last month

Well, I kind of took a little break from blogging by accident.

But now I am back to chronicle. Unfortunately, my laptop has crashed and I am in the process of getting my data extracted from a fried hard drive....so no pictures just yet.

September and the first part of October saw me do the following

• Go to Vina Del Mar and Valparaiso with my friend Mariela. It is a city about an hour and a half west of Santiago, right on the ocean (first time I have seen the Pacific) and I spent most of the time walking around, looking at sights, hanging out at the sea, visiting a very cool place called LaSebastiana (the house and museum of famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda) and a few other things

• After this, a whirlwind trip to Europe ensued. I traveled to Heidelberg, Germany for 4 days to participate in a conference for Edinburgh University (the Bright Europe Conference). The conference brings together post-graduate students from 12 universities from across Europe, once a year, to discuss different political, economic and social issues that are currently facing the EU member countries. I saw 2 of my friends from Edinburgh at the conference -- Shahed and Anne -- and really enjoyed myself there. My contribution to the conference had to deal with growth problems....I really didn´t have much prior knowledge on this so was excited to learn at least a little bit about the subject. The town was very pretty. The conference was quite fun. All in all, a good time.

• I traveled to Budapest for work for about 11 days after the conference. Budapest is officially the farthest East I have been and the city is very old, very pretty, has an absolute ton of history (I only learned a little, however) and is very, very inexpensive. Quite cool. I spent a lot of my free time walking around (pretty easy to get around) and taking pictures. There is a castle district which is quite cool, and there is no shortage of fantastic looking buildings and enticing little coffee shops.

So now I am back in Chile, where it is officially Spring, and I am getting more into my work at NESsT. I am beginning a few projects, getting ready to start my dissertation and all in all liking the experience. I have played tennis a few times, on red clay nontheless, and that has been a small highlight. One of the people that I am staying with in Chile, Patricio, is the head of a tennis academy in Santiago and he allows me to play on the courts of his academy. It is quite cool. In the background are the snowy Andes mountains. I will post a picture when I get one.

It´s time for the real time job search, and that is what is up next on my plate. I would like to get around in Chile a little bit now that my Spanish is somewhat passable.

Until next time.

smoggy sunset

rearview mirror pic in my first chilean cab

friend stefan, from germany, snapping a shot from a cable car ride overlooking the city

kind of a crazy looking clown/mime about to tell me in spanish not to take pictures

barney loves chilenos, chilenos love barney, ellos son un familia feliz

new & old styles colliding downtown

my neck of the woods - called providencia

These are just a few more pics that I have of the city.

I am about to start my first full week of work tomorrow. Patricio, with whom I am staying, had a birthday this last week and it marked the family coming over, a few friends, much sweet food and a gaggle of mini-pizzas. Also, one of Patrice's friends, who did not speak much English, after about 3 hours at the party asked me if I liked tongue twisters. Who doesn't. He then proceeded to then rattle off the "wood chuck chucking wood" sentence with a fair amount of clarity. You just never know what's going to happen next.

Also, I played tennis today with a kid who Patricio knew (about 16 years old or so) and got it handed to me. But, I played on clay for the first time and that was pretty great. And it made my socks super dirty.

Spanish = slowly but surely.

Job search = begins......now.

Getting ready for conference in Germany = quickly approaching and I'm looking forward to it.

The song "Mushaboom" by Feist = my recent favorite.

All for now.

a few pics

friends greg and gutty at my favorite bar in madison, "the weary traveler"













an evening climb on arthur's seat














subway car and tree making friends in the santiago metro















directions on how to order in business class...whoa





















wine list in up front.....whoa















me upon landing in santiago......whoa

learning another language is hard

No getting around it. One week ago, exactly, I was sitting in my room thinking maybe I had it wrong all these years. Other languages are easy to pick up. Maybe I should start learning another one while I am still learning Spanish. Cocky thoughts. Fairly insane thoughts....because week 2 of Spanish brought with it something I was not expecting.

