Religious Holidays are Cool!

Many of you, namely my mother and my cousin, have been asking why there haven't been any recent updates to the blog.  I have to say...I was a bit lazy last week and didn't do anything.  So I will go for a little bit longer today and talk about the last two weeks.

Work has been pretty steady the last two weeks.  It has been a combination of sending the participants a bunch of forms they have to fill out and finishing up the welcome package.  Thanks to those of you who helped me decide what information to put in it, and special thanks to Mom who helped give me some ideas with the design.  Turns out my boss then went and changed a bunch of things, but...oh well. Womp, womp, we can't have it our way all the time.

This week will be pretty filled with work.  We are now in the process of getting all of our students enrolled, and helping any that have visa problems.  We only have two weeks until they arrive, at which point this will get a lot more interesting because I will have to get to know the 30+ international students who are coming here for one month.  About 20 of them will be living in the same area as me, so I hope this will lead to me having more fun in the weekends.  Next weekend is the AIESEC conference in a town a couple of hours away, and I am looking forward to it.


Event Planning at its Finest


Planning the Summer Academy has been an incredibly large amount of work.  It is quite unbelievable that this has been planned basically by two people and a third who did my job before I was here.  I was comparing this to my experience planning an AIESEC conference, which was planned by four people.  This has truly brought to my attention how much work I have actually been doing.  The Summer Academy is a more complicated event than a weekend long AIESEC conference, and there are less people working on it's planning.  But I have to say that I do love event planning.  The one thing I wish was different is the starting date on my job.  On things like this, I prefer being there from the beginning because the learning curve is so steep.  When I first got here I made mistakes left and right, but now that it has been more than five weeks, I know what I can and can't do.  Although, I gotta say...I hope to plan one more AIESEC event before I graduate.  We'll see what happens...


Hanging out in Koblenz


I have come to the conclusion that Koblenz is definitely not a party city.  To get to a party city we have to drive a couple of hours at least to Cologne, Frankfurt or Stuttgart.  Therefore, what we end up doing most of the time here is hanging out at people's apartments and maybe going to the clubs here once every couple of weeks.  However, last week two of the AIESECers decided that it was time to properly inaugurate their apartment that they had moved into recently.  So...they threw a nice, little party where I made some new friends and had good fun.


Holidays in Germany


Last Thursday and tomorrow are national holidays in Germany.  Therefore, I didn't have to work.  Woohoo!  I had the chance to get some much needed sleep and I actually spent a LOT of time sleeping.  However, I also came to think about why Germans celebrate national holidays for the Ascension of Jesus or Pentecost.  I guess it is because they are traditional holidays, but it is certainly somewhat surprising in a country where, according to a 2006 poll, over 25% of the general population is atheist or agnostic (including over 50% of people between 12-24).  Going back to the whole division of church and state, I'm not really sure how I feel about religious holidays in general, particularly because they seem to be biased towards Christians (at least here and in the US).  However, I'm not going to complain because I truly did need some days off.  I get to write this today and not have anything to worry about for tomorrow because I don't work.


Sports are Almost Over...


As you all probably know, I am a bit obsessed with sports.  Unfortunately, I'm not that huge of a baseball fan, which means that my sports watching is about to be over in a couple of days once the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA finals are over.  I just want the Mavericks to win tonight so the Heat never win a championship with the Lebron-DWade-Bosh triangle.  Seriously, if you're gonna make fun of Dirk Nowitzki for playing sick, that is the last straw.  Neither Wade or Lebron have any class and they don't deserve to win a ring this year or any year.  As for hockey, I just want the Bruins to win.  It has been a goaltender's dream what Tim Thomas has had in this series, so hopefully he can continue playing at such a high level.  He just need his own players to score...

Sorry all, for the lack of pictures.  I'm being pretty lazy with my camera.  I'll try to take some more soon and then post them to here (and eventually, to Facebook...).

One Month Milestone Broken!

Over the weekend my 31st day in Germany passed, and thus I have been in another country for more than a month.  My previous record was the 29 days that I spent in Costa Rica two summers ago.  Let's see...we can talk a bit about what I've been doing this week, although it's really nothing too crazy.

