class

Well one week of classes is done, three more weeks to go. Class is very interesting. There are five students in the class, 3 from Holland, 1 from Germany and myself. That pretty much sums up the non-spanish people in this town too, the Dutch are an overwhelming majority of the non-spanish people in this town. The remainder are French, Swedish and a few Americans. You can unfortunately always pick out the Americans... They are the only ones talking about America as if it it is a wonderous place of modern technology and mystery. We ran into one guy who was sitting around talking to a few people from Holland (one of which was my roommate) and he honestly said (and I quote) "In America we have these things called freeways that are 4 or more lanes for cars, they?re huge".... The Dutch guys just kinda of looked at him and said "ya.. umm we have those too". Just a reminder for the Americans that may be reading this blog "Many of the countries in Europe are modern, developed countries...honest" Ok so back to my classes, they are going well. There are five of us in the class and our instructor, Maria, who speaks very little english (everyone else speaks english). It is quite interesting.. We are learning a lot though. Ok I?m done with the internet. I?ll try to upload pictures sometime in the next week...

Today, thursday the 8th,?is our last day of classes at Euromed. Many of the students have elected to do a take-home final while others, including myself, decided to come to classes tomorrow morning for an in-class final. The finals are different and I'm hoping that the in-class final is the easier of the two, my fingers are crossed. The final is from 8am until 10am and after that we (or better yet, I) am done!!! The only thing I have left to complete for my degree is our business project, that will take sometime.

Today we had our normal classes. We all had to sit through yet another class on international branding and another class on Strategic performance measurement. I actually enjoy the performance measurement class even though it is taught by Rodney Rogers (kidding, Rodney.. please pass me.. please). After class the school had a small ceremony for us to congratulate on our studies at Euromed. We all received letters of achievement and best of all, the fed us ;).

After classes We headed back to the apartment and started the cleanup process. The three of us had to search the houses looking for our clothes, quickly wash as many clothes as possible and attempt to fit it all back in our backpacks. It was quite fun.

Finals are tomorrow

First I need to answer Oleg's question. Ya man I'm cool. School is keeping us all busy, we actually do have quite a bit and when you combine it with our ongoing business project we've been doing homework most every night. We have, however, been able to get to the beach to do some homework and also some cliff diving. It's been nice. So just think about this, while you are sitting in your office cubicle doing some number crunching we are working on our homework while watching the sunset over the mediterrean with a bunch of bikini-clad french women around us. So how's Portland ;)

Now about the website. For those of you that are frequent visitors you'll notice that I have made a few changes. First I changed the gallery around a bit. The changes were made to make it easier for me to do things remotely. Secondly I added a new gallery. This gallery is open for all PSU Euromed students to upload their pictures to, so hopefully you'll get an opportunity to see what the other students have been doing. In all honesty, every other student has had much more time than Jenson, Amanda and I have had. We used our time to work on our business project.

Other than those changes the website is the same; boring as ever.

So now the question on all of your minds, What did I do today?

Today our class took a trip to Puyricard?Chocolaterie. Puyricard is a chocolate/confectionary company that produces all of its products by hand and sells them in their own shops. Think of Godiva and then multiply the quality by 50.?Most of their products are made so fresh that they have to be eaten within 3 weeks after production but a few of their products last longer. After we toured the factory they took us back to the boutique and gave us all the chocolate that we could eat. I though I died and went to heaven.

I took full advantage of the free chocolate and dug right in. The first piece I picked up was wrapped in pink foil and I unwrapped it as fast as I could and shoved the entire thing in my mouth. That's when I realized that what I had picked up was a raspberry liquor candy and that I had just essentially taken a shot of whiskey (Although I'm not really sure what type of liquor it was, I just know that it was really strong). I make very interesting faces when I am expecting chocolate and I get a shot of liquor. My next piece of candy was not foil wrapped and I asked what it was before I shoved it in my mouth.

After the chocolate factory the bus dropped us off in AIX-EN-Provence a small town near Marseille. Other than neat buildings and shopping it wasn't anything exciting. I did, however, take quite a number of good pictures. I'll post them up tomorrow after class. So check back here tomorrow around 6pm my time (do the conversion for your own time zone).

That's all I have for now. I will post again tomorrow and maybe on Friday. On friday at 1am, however, I board a train destined for Barcelona,Spain and then I'm off to Salamanca, Spain. Once I find an Internet Cafe in Spain I'll post.

