This week has been NUTS. Okay, I know, I’ve said that plenty of times before. But seriously? This week? Insane. After a couple of months of planning (really, mostly taking place in the last 3 weeks) the ski trip is tomorrow. Man, I so totally, and typically, underestimated how much freaking work it would be. TONS of man hours. Add to that that this week was Consulting Week, meaning presentations from 5-7 every day (and wearing a suit, ich) and it makes for a full week. Let’s throw on top of that that I also had a mock interview today (in which I realized, yet again, just how much I DON’T know about what I want to do with my MBA), and that I’ve been fairly messed up about the whole smooching-a-classmate thing, and yeah, full freaking week. Oh, and let’s not forget, you know, school–marketing presentation, international taxation cases (for which I was totally useless, due to ski stress–sorry team!), various reading assignments… Whew! Today was another 12+ hour day, and I swear, I hardly had time to catch my breath. (Confrontation with aforementioned classmate did NOT make my day better…) I actually had to miss a Sustainability Project meeting today, and I see no way of getting to my Consulting Club meeting tomorrow–all thanks to the ski trip. Seriously, planning a ski trip for 128 people is a pretty big project. Fingers crossed that it actually snows a little, or we’re going to have a LOT of very, very drunk MBAs (because, let’s face it, there’s nothing else to do in Andorra). Oh, who am I kidding–there are going to be a LOT of very, very drunk MBAs no matter what I do. (Pictures next week, promise!) Anyway, the good news is, as stressed out and kind of terrible as this week has been, it’s also been kind of good. It feels good to be so involved, and have big projects to work on. Although, I think I need to seriously work on self control, because I am WAY too transparent and emotional when I get stressed out–nooooo poker face. Also, for future reference: it is an EXCELLENT policy to not smooch classmates, much less the classmate that sits directly behind me every single day. Man, that was a dumb idea. But this week, with the mix of school stuff, life stuff, and project stuff, I don’t know, I guess I started to feel like THIS is what b-school is really all about. Which is kind of cool, I think.
Some things I love about Barcelona January 28, 2008
More because I feel like I need to remind myself, than anything else… (It’s only Monday, and I’m already ready for weekend again. Of course, this is largely due to the fact that the much-anticipated ski trip is this weekend, and I’m equally as excited to go as I am to be done with the freaking planning process. Planning a ski trip for 126 people? Um, no picnic, my friends, nooooo picnic…) But I digress.
Things I LOVE in BCN:
The sunshine. Ooooh, how I love the sunshine here. Today it was 64 and sunny, and oh so mild! Reminds me WHY I moved here…
Living 2 blocks from the Mediterranean ain’t bad.
Whimsy. LOTS and lots of whimsy. And I care for whimsy a great deal.
Urban spelunking in the Barrio Gotico. My neighborhood feels pretty infinite sometimes, because I’m always finding the most random and delightful places tucked away in corners and alleyways.
My apartment. SO worth the 95 stairs I have to hike up every day to get to it. I would love it even if not for my fabulous Blue Lady mural, but she’s definitely a bonus.
My roommates. Raul and Jorge (soon to be Raul and Al–we’re swapping out one Dane and another one in, apparently) totally rock.
Having an extended excuse to sharpen my Spanish which, I feel compelled to oh so humbly admit, kicks a** at the moment.
Cava. Wine club. Friday night dinners. Cafe con leche. Gelatto. Tapas.
I’ve never appreciated a cheese burger so much in my life. And paella’s not bad, either.
Family Guy dubbed in Spanish? Still freaking funny.
Bars are open until 3am–awesome AND dangerous.
Jamon: when it’s good, it’s SOOOO good. (The contrary is also true, of course…)
Passeo de Gracia. Gaudi. El Borne. Santa Maria del Mar. Gracia.
Pyrotechnics and love of fuego (or “foc,” in Catalan) in general. We walked through a plaza in Gracia on Saturday night that had THREE large bonfires raging. Not clear on why, exactly, but it was still pretty cool.
The metro. It comes every 2 minutes in the morning, which is definitely nice for this habitually tardy girl.
Clementines from Valencia. (Or “mandarinas.”) I’m addicted.