Welcome Packages


As I told everyone last week, I have been tasked with creating the welcome package for the Summer Academy.  By Friday I had a rough draft of the little booklet.  However, there is still a lot of information left to put in it, and the problem is that a lot of the information I need is in German.  I was supposed to have a lot more time this week to do it, but my boss then asked me to do like 5 other things and by the time I knew it I had run out of time.  What a crazy week this was...more info on these welcome packages as they get prepared and sent out.

The unintentional BHAG...


I am not sure if all of you have heard about this term.  A BHAG is used in goal setting as something that you should strive to achieve, but is many times unachievable.  It stands for big, hairy, audacious goal.  Well...my head was big, hairy and definitely audacious, though it was not really a goal of mine to get it to this level.

I look like a combination of Wolverine an Jack Nicholson...not pretty.

Now...I have actually been looking for somewhere to get a haircut, but paying 20 EUR to get my hair cut was not really something I wanted to do.  Therefore, I stalled...and stalled...and stalled...until my hair was looking like this.  I have reached the tipping point...can't do this anymore.  I was getting annoyed over how long it was, so I asked my buddy yesterday if he could take me to one place he knew where it was like 11 EUR.

My head looks bigger, haha.

Ok, so it ended up being 12 EUR, but I can no longer feel hair in my forehead.  That was more than 2 months, and by far the longest time I had gone without a haircut.  And that is the story of how I ended up getting a haircut after 2 months.

Erryting else


Besides working and hanging out with the people here, I have been watching a ver large amount of movies.  God bless Internet streaming, because I am yet to miss a recent movie that I wanted to watch.  Thor, Fast Five, Hangover 2 and many more...seen them all.  And then there's all new South Park, and Colbert/The Daily Show to give me my weekly dose of America.  These last two I usually watch all together at the end of the week.  It's a funny couple of hours every week.

Simply cannot believe I have been here for one month already, and now I'm simply looking forward to getting this Summer Academy ready to go.  Lots of paperwork to make sure these international students can come to Germany.  These Germans have as much paperwork or more than Americans, and about twice the amount of government bureaucracy.  This week should be pretty awesome as well because I SHOULD get paid, unless someone messed up my paperwork, which would really suck...but hopefully all goes well.  For now I'll keep working hard and actually having a good sleep pattern for once.

Parting words:

-Go Bruins!  Congrats on getting to the Stanley Cup Finals!  Beat the Canucks!
-Please, dear God...the Mavs better beat the Heat because I hate Lebron James.
-Germany beat Uruguay in an international friendly today.  Woo, Deutschland!
-Hangover 2 is good but not as good as the first one, and a little bit too out there for my taste.

Are you guys from the US? HELLO!!! ME TOO! (And we also talk about life-changing decisions...no big...)

As I may have mentioned before, there is a private university right by where I live, and they run on the same school schedule as Michigan and most schools in the US.  They are now in summer vacation and are running summer programs.  Some of these are for international students, so at one point I ran into a bunch of them on the bus who were coming back from the bars.  Let me tell you...when everyone around you is speaking German, and you don't understand German...hearing English is as close to hearing a choir of angels as possible.  A group of about 15 people got on the bus being loud and speaking...ENGLISH!!!


I asked where they were from and it turns out they were MBA's from all over the US and a couple from the UK.  Two days later, I run into 5 guys at the bus stop speaking English again.  Turns out one of them was from Michigan so we had a nice little chat on the way to Koblenz from where I live.  It's been a great week cause I've made some good strides at work and also met some cool people along the way.  Lately I've been speaking more Spanish than anything cause my boss is half Mexican and insists on talking to me in Spanish.  I guess it's cool.  My Spanish needs practicing, hehe.


Work is gradually getting better.  I am going to start working on the welcome package for the students of the Summer Academy, which starts in little over a month now.  It should be pretty exciting times this week.  I will write more about these welcome packages later as I start to work on them this week.  Other than this, most of work has been a constant communication between some of our participants and me, trying to figure out all the things they need for entering Germany, enrollment at the university and getting them a place to stay in for the duration of the program.  It's actually quite funny when I know some of these people so well even though I have never met them.


More friends from AIESEC
AIESEC Koblenz, as I mentioned in earlier posts, is right in the middle of their recruitment cycle.  So far they have a couple new members, a couple of which I've gotten to know kind of well.  To top it all off, they also recruited two international people to come help them with recruiting.  This kind of "working for AIESEC somewhere else" is know as a CEED, or Cultural Envoy for Exchange Development.  For this reason, we now have another American in town with AIESEC.  His name is Daryl and he is the VP of Finance for AIESEC Yale next year.  Pretty cool guy, and we've hung out a bit the last couple of days.