This entry is for Oleg:

Last Monday we started a two day course entitled "Legal Highlights of Business in Europe". It was taught by Pr. David Sprecher a lawyer from Israel. He explained to us that we were going to cover a good chunk of the material that he normally covers in a 30 hour, 3 week course. Oh Goody.

The classe began at 9am monday morning and we adjourned at 4:30pm the same day. We were granted two fifteen-twenty minute break plus one hour for lunch. The remainder of the time was him sitting in a chair lecturing us on how to find governmental funding in Europe and on other legal issue. The content was very interesting but it was incredibly crammed into a very tight class session. He explained to us that on Monday we were receiving a lecture but on tuesday we were going to be given a test, a 2-hour long test.

His manner of teaching was completely the opposite of what you would find in the States. He must very blunt, rude and told you exactly what he was feeling. Although many students (well, ok everyone except me) hated him, I found him refreshing and I learned a lot. Periodically he would ask a question of the class and if a student's answer was completely off the wall, off topic or just completely wrong he would tell you that you were wrong very bluntly. He also made it very very clear that everyone had to speak in the course to receive 30$ of the grade, when one student did not speak during the class he approached the student after class and said "Too bad for you that you didn't speak in class".

While some might find this harsh I found it an excellent teaching method. The next day that student did speak in class. Although I don't think that all teachers should be as rude, arrogant and mean as this teacher periodically its good to be pushed down and belittled by a teacher. Oh and by the way he hated several of my answers and loved a few of the others.

The test on tuesday was quite interesting. We were given very little information about our task only that we would work in 4 teams of 5 in a 1 on 1 negotiation. One of the teams would be a Belgian company and the other a Czech company. The size of the company, product, purpose, etc. would not be told to us until just before the test started. It was our job to pick a country of incorporation, a country of manufacture, state where funding will come from (which grants or private sources) add the legal issues for choosing each country. Most of us didn't leave Campus that night until at least 8:30pm or 9pm(computer labs closed at 9pm).

So far that has been our most intense class but the other classes are starting to pile on the homework.

It has been a while since we last spoke, how are you doing? I'm doing fine, school is keeping me pretty busy as usual, I have a list of callbacks that seems to be growing by the minute and my email inbox is full of people I haven't responded to. If you are one of those people, I apologize. Please understand how busy I am, way too much homework and Sundays are my only day of rest. I hope you understand it when I say that I'd rather be surfing on Sunday rather than sitting in front of my computer responding to a million emails. Surfing allows me to relax and I personally believe that it is something I need, one day of rest out of a hectic week.

Hmm, what have I been up to you, you ask. One Word, school. This term I am only working with the Surf Club, I have backed away from Beta Alpha Psi, the snowboard club (season's over), student politics, campus rec center and a plethora of other groups that I was involved in. I need the time to focus on my studies. Fortunately my lack of time hasn't hurt my G.P.A rather it has hurt the amount of sleep I get every night. This term has been pretty good so far. I am taking three classes; Financial Statement Analysis, Managment strategy and I started my business project. My busines project is quite fun. Fortune smiled upon our group and we were able to work with a great company on a very interesting project. Unfortunately we are all under a N.D.A so I can't tell you anything about it except that I am learning a LOT.

Summer Plans,

    Oh summer plans, summer plans. My have those changed. Originally I was heading to France for a month and then I was going to trip around Europe for another month. Nope, that ain't going to happen anymore. I am still going to France for a month to finish my studies but afterwards Jenson and I have decided to head west to Spain instead of tripping around Europe. I am going to spend one month in the town of Salamanca, Spain at a language school there. Each morning for four hours, five days out of the week I am going to be attending spanish courses. After classes we'll be heading out on field trips and exploring the town.

One of the weekend we are going to leave immediately after class and return late on monday (most likely skip classes that day). The destination: Portugal on surfing safari. I've begun the research and I have found a few good breaks that should provide some decent waves during that time of year. Summer isn't the best time for surfing in Portugal/Spain BUT some places still do go off and it is our quest to find those breaks and surf them. Well it's my quest at least. 

I am still returning from Europe on the same date, August 10th. I am going to kick back in Oregon and finish my business project until approximately August 27th and then I'm headingto Florida to visit my parents. I'm not sure on that exact date yet (it may be earlier). I will pin down that date pretty soon and let everyone know as soon as I do. I will be purchasing plane ticket(s) before I leave for Europe.

Welp, I better get back to my homework. Until another day.