Other verb tenses.

I no longer am supposed to talk in the here and now. And it has thrown me for quite a loop. But the more I get into it, the more I think that it is doable, just with time and a lot of work. Right now it is kind of tough. My two favorite Spanish talking related stories to date are (in chronological order):

1. Someone was trying to help me with my Spanish by asking me easy questions, "How are you?" "What are you wearing today?" etc. So they came to the question of "Do you like the outdoors? and why?" What I meant to say was "Yes I do like the outdoors because of the pretty trees" but what came out was "Mountains are well because of tall grandmothers"

I thought this was right, kept saying it, sometimes louder, sometimes enunciated better, but I kept saying it. It was not right. Or really very close.

2. I found myself in a situation where I asked the following question in Spanish to an 88 year old Chilean woman, "Do you enjoy knitting wool hats for 200 yellow canaries?" I thought this was a hilarious turn of events, and she just calmly answered "No." Spanish is hard.

Other than butchering foreign languages, I have spent time getting ready for a conference I am going to in Germany in a month and getting around the city a bit more.

The downtown area of Santiago is very vibrant with a lot of shops, street performers, restaurants and local artisans selling their goods.

More pictures, less words.

Until next time.

first week in santiago de chile

I have been in Santiago for just over a week now. And here is kind of what has gone down, and how I got here.

I referenced in a picture that I got to sit in Business Class on my way from the US to Chile. This came about because my original flight out of St. Louis (connecting in Atlanta) was delayed...so I missed the conection to Santiago...so the airline put me up for the night in a hotel in Atlanta. Some would count this as an inconvenience, but in my case I will point out a few things that put me in a different camp

• I had absolutely nowhere to be
• I like free hotels
• I like free food (the airline gave me meal vouchers
• I love wierd stuff like this
• *I got upgraded to business class.......on a 9.5 hour flight

*denotes the absolute most important point, and one of the cooler things I have ever experienced

I have never flown business class before, and so I didn't really know what to expect other than it was an upgrade from coach. Maybe I am overstating it, but it was really more than I had hoped for. Champagne right when you sit down, more buttons on my chair/recliner/bed/workstation than I knew what to do with, 5 course meal, warm towels, someone trying to give you literally whatever it is you want, free drinks, 8 movie channels, little gifts (slipper socks, lotion, eye masks, ear plugs, some sort of spray thing, etc.) and the list goes on. I know people fly business all the time and people get used to all kinds of luxuries, but my long flight into a new country that was at least a little daunting turned into a real pleasant surprise that, if only a little, helped soften the landing into the unknown. So enough about the flight.

I believe I put that I stayed at a fantastic hostel -- for $18, you stay in a great place...we are talking 20 foot ceilings, a fantastic breakfast, free internet, free pool table, a bar, a tv room with cable, friendly people, etc. I palled around with 3 guys -- Stefan from Germany and Hernando & Raul from Venezuela. We walked the city for a day and all went on a cable car ride at the foot of the mountains to see some great views.

In the meantime, I had secured a place to live and figured out a language school to go to for the month of August. I am staying with a Chilean family composed of Kruskaya and Patricio, both in their early 50's. They have two daughters (who live elsewhere) and they rent out two rooms for extended periods of time. Kruskaya owns her own bakery/coffe shop (today she took me there and we ate empanadas, pizza and drank Coca-Cola) and Patricio runs a tennis club / academy in Santiago. They do not really speak English very much, but that is a little bit what I was looking for because I figure the two footed jump into a language was the quickest way to learn. So far, so good.

During the week, I am going to language school for 4 hours per day. It is a one on one tutor session and it usually leaves my brain fairly worn out. I had heard that it is exhausting to learn another language and, even though I am really just in the very beginning stages, I can see where this would be right.