Also this week, they brought in a girl from Brazil.  Her name is Carina, and she is a law student in southern Brazil.  Very nice girl, and the funniest part was when we went to pick her up in the airport.  The only person who had seen a picture of her had told us she was a blonde.  So obviously, when people are coming out we're looking out for all the blondes.  This one other girl is just standing there looking lost, but she's brunette.  Obviously, it can't be her.  The plane is emptied, and Daryl just yells "CARINAAA!!!" hoping she would hear us.   And of course, it was the brunette who was standing there.  Quite the funny story, if I say so myself.


We spent the night in Koblenz, at one of our friends' house, and then we went to old Koblenz in the early afternoon.  The weather was beautiful, and we had some breakfast at 2pm, which is always nice.  Then 20 minutes later it started pouring like I have never seen in Germany.  Weather so far has been great here, but it started to rain the likes of which I have only seen in Puerto Rico, which was pretty impressive considering it's a tropical island, which are known for heavy rain.  I had to get out of the car and to the bus stop so I got drenched, and then finally made it back home to a nice, warm shower.  But seriously, the rain was hardcore...and I'm usually not impressed by rain.  If you're one of those people who know and understand my hatred for rain, you will probably feel bad for me.  It was nuts...


I'm actually looking forward to this week because this welcome package should be fun to design.  I'm getting a lot of autonomy on what I want to do with it, so I'm going to try to make this into an awesome looking booklet.  I will probably publish it here once it's done so anyone can look at it if they so wish to.  More updates to come.  Now let's chat about something important...




So let's talk about life-changing decisions
I was talking to a friend recently, and she asked me what I planned on doing next year after I graduate.  I was actually a bit surprised because, I actually haven't been giving this as much thought as I should.  So after this I started thinking about it and that's pretty much what I've been doing all afternoon.  I think I have narrowed it down to 4 options, ordered by alphabetic order and in no specific order of priority:

• Consulting firm job: Consulting has become the field I want to work on.  It allows me to have projects that change constantly.  I'm not stuck doing just one thing, which will motivate me to always do more. There is also quite a bit of travelling involved usually, which is nice.  I think that starting in a consulting career is a great way to learn a lot about businesses quickly, then decide what I want to do later on, whether that is more consulting, going into an industry or opening up my own ________ (insert wild, crazy idea which may or may not be possible here).

• Higher education Master's program: Let's face it...I love college.  And the more I think about it the more I never want to leave this atmosphere, so it makes a lot of sense that I would want to work at a university.  And the reality is, if consulting is #1, then this is either #1b or #2.  If I can get a Master's in Higher Education I can most likely find myself working in upper management for a university in the next decade.  Wouldn't that be sweet, especially if that school can be Michigan?

• Law school: This one is mostly a "I can do anything after I get a law degree" option.  And it also gives me 3 years to decide what I actually want to do.  Having the knowledge that a lawyer has can be very beneficial, and let's not forget the value that the letters JD have when applying for a job.  The question is: how bad do I want to attend law school?  The answer to that is to be determined, and 

• Long term traineeship in another country: This is the wildcard option.  I'm doing it right now for 3 months, but wouldn't a year (or year and a half) in another country be something special?  My parents might kill me if I take this route, but this one can actually lead me into any of the other three options.  After however long I'm gone I'll have to come back and decide what I want to do again.  It would be a great opportunity and I would learn a great deal about business somewhere else.  This time I would like to find something in a country where I speak the native language, which is a bit limiting.  But I believe in my ability to find something.  We'll see if this can be done.

I have considered all of these options in the past and they are truly the ones that I can see myself doing in some way in the next 2-3 years.  However, each of these can take me in remarkably different paths.  The one thing I do know is that, for some reason, I really want to end up living in Boston.  If you have any thoughts, talk to me or leave a comment.  I have realized that this is something I should be thinking about right now and haven't been doing so.  There may even be other options that I'm currently not thinking about, also.  This is going to be one crazy year.  At least I got the GRE out of the way already.  LSAT soon? Maybe...let's get back to America first before we decide.


