Lunch at CIMBA

Just wanted to give you all a quick look at what our lunchtime looks like. Tommaso took this picture one day during a break from class. I realized after looking at it, that someone from the outside might think that this looks complicated or bizarre. I don't know how we do it, but we manage to make it work. (And FYI: The hand on the right holding the cutting board is mine.)

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Tonight, after dining out with Tommy, I came back to school and joined Lisa on the couch in the common room. We were watching a movie for awhile when in walked Tommaso. I looked up and asked him jokingly, "Did you bring me dessert?" He smiled, put down his bag and pulled out a bag which, as he handed it to me, caused me to say, "OH MY GOD. DID YOU BRING ME DESSERT?!" He had. Good Italian.

(It was a nutella filled pastry, by the way. Very yummy.)

Sunshine

Today I went out to lunch with a friend and realized, when he asked how I was doing, that I am really happy. This is a nice change, because the first few weeks back after winter break were a little rough for me. Everyone was driving me crazy, school was hard, it seemed like nothing we (as a team) were doing was right, and it felt like this was never going to end.

That has since changed. I don't know if it's because the sun is out, (it hasn't been out for basically a month straight) but either way, I am thrilled to be here. School is going really well. Our consulting project is going *fairly* well. The sun is out. I'm working out again. I love the people here. I love Italy. Starting to look for jobs. I actually am narrowing down my options and figuring out what I want to do! That, in and of itself, is a miracle.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with everyone. Hope you are all having a fantastic, sunny day too.

P.S. Did I mention it was sunny? Because if I forgot, IT IS!

Voicemail

Here's a fun little story for you. So, as you may (or may not) know, I am in the middle of a consulting project. Basically, this project consists of calling a lot of European businessmen to get information about something. I'm not going to go into specifics because I don't want to get in trouble for saying something I shouldn't. For this story you don't need to know specifics.

Day 70 or so of our project. We had spent the first 70 days preparing, creating the schedule, the template of questions, talking with the company, going on winter break, and waiting on answers from important people etc. So, day 70 rolls around and I'm thinking, "Great! We get to actually move forward and start calling people!"

My first phone call went like this:

ring..... ring..... "Hello?" Blah blah blah, I say who I am and what I'm calling for. He says, "What are you talking about?" My first panic attack sets in. Oh my God, these people (who were supposed to know about our project) have no idea. Quickly, and calmly I try explaining the deal. "Oooohhhhh, yeah, I remember. Well, for that I actually am not the right person to answer these questions." I end up getting another number and then call that person. This time it goes well.

Next phone call:

ring...ring...ring...ring...(start mentally preparing the message I'm going to leave) ring...ring...(start thinking it's taking a long time for voicemail to pick up) ring...ring...(maybe they are on the other line or something, therefore voicemail isn't working)ring...ring... I hang up. I then say to my teammates, three of whom are Italian, "Wow, that rang forever."

Then in a joking manner I said, "They probably don't have voicemail or something."

I said this assuming that I was completely wrong because, what business person would not have voicemail? Everyone, especially people who work at important companies, has to have voicemail, right? WRONG. Instead of making everyone laugh, like I thought I would with my "probably don't have voicemail" statement I was met with three very serious faces saying, "No. No one has voicemail."

This is when I went into shock and then said, "WHAT?! They don't have voicemail?! Are you kidding me?!" No, no, no. They weren't and I knew what that meant. It meant having to call and actually catch someone while they are at their desk. It meant the project taking longer because of all the time I'm/we are going to spend hearing the phone ring forever. It meant me having to adjust to the European way.

By the way, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. In fact, I think it makes sense. I mean, I think many Americans dread going to work in the morning for fear of all the voicemails they have. Maybe we should all adopt the no-voicemail rule.

American Idol

One of the girls in this program was watching American Idol last night on the Air Force Network. A few of us were giving her crap for watching it, and then I heard the TV announcer say something about Kansas City. Apparently the auditions from this episode were from KC! Anyway, I said, "Kansas City! That's where I'm from!" Another girl said, "Oh, you can show us your friends" (in a joking manner). Not two seconds later (they had been showing clips of people waiting in line to audition) a girl from my high school class appeared onscreen and said something about KC. I immediately said, "Oh my god, that girl went to my high school!" People thought I was joking for a second, and then realized I was serious. It was all very funny. I mean, I'm in Italy, using the Air Force Network satellite to watch American TV and I see a girl from my high school on it. Crazy.

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.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

(I was going to try to upload a picture from Thanksgiving to this, but it is taking way too long. Maybe next time!)

Just a quick update:

Have taken 2 more tests since my stats final. Am in the middle of Production and Operations Management, Human Resources Management, a consulting project (that's going to take me almost all year), about to start our Six Sigma green belt training, and I have to read about 1,800 pages before next week or something. Yay! This is why I haven't been updating very frequently. I'm going to try to do shorter, but more frequent posts. Let's see how this works out! Also, don't forget to check my twitter account.