The fact that I can (and have) give directions to my house based on the performers on the Rambla. (After the Michael Jackson impersonator, when you see the guy with the two small dogs and the hand-crank organ music maker thing, usually playing “Fever,” turn left.)
My awesome friends. (Duh. They’re pretty far down the list, but only because it’s so effing obvious.)
Proximity to the rest of Europe. There’s talk of Munich in April and Paris in May, and we know how much I LOVED the trip to London in December. Good times.
Mango and Zara, even if I can’t really afford to shop there more than once every few months.
The Irish bar by my house. A waitress there told me that I inspired her to enroll in business school. Awww!
Okay, I think that’s a pretty good list for now. And remarkably, I do feel better. Hm. But if I missed anything on the List of Great Things about BCN, feel free to add!!
Apparently b-school mostly freaks me out January 24, 2008
I’ve mentioned, many times, that my street is photogenic. And so it is! If you swing a left at the last lantern at the end, you’re at my apartment. Walk through the heavy wooden door, up four dirty, sketchy, dark flights of stairs, y voila! Mi casa! This picture was Saturday night (er, Sunday morning…) after a loud, rowdy dinner to celebrate a couple of birthdays. Good times. Yep, we’re all holding beers. It’s Spain, dude. I’m pretty sure it’s legal to walk around with open drinks at 3:30 in the morning, but even if it weren’t, well… it’s not really the kind of thing your average bored cop is going to care about. (As near as I can tell, law enforcement here mostly hangs out on street corners and waits for an excuse to hassle the punk kids who are generally loitering about. And until that happens, like I said, they mostly just look bored, and vaguely threatening. But not so threatening that they would take away my beer. Mostly just threatening to the punks who are loitering, I think.) Oh, and of course, these are my “hermanos” here, Christian on the left, Guille on the right. And if you’ll allow me to wax metaphoric (or dare I say downright cheesy) for a moment, I must say, this picture perfectly represents what they’ve been doing for me lately–that is to say, holding me up. Oh, and feeding me beers, of course. The thing is, ever since I got back from Christmas, I’ve been in varying states of FREAKING out. Any time anything touches the “what am I going to do with my life, what do I want my future to look like” nerve, I pretty much panic and freeze up and, yeah, generally freak out. Which pretty much means that, at the moment, just about everything freaks me out, because everything about being here is about my future. No exaggeration. What internship to look for, how my classes are going this term, how my classes went last term, the fact that one of my favorite people in the program got kicked out, how we’re having technical difficulties with the ski trip (too many people signed up–a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless), that I’ve been unmotivated and distracted, and, yeah, mostly just freaked the eff out–dude, even being freaked out freaks me out. It’s an awkward way to live, and people are starting to notice that I haven’t really been myself. Which makes me feel extra lucky for having such good friends, both here and across the pond (hurray, Skype!! hurray internet in my house! hurray good friends commenting on my blog!). Interestingly, I was commenting to a friend a few nights ago that, while my social life is pretty awesome, everything else is stressing me out. He shook his head and said, no, it’s impossible to have one part of life be good and everything else be terrible, because it’s all one. He explained that he sees life like a sudoku puzzle–you know, move one 4 in one of the squares, and it messes up the whole puzzle. It’s not enough to just finish one of the small squares, they all have to fit together. Good metaphor, right? And I’ve been thinking about what he said, and yeah, I have to say, I totally agree. I know that my panic will pass, but it sure sucks to be in such an uncomfortable place right now, and it sucks that even an overactive social life can’t compensate for everything else being out of place. I’ve even managed, in true Crystal form, to get myself totally twisted up romantically, too–but that seems to already be passing (not necessarily my choice, ahem, but probably all for the better anyway). Given that, as I’ve said, EVERYTHING freaks me out right now, it’s probably not the best time to start dating anyway, eh? Luckily, it’s almost weekend, and this weekend? Thankfully, there are no birthdays, and my homework load isn’t too much, so hopefully I’ll be able to just take it easy, apply for some internships, sleep a lot, and attempt to calm myself down. And, for the love of buddha, try NOT to freak out.