Some last words
My cousins graduated from high school last week.  This is scary.  I remember them as little kids and now they're all grown up.  They're going to Indiana to study, which brings up some amusing thoughts.  With me being the first in my family to go study in the US (at least in my generation), some family members freaked out and asked "BUT WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT??!?!?!?!?!"...and 3 years later my sister left and now my cousins leave.  No one's making a big fuzz about it.  You're welcome, sis and cousins, for me getting all the "you're crazy for doing this" comments.


No, but really...this isn't about that.  It's about the fact that I feel old.  Friends graduating college, cousins graduating high school, deciding what to do after college...I feel old.  I guess life happens, huh?  Sorry for those of you older than me (parents and the such, particularly) cause I technically am calling you old.  I would like to think I've changed a lot in the past 4 years, mostly for the better.


**Damn, this post is long.**

Heigh Ho!!! It's Home From Work We Go!

"Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”      
-Francesca Reigler

One of the most important things I learned during my change management class is that most people are resistant to change.  Whenever some system is being changed, most people will resist because they are either afraid of change, they don’t see a flaw with the old system or they simply are complacent with current methods.  As it turns out, I have experienced this firsthand since I started work.

So first off, what does my job involve currently?  Well, as I mentioned before, the University of Koblenz has a Summer Academy program for international students/professionals.  This will involve a series of classes on management, computer science and information science, all of which are given in English.  The program runs from June 27-July 22, and before I arrived registration had opened and the scholarship applications had been received.  Just before I arrived, the scholarship application was closed and the recipients chosen.

Enter me.  I am given access to the email account and told that it is my job to handle all communications between the applicants and the Summer Academy Team (which currently consists of me and 2 others, including my boss).  I am told there are Excel sheets with all the information I need, but that I need to install Dropbox to access it.  Problem #1:  I install Dropbox on my laptop, but I can’t edit the tables because my Excel is not compatible with the PC version the have it on.  Problem #2: I can’t do it on my work computer because I don’t have Admin privileges to install it.  Took me a whole week to get someone to give me permission to install it.  Meanwhile, emails kept pouring in and no one was updating any of the data.

The learning curve was pretty high because so far we had about 90 people registered, of which around 13 were given scholarships.  Some of them hadn’t applied for scholarship and were simply paying themselves.  Others are simply in the system and I haven’t heard from them at all since I started working.  I finally got to install Dropbox and it took me 2 full days to get that entire table sorted and updated and with everything it needed ready to go.  I am quite happy with the progress I made.

I’m quite happy that my work hours have ended up being 9:30 am to about 5:30-6:30pm.  I go in and the first thing I do is check emails.  Does anyone need anything new from us?  Who has paid?  Who has some dumb question I’ve been asked a thousand times?  You have to be very patient with some of these people, but at least I get a kick out of reading their applications, resumes, and everything.  Confidential information, of course, but I have access to it.  I definitely have some names that I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

Besides all the email back and forth, I also have to ensure that all participants who are coming get invoices so that they pay, and once they pay I need to send them an invitation letter so they can get their visa process started.  It’s very detailed stuff, especially with so many names.  The amount of things I am expected to remember is truly large.  However, I have been blessed with a good talent for remembering names and people, so I have been getting better at this every day. 

The days continue to pass by and every day I do the same.  For now this is what I am meant to be doing.  Once this process is over I will have a different set of tasks, mostly related with dealing with the student affairs part of the Summer Academy.  More details about that once the time comes, but for now I simply spend a lot of time emailing and updating tables.

However, one thing does bother me.  These people apparently are yet to discover the wonders of Google.  Gmail, Google Docs and Google Forms to me are synonymous with efficiency and productivity.  Making a registration as a Google Form is the easiest thing I have ever done and it makes it all into a Google Doc which is easily accessible and shared to all people on the team.  However, registration for the Summer Academy is done via a system they created using mySQL, which probably took them twice the time to make than what it would take me to create a Google Form.  And the email service crashes at least once a day for about 20 minutes at a time.  My umich.edu account is so much more reliable.  I’m supposed to evaluate this project once it’s over and give feedback for next year. 

Recommendation #1: Scrap your system and just use Google.  It makes life so much easier!

So yes, my plan is to show them the Google way and hopefully have them use that system next year.  You’re very welcome, Google…