T Minus 7 Days and Counting....

Intensive Spanish has already started and one of my roommates who I am yet to meet, told me that people aren’t exactly ecstatic about it. Well life here isn’t exactly a cup of tea either. In my brilliance before leaving Spain, I didn’t pack any warm weather clothes. After all… it is summer, but apparently summers aren’t the same everywhere, and now it’s raining, it’s cold, and my tan is fading faster than Michael Jackson’s new single on the U.S. Top 100.

But moving away from my own melanin production and back to the MBA – over the past week we’ve been getting e-mails from the administration to start working on things, prepare for classes and so on and so forth.

The first of these e-mails pertained to career assessment. Basically, ESADE has a website, you log in, fill in a b c, the whole process takes approximately 3-5 hours, and they website, though what I assume are logarithmic calculations, tells you where your strengths, weaknesses, areas for improvement, lay. While usually, I tend to look skeptically on any one person or program that gages my abilities. I approached this one particularly openly. And while I found minor glitches, the end result was overall very pleasing to see. – Apparently I’m cut out for Consulting / Entrepreneurship. – I never would have figured ;)

The following e-mails were the basic, school starts for Intensive Spanish on so and so, Into week on so and so, but during intro week, they will be taking the whole class somewhere for two days, and told us that they will send a follow up e-mail with what we should bring, etc…

I personally think they’ll be taking the whole class for a sort of trust building, get to know each other, teamwork building session in the mountains somewhere, but then again I could be entirely wrong, and we may well go to the canaries for a couple days on the beach, wind surf, and just hang out. However, option B, I fear, is just a delusional dream. Regardless however, it’s going to be so nice once classes start. I can’t wait to drown myself in work.

Cheers,

From Russia (o.k.. Ukraine) with Love...

Or something like that. Got back from Ukraine yesterday, and between not showering for two days, being almost robbed, and trying to avert swindlers at every opportunity. I'm sure glad to be back in civilization. But one thing's for certain, the Ukraine is definately an adventure and takes the utter monotany out of traveling. And regardless of everything it was prety fun. Full update when I get back t Espańa.

Tootles.

Mi movil eran robado ....

Tel got stoeln last night... :/ not too happy about it at all... especially the 179€ I had to drop on a new one

Too much money? Let's invest it!

I’ve recently been looking over my finances, and not really knowing how much I would need for my 1st year in Spain, I decided it would be better to take out more than less. So now I’m stuck with 35.000 € in my bank account, collecting nothing more than – digital banking dust, and I still have enough USD in my old bank to get me through, I would say, October – while living decently enough.

So what’s a poor MBA student to do? Well the logical thing, at least in my mind would be to put that money to work. No need to have it sitting there, when I could throw it in a growth fund, money market or something else of the sort… even better, spread it out, so that I can hedge the risk in putting the cash into Emerging Markets, Eastern Europe, and India…

… so, looks like it’s time to do a bit of research with what investment options are available to me here in good ‘ol BCN, and see if I can capitalize on this extra cash, and maybe lower my overall debt, while still in school. After all, once it’s in there, it only takes about 30 min’s a day to check on how your cash is doing.