First Week of Orientation

Monday was a holiday and I was happy to have the day to (well) write at a coffee shop uninterrupted. I got a good six hours of the England saga in, kind of like wanting to be out of dirty clothes, I wanted that part 2 out of my head!

A woman sat across from me at the cafe and I noticed she was reading a packet with the IE logo on in. I asked her what intake she was from and she said the previous November. She asked if I’d already started and I told her my first day, the welcoming day in Segovia, was tomorrow. She threw out that last year everyone froze in the cathedral. No one was prepared for the unheated, stone church and she stressed to bring coats, gloves and scarves. I’m not getting sick.

Tuesday morning, Deepak, Kundan and I walked to the bus location. On our way there we ran into a few other classmates. We greeted the group and another friend Chris said that my face was clearing up. At first I thought I’d ranted to him at a party or something and I was so embarrassed. He said he'd read about it on my blog...awwww...air public grievances…

I feel like I’m still in the “pilot blog phase,” so I haven't intentionally advertised it, except obviously that it is a public site. Any number of things makes you conscientious of it: grammar rules, did I spell that right? is that going to hurt my employment potential? hurt someone's feelings? Nonetheless, to my classmates, I can't wait to go through these experiences with all of you and to those friends not in Spain, I hope you enjoy our stories.

The buses took us to the other IE campus in Segovia, over an hour from Madrid. And my seatmate Phillip informed me that he had been to Segovia for the first time recently y and to keep my eyes peeled for the ancient aqueducts. He warned me when we were getting close and wow were they a site to be seen. I don't know how many stories tall they are but they are impressive.

One more turn and we were at school. We got off the bus and walked down to a monastery. They had coffee and pastries for us as all the buses were arriving (10 plus or something). They gave each of us a pin of a flag of our country which was sort of a natural conversation starter, that, and what group number are you?

From 101102

Erin and Chris just before the talks.

We took a seat in the church-converted auditorium and Santiago Iñiguez, President of IE University gave the opening remarks. Next up, David Bach started off with a "really serious issue" and flashed a picture of the New York Times front page headliner the San Francisco Giants victory. He pulled out his black and orange SF baseball hat and if people weren’t laughing, they were cheering.

From 101102

A little piece of home so far away, thank God I got to a game before I left! Go Giants!

The next speakers informed us of our class demographics:
460 (?? checking this) students in the IMBA program (English and Spanish classes)
29% Latin America
27% Europe
12% North America

Professional Sectors
20% Financial Services
15% Consumer Goods
14% Consulting

Academic Backgrounds
34% Business
29% Engineering

From 101102

Lorne and Erin in front of the school sign in Segovia

The rest of the week we were in Madrid and we moved through a series of talks to get us orientated to the school, the curriculum and the country.

Wednesday afternoon we were given the list of our smaller teams. That night the school hosted a cocktail party for our class and not only was there a scavenger hunt ice breaker, but many spent the night trying to find/meet their team mates. They had a DJ and I guess there were a couple professors out on the dance floor rocking out, I’m sorry to have missed that. At midnight we celebrated the anniversary of Verity’s 21st birthday and a group converged on her and sang (yelled) the Happy Birthday song.

Thursday was rough for most of my class. In the first session that morning they asked teams to find each other and complete the first assignment in 45 minutes. The facilitator gave us instructions which started off with some getting to know each other questions. “What do all of you have in common?” One of my teammates said “hangovers?” Nope, nice try though. For our assignment we had to come up with a print ad campaign for IE that expressed the key topics IE school exemplified. I give props to my teammate Cagdas who was the creator behind our poster, an “ie Pad” a take on Apple’s iPad with applications that represented the key topics. Cagdas said I would present our poster, “You’re American’…I guess I take that as a compliment…In the first round of voting by the representatives we won the popular vote, but there was a panel of judges that thought we’d run into copyright issues. Way to take all the fun out it judges. The next assignment was to build a structure out of straws that housed and egg, would be dropped from some height and prevented the egg from breaking. Groups reconvened again for 45 minutes and we spent the bulk of that brainstorming what kind of structure we needed to build. Groups were able to reduce the height if you used less straws or answered a bonus question. Our group managed to have the tallest drop, which meant we’d be the last to present. My teammate Constanin took the lead highlighting our group’s “pyramid of egg-ccess.” He was amazing. He started off by responding to having the tallest drop. “There is a reason we are up here today, this is intentional…we will dare to go higher,” which he did by extending the height a matter of centimeters to the ceiling. He said the engineering behind our structure was so safe, that our team all agreed we’d put our babies in it. And then it was the moment of truth…from over 210 centimeters….no break!!

From 101103

Team A’s “iePad” campaign

Friday we were in class until 7:30 pm hearing about the case study structure of the program. Afterwards I ran over to a building on campus where my roommates and so many others were celebrating Diwali, a religious holiday known as the "festival of lights" that the Indian club had sponsored. Had to support the roommates! First week of orientations over, two more to go!