More stats

About to take a stats final. Wish me luck! For those of you who are like, "why isn't Jennifer updating this more frequently?", please take advantage of this. Maybe that will help satisfy your desire to learn about what's going on in my day. Right now this is easier for me to update, since it requires you to be less than 140 characters.

Rain, rain go away

This week was our fall break. One would think that maybe I would have updated this since I had an entire week without classes. Of course I didn't, though, because the week completely escaped me. It was full of shopping, and sleeping, and relaxing, and having fun with friends, and going to the gym (that is a blog all to itself). I just wanted to write a quick post explaining something I learned this week.

Tuesday night Claire, Javier, Jay and me wanted to go out to eat. We had planned on this with some of the other people who were still here, all of whom were Italian. It happened to be raining that night. When Claire went to ask if they wanted to join us, as originally planned, and they all responded like this: "What?! Go out?! But, it's raining!" I'm not joking. So the 4 of us went out and they thought we were crazy. Then, the next day, one of the other Italians who hadn't been there the night before asked what we had done the previous night. When I told him we'd gone out to dinner, he also responded with, "But it was raining last night!" I don't get it. Also, everything seems to shut down when it rains. As if it isn't hard enough already to plan your trips to the store when they are actually open, you throw rain into the mix and it is impossible. God, I love this rain-fearing country.

Spider

You know those times when you have a very lucid dream? The one where you wake up, and actually see a spider the size of your hand on your bed? And when you scream and fling your covers away, the spider goes flying into the wall? Then you turn on the lights, stand in the middle of the room, and search for the spider that you are 100% sure you saw smash into the light fixture on the wall? The same spider that you never find because you are obviously just losing your mind? Yeah, that happened to me last night. Needless to say, I went back to bed with the covers over my head. Oh, and I'm crazy. I blame stats.

Stats Exam

Today was our stats test. It was 38 pages and we had 4 hours. And I wish I'd had a little bit more time. Both my head and hand are pretty much close to dead. I don't even know where those 4 hours went, but they are over, and I'm done with that test, so I'm happy. We decided to go out and celebrate with some spritz and dinner and dancing at club CIMBA. Perfect end to a crazy few weeks of studying. Time for bed.

Italy

Today is one of those days where I just wish there was a Target. Or that I had my own car. We have to rely on those who have cars to take us to the grocery stores. For starters the grocery stores (like all stores) are closed from noon until 3:30 or so. That's fine. But apparently, after attempting to go yesterday afternoon, they are only open Wednesday mornings. Again, fine. Irritating, but fine.

We absolutely had to go today, since our group had absolutely no food. First I had to wait until Gigi was available to go. This wasn't until about 3:30. I would have preferred going earlier in the day, but it wasn't up to me. Before leaving, I asked Tommaso if they took credit cards (our bill is usually a big amount that one person pays and then we all split). He said they only take ATM cards. I said "That's fine because I have an ATM card."

Fast-forward to Bingo!, the grocery store we go to. After dealing with a packed store, and the line that took just as long as the grocery shopping, we finish bagging our groceries and I hand the cashier my ATM card. She tries to run it and asks me if it's an ATM card. I said yes. She tries again and it doesn't work. Then she asks if it's both ATM and credit card, and I said yes. She then said that they only take cards that are only ATM. (Who even has cards that are ONLY ATM anymore?!)

I then look at the 2 guys with me. One American and one Italian. Out of the 2, the American only had his American Express, which is hard to use anywhere here, and the Italian had left his ATM card at home. (I'm not even going to say something about him leaving his card at home when he knew we were going grocery shopping.) Between the 3 of us, we did not have enough cash. Luckily, the cashier was really nice and let us leave the cart completely packed with the already-bagged groceries, go get cash, come back, cut in front of the entire line, and pay. Frustrating, to say the least. Now I'm going to go study. Oh, and yes, I dreamt about stats AGAIN last night. NOT. COOL.

Stats

Let's see. Starting on Saturday I've had 3 8-hour classes of Statistics. In the "free-time" (I use quotes because it's not even remotely close to free) we have between the end of class at about 5:30 or 6 and bedtime, I study. We have covered 9 chapters (almost 400 pages) of stats in those 3 days of class. It's no wonder I was dreaming about statistics last night. Probably will again tonight. This is also my way of saying: "Sorry I haven't updated anything about my life, but my life is consumed with the wonderful world of statistics right now."

I'm now going to go to bed. What do you want to guess the margin of error is of me falling asleep before I even hit the bed? I'm so funny.

My last 2 weekends

Wow. I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll just go in chronological order.

Last weekend my classmates and I went through a program here called LIFE (Leadership Initiative For Excellence). I'm not going to write about it here because it wouldn't do it justice. I will say that it was life-changing (no pun intended) and that the group of people I will be with for the next ten months now is more bonded than I ever thought we would be. These people are great and I am so happy that we went through this experience together. One last thing about LIFE is that everyone came out of it with a hoarse voice, and hurting hands. The voice was gone from all of the yelling we did, and the hands hurt from hours and hours straight of clapping for each other.

