Exam Week

This past week has not the most interesting in terms of getting out, well, much at all. As such, the beautiful picture of the week is the view of the large church in the town square from my apartment. Since I haven't been able to get out much, until today, I decided it was an appropriate photo.

I spent last week scrambling to get all of my papers and projects together (successfully!) and this week studying, studying, studying and then taking exams. The process of taking exams feels unnatural here. Instead of waking up like normal and going to my campus to take exams, I woke up, rode my bike 15 minutes away from campus, and took my exams in a large convention center with 1,000 other students. I thought that was very strange considering my largest class so far has had 14 students, but either way, I made it through them.

Either way, I feel confident that I have passed all of my exams and can prepare for my next visitors, my parents and uncle! They will arrive tomorrow, my mom's first time out of North America. I think they will greatly enjoy it. For the moment, I need to get outside, ride my bike, and breath in the fact that for the next few days, I have no schoolwork.

Busy week!

Sorry for a late post.. The past few weeks have been incredibly busy: I am getting closer to exam week (October 25) which means I have papers, projects, exams, and presentations... Even though it's busy, it's been informative! But, even though I've been busy with school I have had a lot of other action going on as well: I had visitors a week and a half ago. My aunt and cousin from back home came to visit! They were here to celebrate my birthday with me as well as show me around Paris a little bit. I have also been able to meet more Rotarians through our District 1550 meeting in Eindhoven on October 9 as well.
The meeting in Eindhoven was beneficial. Amy Henslin, the other Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in District 1550 and I drove up to Eindhoven at about 7:30 AM on Saturday. We arrived in Eindhoven about an hour later and met with District Governor Frank Van Der Meijden as well as different Rotarians. Even though all of the presentations were in Dutch, we were able to learn more about Polioplus, JobRotary (A Dutch Rotary Foundation Initiative) and the future of media. While this was informative and interesting, the most beneficial part of the day was the relationships we've formed with local Rotarians and the meetings we have set up for future presentations.

Aside from that, Paris was wonderful. I was only there for about 30 hours (because I left after class and returned before class) but I was able to see the Centre Pompidou, La Panthenon, La Louvre, Notre Dame, La Tour Eiffel (of course!) and spend some time enjoying the wonderful French cuisine. On top of that, it was wonderful to have family around with whom I could share the experience! Despite all of the Safety Warnings about traveling in Europe, I have felt no problems or unsafe in any way at any time.

Today I was able to "teach" the class on Ethics. It was pretty interesting as we discussed mostly American firms that had been implicated in unethical business practices. We talked about Enron (I mentioned that Ken Lay came from Mizzou, but also reminded them that this had nothing to do US business schools fostering unethical behavior), and also the fact that unethical behavior is not an American phenomenon, it just is more widely reported. I think it went well and the class was able to have a great discussion.

As for now, I need continue preparing for exams. Luckily, the weather is still holding up, so I can take a nice bike ride when I need a break!