Punto

Fiat Punto, that is.

This baby is my rental car, a.k.a. ticket to freedom, for the next 14 days. And I am so excited.

*CUT TO 14 DAYS LATER*

Obviously I was so busy driving that I couldn't even finish this post. Seriously, it was awesome. Driving in Italy is great. The other drivers actually pay attention! Kind of. Throughout my entire time driving, I would say the scariest part was driving down the ridiculously steep and snowy hill that is right outside of my school. This happened on the 26th when Alok and I were planning on driving to the train station to catch a train to Florence. As I started going down the narrow-barely-big-enough-for-2-cars-in-only-some-areas street, the Punto started sliding. On one side of me was a jagged stone wall, and further down the street (about 30 feet) was a BMW. I was just hoping that my car did not hit the BMW. After sliding for a second or so, I realized that the car did not have anti-lock breaks, so I quickly took my foot off the pedal and replaced it. This caused the car to stop and my heart a chance to not explode. I'm so happy I've had a lot of practice in KC (ice) and Denver (snow) driving.

Anyway, the rest of the time with the car was fairly uneventful. I drove all over, though, and had a great time trying to see if I was as aware of my car's size as most Italians are of their cars. (It's incredible, really.) I think I got really good with it, managing to park in some crazy areas. The best, though, is how quickly I backed down a street that was lined with cars on one side and a stone wall on the other. The reason I had to back down it is because I had to get out of the way of the car coming down the hill and towards me. This lane was only big enough for one car, and since backing downhill is easier than uphill, I basically had to back up about 50 yards down this very-windy, very-narrow street. What amazes me about that particular incident is how quickly I did the backing up.

Having mom with me was what kept reminding me how different Italian drivers are from American drivers. Whenever I would do something, or some other car would do something a little on the dangerous side (according to an American), mom would gasp or say "ooh ooh ooh!". I think she just tried not to look most of the time.

Time for bed. Hope everyone's 2009 is off to a great start!

One more time...

Just had the same issue with mom and Skype. Mute was not on to begin with, then it was. All I heard was, "I can't hear you. What happened? I don't know what happened."

Sushi in Bassano

Here is another blog I wrote for CIMBA:

Having just finished a long stretch of classes and Six Sigma green belt training, all of the MBAs were ready to have a little down time. When Tommy (the program coordinator at the undergrad campus) suggested we go to the sushi place in Bassano, I immediately jumped at the chance. As much as I love having Italian food for every single meal, something different is always appealing. Since car seats, a hot commodity here in Asolo, were limited, we used some of our Kepner Tregoe skills to decide who would go. The lucky five were Tommy, Jay, Javier, Claire and myself. Full of excitement and hunger, we made our way to Bassano, where we had one of the best meals we’ve had in awhile. Even though our outing lasted only a few hours, it was just what we needed. Instead of Human Resources Management discussions we had discussions about how we were spending our winter break as well as what we were looking forward to in our consulting projects. Instead of eating the same pasta we make for every meal, we had tuna and salmon sashimi and miso soup. Instead of Italian wine, we had sake. Most importantly, instead of learning more business-related concepts, we learned more about each other.

After stuffing ourselves full of raw fish, we took a quick walk through the streets of Bassano to digest the amazing meal we had. The guys stopped for a minute to goof around on a swing-set, and as I stood there watching and taking pictures, I realized that no matter how serious classes get, there is always room for acting like a kid. That night was perfect. And it was just what we needed to gear up for the last leg of classes and exams before winter break. It’s nights like these that really make our time here at CIMBA special.

Rogue Wave

I've been obsessed with this song recently. Enjoy!

Sometimes...

...I wonder what I'm doing here.

Don't get me wrong. I am very happy. I am doing very well in school (as far as I know). I love the people I've met. I know that this is exactly what I should be doing. But part of me feels unsettled.

Let me explain. It's just that I'm getting impatient. I'm dying to know more about my future, and all of this basically has to wait to be figured out until once I'm done with this program. That is when I'll know where I'm going to get a job, therefore where I'm going to be settling down for awhile (with all of MY things). With settling down comes meeting people. I'm ready to meet people. I'm ready start a new relationship and see where it goes. No more of this going-nowhere-dating. I'm sick of that. And most likely no one I'm really going to take into account because they will most likely be Italian and want to stay here. As much as I love Italy, I would like to be closer to my family. Anyway, I'm kind of just rambling. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel a little different.

Skype

So I'm trying to call mom and dad on Skype and start having a ton of problems. First, my laptop in my room doesn't have a strong enough signal to get onto Skype. I then moved myself downstairs to the computer lab. After plugging directly in with the cord, it still didn't work. Next I tried one of the computers in the lab. On my end it seemed to work just fine, but they could not hear me. So, I moved to the next computer, which didn't have Skype. Then I tried another. Got online again, managed to call, but still mom couldn't hear me. I could hear her just fine, but she could not hear me. Running out of options, I then decided to try calling her cell phone. That worked just fine and we were talking for awhile when we decided that we should all (mom, dad and me) be on the line.

Before hanging up and calling her computer, I said, "wait". When I had originally called her computer and had it not work, I could hear her perfectly, but she could not hear me. A thought then occurred to me. If she could hear me on her cell, but not on her computer, maybe it was her computer's fault. I then asked her if her computer was on mute. She said she didn't even know where the mute button was. I told her and she told me to try calling. Sure enough, that was the problem. Now mom knows where mute is. And just so everyone knows, she thinks it's dad's fault because supposedly he's "always playing with the sound". Goodnight.

Blog for School

We are all taking turns updating a blog that CIMBA has. It is my turn right now, so I thought I would share my first entry. Enjoy!

Having been at CIMBA for several months now, I'm learning to just go with whatever is thrown my way. First, it was LIFE (Leadership Initiative For Excellence), a program that helps prepare your mind to thinking like a leader. Next was the high ropes course in Slovenia, two days of adrenaline-filled experiences eight meters up in the air. After that we started our classes and were immediately being challenged to do well in school all while learning how to act as a team outside of class.



For me, someone who has one undergraduate degree in French and one in International Studies, every single class I encounter is brand new. Before the first statistics class I had a small anxiety attack thinking that there was no way I would ever be able to do the class. Luckily, some of my teammates calmed me down saying that learning statistics is just like learning another language. They told me if I could learn French and Italian, I could definitely learn statistics. Having already completed and received our first statistics test I can tell you that they were exactly right. Not only did I learn a whole lot, I did extremely well! With every curve ball thrown my way, I take that same rush I got from receiving my first grade in statistics and use it to remind myself that if I put my mind to something, I can do it.



This brings me to our consulting project. My group is the first group to get their assignment for one of the two consulting projects we do throughout the year. We already had one meeting, for which I was extremely nervous. I survived and actually feel that I did a very good job in that meeting. Tomorrow two of the five group members are traveling to Trieste (where our company is located) to have a second meeting. I am one of those two people. Up until about one hour ago, I thought the meeting was going to be with the same man with whom we met last time. We are, indeed, meeting with him, but thanks to an email I just received, I found out that we are also having a conference call with the head of this project. Had it been two months ago, or even one month ago, I would not have had a clue how to handle meeting with such an important man. I probably would have asked one of the other group members to go in my place. But now, thanks to all the preparation this program has already given me, I'm surprisngly calm about this turn of events. In fact, I am almost excited about it. Not only will I be able to prove to myself that I can handle this, I will be able to prove to my group that I am flexible and ready for anything this project presents to us. Considering we are barely a third of the way through the program and I already feel prepared to take on anything, I cannot wait to see how I feel at the end of these eleven months. I have a feeling it's going to be quite the experience.