Argentina

On the train back to Paris from London after spending the whole weekend with Julianne, Antonia, and Jack. The whole journey door to door is about 6 hours, so doable for a weekend and the train ride is comfortable. On Friday, all of us went to a work party at Julianne’s office in Shoreditch. The office is a converted apartment with everyone working in the living room. It had a very start-up feel as to host the party they had pushed all of their desks against the walls and set up a beer pong table in the middle. Everyone was casually dressed and Julianne was the only female employee. It ended up being really fun to meet Julianne’s colleagues and “bant” with Jack and Antonia. Bant is my word of the week and something Jack says all the time. It’s comes from the word banter as in have banter with friends, like when you’re drinking with friends and having a good time. We had a fairly early night as Jack had a rugby match the next day, Antonia had a date, and Julianne and I had to be out...

On Wednesday night last week I met my old French roommates from Buenos Aires for dinner in Paris (Axel & Alex). We went to an Argentinian steakhouse and had a great dinner conversing in Spanish. Axel now works importing/exporting French cheeses to Latin America and regularly works in Spanish and Portuguese. Alix works as a consultant in Paris and is getting married in the summer to a French man. Another girl named Julie who also studied abroad joined us as well and she actually married the Colombian roommate of one of the exchange students in Buenos Aires. So out of the 4 of us, 3 of us had our lives substantially shaped by the experience and became obsessed with Latin America. Alix, on the other hand, has never returned to Latin America after 8 years. Here's a picture from 2008 and now. Anyway, after dinner I caught the last train home and arrived at 11 pm to the train station in Fontainebleau. I looked at the bus schedule and realized that no buses ran after 10 pm...

It has been a little over a month since classes have started and I feel like I am in a routine now. Overall, I am pleased with the business education I received from the University of Washington, because so far nothing I have learned has been significantly different than what I learned 7 years ago in undergrad. The only difference is that the lecture is more discussion based and way more people ask questions and share experiences related to the material. Although I have tons of in class time, I do very little out of class studying and have yet to go to a single TA session since everything is review. This has meant that I have had more time to play soccer and basketball, go to the gym, and do career prep stuff. The weird thing about classes at INSEAD is that there is no fixed schedule. Any class can be on any day of the week at any time and it changes every week. I have no clue what is driving it. The good news is that they have an official calendar and all the class times automa...