Santiago is a city of 6 million, and I have not run into too many people that speak English. The city is more modern than I thought it would be. There is a subway (the metro) that is very new, clean, fast and reliable. I am staying in an apartment with heated floors. There are shopping malls with Brooks Brothers stores and TGI Friday's. But, I never walk down the street and forget that I am in a place very different than what I am used to. The hours are much different (see: later) than what I am used to with dinner regularly starting at 10pm or later. There is more poverty than I had previously been exposed to. There are lots and lots of people, period. And many other subtle differences such as customs, food, holidays, bank hours, etc.

I had heard that the hospitality in Latin America was fantastic, and my first week proved that to be true as there were random people off the street, speaking broken English, that could obviously tell I was lost or looking for something and they would try to help out however they could. A few gave me their contact phone numbers or email addresses (complete strangers just trying to be helpful) in case I needed anything since I did not really know anyone else in the city.

This week sees me trying to conjugate more and more verbs (past and present tenses are on their way), try to prepare for a conference coming up in September and see if I can't get to know the city a little bit.

Also, my friend Evan (who is over in Kuwait with the Navy) has started a blog in case anyone knows Evan and wants to check him out, or simply wants to see a man with a really, really bad moustache. It is www.big-iron.blogspot.com.

Until next time.

santiago - pretty big, andes mountains in back, smog in the middle














mi padre













pretty close to the neighborhood where i live in santiago
















santiago centro














ample leg room in BUSINESS CLASS.......story to follow in next post














mi madre y hermana

additions

I forgot to add a few things that I did while back home, and wanted to do so.

I got to see two beautiful, small, wrinkly children while I was home. Derek and Jill Johnson have a new son called Davis Stanley and he was 6 days old when I nervously held him. My friends up in Madison (who also let me stay with them while I was in town) Thomas and Katie Spelsberg have a 3.5 month old young lad called Tommy (aka Tommy Gun). Based on very little scientific fact, I have declared small Tommy pound-for-pound the strongest human on the earth. My hope is that he leverages this power into becoming a professional wrestler.

I also played softball while in KC (1 horrendous throwing error from 2nd base) got to catch up with my friend Matt Shatto -- he of Shatto Milk Company fame, saw a lot of family (both grandmas numerous times, my Aunt and Uncle in KC), got to hang out with my friend Erin from Salem who is now moving down to Dallas and I am sure other stuff.

Just a quick update because here at scottonthego, we run a tight ship and details are our best friends.

By the way, I am in Chile, at a very cool hostel (www.happyhousehostel.cl) and I think I have found the place that I will stay permanently. I will write about that soon -- in the "business", this is called a teaser.

Out.

whoops!!

I did not update this little guy in well over a month. That changes.......now.

So the last two months found me doing a fair bit of traveling, finishing up my school, securing my internship and seeing quite a few friends. It has been a good time. I finished up my last 2 classes, Mergers and Acquisitions and Doing Business in China and Japan, at the very beginning of June. They were my two favorite classes while at CBS and the M & A class got me especially excited about things. So after these were done, I had time to do a bit of traveling.

I started it off with a weeklong visit to Paris to see my friends Jay and Laura. We were talking on Sunday and they said, "I thought you said you were coming to Paris, you ought to come." Well, I called their bluff, and was there by Tuesday afternoon. I had heard of Springtime in Paris being fantastic, and I found out firsthand it really is. I had been to Paris about 5 years ago and for one reason or another I did not find it to be my favorite spot. That opinion changed with this trip. It was beautiful weather, both Jay and Laura speak some French so we could get around, and pretty much all we did was walk around, look at sights, stop in and eat at great places (there are so many outdoor cafes that I can not come up with a good way to describe it.....just think of a number and then add some. That is the only way I can think of right now), go to different bars, shop around and just really take it easy. I really, really enjoyed myself and am happy that I got to catch up with those two as well.

If I can figure out how to post videos, I will do that. I have a couple from Paris.