Good medicine January 20, 2008
I know my post yesterday may have had a somewhat despondent tone (and I was, indeed, feeling pretty morose), but guess what happened today that made my whole world look just a little better? I’ll give you a hint: besides mac ‘n’ cheese (which I still haven’t found here) what’s one of my all time favorite comfort foods? Yep, you got it: eggs benedict! So what happened? We found a place here, IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD!, that makes BRUNCH!!! Imagine my delight when I saw eggs benny on the menu! Because, obviously, it is a Universally Accepted Truth that hollandaise sauce makes everything better (it’s a fact–it’s science), and this place managed to create a pretty mean hollandaise sauce (a little heavy on the mustard, to be honest, but I was far too excited to care). They also make a killer banana berry smoothie, so yeah, I was a pretty happy girl–my favorite breakfast in the world AND a delicious smoothie were exactly what the doctor ordered. I’m pretty sure that this place is about to become a favorite hangout for Sunday afternoons. Seriously, I’m so excited. (If you feel like my excitement is a little exaggerated, well, you probably either don’t share my love of poached eggs drowned in fatty delicious hollandaise sauce, or you just don’t know of my propensity to get disproportionately excited about seemingly small things.)
Of course, nothing about this weekend was good for any of the half-hearted new year’s resolutions I made three weeks ago (you know–cut calories, go to the gym, drink less alcohol, be more studious, no boys, yadda yadda yadda), but man, after such a frustrating week at school, that breakfast this afternoon, and the various fun activities of the weekend, were like medicine for my soul. And I guess maybe this week I should think about getting on top of those resolutions. Or something.
Menos good… January 19, 2008
Well, it happened. Grades for last term came out. And pretty much, I’ve gotta say: ugh. Not only were my grades, on the whole, disappointing, but also, as I suspected, I failed Accounting. I more or less knew it, but it was still hard to see that “3″ staring at me from the “Contabilidad de Costes” line. The best news is that my Financial Analysis class (the one that I had SUCH a hard time with for most of the term) actually went really well. So that’s good. What’s NOT good is that I have now failed 2 courses in my short time in b-school, which, of course, totally validates all of my fears about truly belonging here. Also, I keep thinking this is FAR too expensive an endeavor to be failing classes. Suck. A fair amount of people will be repeating a class here and there, but I have yet to encounter anyone else who failed accounting. (Um, on the bright side, at least I wasn’t asked to leave, which was a relief.) Predictably, Dario and Arturo have offered to help me study, and maybe some more of their brilliance will rub off this time than it did last time. But of course, the low grades do absolutely nothing to help with my motivation, which was already in a post-vacation coma. My friend Jerome, who is in his 2nd year, warned me that motivation would be low this term, but man, he wasn’t kidding. This whole week has felt like running under water–really, really hard, and lots of resistance. At least I feel like my course load is manageable, for the most part. It’s going to be a LOT of reading, but some pretty interesting stuff, and nothing that makes me feel like I’ll obviously fail (ahem, yet).
In better news, it seems like the ski trip is going to be a RAGING success (I think we have close to 115 people coming, versus 60 who went last year–whoa). Also, we did Ben’s birthday dinner last night, which was great–Argentine steaks. SO good! Luckily, my pal Langdon was taking photos, because, let’s face it, I was WAY too excited about my steak to try to focus on taking photos.
Okay, I’m not going to name all of these people, but suffice it to say, it’s a pretty good cross section of the people I usually hang out with–mostly from the English section, except for Guille and Brian, who are front and center in the photo. (Brian is one of my heroes in the program, as he’s here with his wife and 2 young daughters. They sold their house in Chicago to move here for this adventure, which I happen to think is incredible, and more than a little bit inspirational. Plus, I love their kids, and have gotten to babysit for them a couple of times.)
So far, so good January 13, 2008
Oookay, I give–I DO like Barcelona, I DO like my school, and it IS good to be back. I got a couple of very good pieces of news this week which have made life look better: remember how I re-took my law exam? Well, I got my grade this week for the class, and it went from a 2 (ugh!) to a 9!!! I think I ended up with one of the best grades in the class!! Whew! Additionally, in a brief encounter with my Quantitative Models prof this week, he all but told me that I passed the class (by the skin of my teeth, but that’s how I figured it would be). So it just remains to be seen how I fared in Accounting–fingers crossed that I also scraped by in that class, but we shall see. I’m not all that optimistic, to be honest. But enough about school! How ’bout some pictures of some of my friends? (We went out for Cuban food Friday night, and then out for drinks after. I do love our Friday night ritual…)
Guillermo from Puerto Rico and Ben from Texas on the left, and then I think we all know the girl on the right, eh? Poor Ben was the only other English speaker in the group Friday night, but I’ve gotta say that kept up marvelously with all the Spanish. (I mean, everyone speaks English, but after a few drinks…? Not so much.) Oh, and my Spanish? I was worried that I would regress over the break, but have actually been able to just jump right back in, which is a total relief.