This past weekend was spent in Slovenia. At Adrenalinski Park, to be exact. This was more bonding for the group. It was a low and high ropes course. I've done low ropes before in elementary school and through girl scouts, but never high ropes. The high ropes were amazing. First of all, I will be sending pictures out (if my connection ever actually lasts long enough for my pictures to upload (I'm trying for the 5th time right now)). If you are interested in getting these pictures, and you don't already, send me an email and I'll add your name to the list.

OK, the first element I did on high ropes was climbing a pole, basically a telephone pole, that was 8 meters high (about 26 feet). By the way, during all of the high ropes elements I was harnessed in and attached to a rope that would save my life if I fell. Once on top of the pole, we had to stand up on it, turn about half way around, and then jump off. I don't really have a fear of heights, but I do hate, with a passion, the feeling of my stomach dropping. As I was standing on the top of this pole, which was furiously shaking, thanks to my trembling legs, I had to convince myself to jump off. So there I am, standing 8 meters in the air, on the top of a pole that is not even big enough for both of my shoes. And, I'm shaking because I realize the only way for me to come down is by jumping off. I don't even remember if I counted to myself, but somehow I found the strength to do it. I free-fell for about one second and then my the rope tightened and caught me. What a rush that was. And that was the first of about 5 million rushes for that day. The next event was something called the "Career Ladder". This was a bunch of wooden slabs that were hanging by ropes. I think there were maybe 8 or 9 in a row. The object was to get on one step (slab), have your teammates raise you to the next one (only one meter at a time was allowed), and work your way up to a platform so you can ring a bell. I was elected stunt-woman for this element. I believe it's because I was one of the smaller ones of the group, and not scared of heights. This was a very taxing element. We did it over and over and over (I think I did it 4 times) so that we could try to beat the other teams record. Our best time, which did beat the other team, was 57 seconds.

At the career ladder, I had a high ropes instructor belaying me the entire time. The first time I got to the platform, he instructed me to turn with my back towards the open air, and just sit down into nothing-ness. He then lowered me down very quickly. Too quickly. And I yelled at him for it. He basically called me a wimp, but I told him how much I hated when my stomach dropped. The next time around, he lowered me insanely slowly, so I told him he could go a bit faster, and of course it scared the hell out of me. After the second time, he introduced himself to me. His name is Marko, and I kind of fell in love with him. (Probably just because my life was in his beautiful hands for about half a day, but still.) Throughout the day he basically just enjoyed torturing me. I think the best thing he made me do was what I'm about to explain.

The second to last activity we did for the day was climb up to the top of the high ropes and do as many elements (walk across a log that is 8 meters high, cross tires that are just a bit too far apart, walk a tight rope etc.) as we wanted to (or could) do. I walked across the log, then crossed some ropes that were hanging so you could step into them, walked on a tight rope (with ropes to hold onto), did the tires, and crossed three logs that were suspended separately. The tires completely wore me out. It took me awhile to figure out how to do it, and with a little coaching from Marko, I finally made it across. Basically, you had to get one foot in the tire, swing a little bit so that you could grab the next hanging tire with your hand and then stick your free foot in it. The point is to keep two feet in two separate tires at all times. This keeps you from spinning in circles on one tire. It was insanely hard, and when I finished I realized how exhausted I was.

So I went back to the initial platform and told Marko I was done. He smiled and said that he was going to let me get down from the top of the high ropes in a fun way. I asked him how, and after he told me I told him I hated him. Marko wanted me to stand a few feet back from the edge of the platform, get a running start, and jump off of the platform into nothing-ness. I could tell that he was not going to go easy on me, and to be completely honest, I kind of liked being pushed to my limits. So, there I was, standing 26 feet up in the air, trying to make myself jump off of the platform. After some encouragement, Marko decided to count to 3. Once he got to 3, I don't know where I found the courage, but I did it. And it was awesome. I free-fell again, but this time for a bit longer. Probably twice as far as when I jumped off the pole. What a rush.

The last element was something called the "Giant Swing". This works by you being strapped into a lot of ropes, having your teammates run holding one of the ropes that hoists you up into the air, probably right around 30 feet. Once at the top, the instructor (in this case Marko again) tells you to pull the cord that will release you and let you fall into a giant pendulum motion. Once again there is a horrible free fall, but then it is awesome. I actually let go, but did not lean back like they told me to. Maybe next time I'll be brave enough for that. Needless to say, it was an amazing weekend.

*The picture I've included shows the platform that I jumped off of (the one with the people standing on it on the left). It also shows on the lower right corner, the Career Ladder. About halfway up the picture on the right is the other platform that I was supposed to be raised to during the Career Ladder. You can also see the 3 suspended logs that I crossed, but not the log, or the tight rope, or the tires.