Look how much better looking Guille is when he’s not making a silly face! Anyway, on the left, that’s Guille, Diego from Chile (one of the funnier kids I’ve met here, and provides much needed comic relief in class), and moi. On the right, Mafer, wife of Dario who’s on her right, and Arturo (all from Mexico). Dario and Arturo helped me out a ton during accounting class, but I fear that even their brilliance won’t save me… (Not kidding about their brilliance though–they are some seriously sharp dudes.)
So tomorrow school starts f’real. The week-long Strategy course was pretty good, and my new group managed to get through all of the work relatively easily–whew! I think everyone was a little worried that they wouldn’t love their new teams, and it seems pretty clear that some teams will have more challenges than others, but I, for one, am PSYCHED about my group. We all got together to do work at Graciela’s house on Thursday night, and ended up finishing work and then just hanging out, drinking beers, and eating quesadillas. I think that’s a very good sign. (You can imagine my delight to have Graciela on my team, given that she’s already been a great friend so far this year. Oh, and she’s really sharp, and really good, and super sweet. And, being from Mexico, she’s already working on finding me a Mexican boyfriend. Hee. I’ll let y’all know how she does!) The rest of my team is comprised of 4 guys: one from Mexico, one from Colombia, one from Guatemala, and one from Spain–an excellent balance overall, I think. The guy from Guatemala, Christian, is already a buddy of mine, and has already invited everyone to visit in Guate. Having seen pictures of his houses (that’s right, plural), I’m definitely sold on the trip. When I’ll be able to afford it is anyone’s guess, but it definitely seems like a great idea to me.
Aaaaanyway, it’s Sunday afternoon, and I’ve promised myself that I’m going to do all kinds of stuff today (like clean my disaster of a bedroom, for one, and catch up on some other random to-dos), but so far all I’ve accomplished is eating a late breakfast and reading some Jane Austen. (Recreational reading: totally a hangover from vacation, and a habit I fear I’m going to have to drop again shortly, sadly.) Sooo, I guess I should go and do some stuff, or something, eh?
Back in the saddle again… January 8, 2008
I’ve had the Gene Autry song stuck in my head for a solid 24 hours–I guess my unconscious feels like I’m ready to get back in the saddle, eh? (Despite my feelings of apprehension and impending doom! For the whole of my last 24 hours in Portland, I could hardly say anything but “Don’t make me go back there! To the place where I feel fat and ugly and STUPID–NOOOOOOOO!!!” As we already know, I care a great deal for hyperbole, but you get my point.) Anyway, I’m back, and I’ve gotta say, so far, so good. Raul and Jorge were both excited to see me (and I them), it was super nice to sleep in my bed, we now have REAL internet in the apartment (not unpredictable stolen internet–which means, hurray!, free calls to the US! everybody Skype!), and it’s pretty great to see all of my peers again. I fear that this week is going to be intense (we have a one-week course on Strategy and Competition, and there’s even a final for it, on SATURDAY), but I’m excited to dig in with my new (awesome!) team, so at least there’s some fun to be had, right?
So, when I last wrote, I was in the middle of some serious terror. Finals were pretty freaking terrible, I have to say, and I’m pretty worried about how my accounting final went (that subject is the devil). By the time I got to the end of the week, I felt like I couldn’t possibly absorb any more information, any more Spanish, or any more school. So vacation arrived just in time. And it was AWESOME! We all know how much I LOVE Portland, and man, I’m more convinced than ever that that is a city where I want to live someday. (Maybe this summer? Let’s see what happens…)
Given that I got a camera for Christmas, how ’bout a (very incomplete) highlight reel, in pictures?
Yes, friends, that would be my beach house. Also know as My Very Favoritest Place Ever Created in the History of Man. 2008 is the Beach House’s 50th year in my family–whew!