After this, I came back to Copenhagen for about a week or so. Since I was done with classes I had plenty of time to walk around the city, go to a few movies (the Squid and the Whale was pretty good) and hang out with a few friends. My friend Shell had some time off as well so we got to hang out which was great. I will now brag on Shell a little bit. She secured an internship where she will be working for a large, thriving company based in Iceland that is looking to expand into China. They have asked her to target 5 - 10 companies to acquire and to have her be a big part of their expansion plans in China. Great job Shell!!

Next starts a small phase where I did a bit of traveling. For my internship, which I will mention a little later, I will be in a Spanish speaking country. So, I decided that I would start the learning process a bit earlier by going to language school in Spain. My friends Justin and Pedro suggested that I go to a school in El Puerto de Santa Maria which is in the Southwest corner of Spain (close to Sevilla and Cadiz). It was quite fun. I flew in on a Sunday and was taken to a local family's house where I would stay for 6 days. Ivan and Anna turned out to be absolutely great. The thinking behind staying with a local family is that you get immersed in the language as they speak it while at home. This was the case most of the time, but because of my very minimal Spanish skills, we also talked in English some. We went to a few bars, to the beach and around town while I was there.

The school was nice as well. Once I stepped foot in the school, English was strictly forbidden so I spent a lot of time making strange gestures and string together caveman-like sentences to get my points across. Rocio and Maria were my teachers and they were great and put up with me so I am very grateful to have had them.

After this was a whirlwind trip up to Oslo, Norway to see my long-time friend from Salem, Ben Sachs. Ben is doing some work up in Oslo and it worked out where I could go and visit him. I really like Oslo. It was clean, pretty, sunny (the sun sets...kind of....at about 2:00 am and then comes up at roughtly 2:26 am) and E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E. Burger and a beer = $30 easy. Even though the pocketbook was hit a bit hard, it was well worth it. Ben and I went down to the harbor area (I ended up taking a boat trip around Oslo), watched England beat Ecuador in the World Cup at a huge outdoor TV screen / beer garden place, went to a huge park with sculptures by a famous guy I believe called Munch, and other things. It was good to see hang out there and see Ben.

After Oslo it was Edinburgh for a week to tie up some loose ends around town and to see some friends. I have become adept to paying for housing when not actually living there, and this trait came in handy during my Edinburgh trip because I still had an apartment available to me! It was good to be back to see friends, watch some football, go to a few parties, walk around town and just soak in the city. Hamutal let me crash at her new flat for a few days (as it were, my apartment lease ended during my trip..wierd!) and she lives in a lovely place near Morningside. I did some walking around, movie watching (Thank You For Smoking was great) and then it was back to the US for a month.

July 4th was my arrival date and my family was there to meet me at the airport! From here, it was a few days in St. Louis with Num and Justin, back down to Salem for a float trip !!!!!! on my birthday weekend which saw college friends Todd, Matt and Chrissy come down (along with friends from Salem the Holders, Ben Bradley, Jay Keeney and his girlfriend Shelly, the Gassons and a few others). People poked fun at my choice of beverage on the float trip, a football was thrown around a lot, I tipped 3 times, I lost a pair of sunglasses (they were Chrissy's), Todd fell down in front of a Park Ranger and blamed it on everyone else, and other fun stuff ensued.

The next couple of weeks saw me travel to Jefferson City to see my friend Katie Watts, Kansas City to hang out for a few days with old college friends, St. Louis for longtime friend Amber Gott's wedding, Madison, Wisconsin to check on another dwelling which I pay for but do not live in (my condo, which thankfully is rented out) and to see a few friends, and then back down to Salem to spend the rest of my time with my family. My pal Jody Farthing came down for a weekend also which was filled with golf and much debate on how quickly it takes to go from a 22 handicap to a 6 handicap, from two people that have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

Now, I am headed to Santiago, Chile. And I mean right now. I am in a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia as I type because my flight was delayed and I had to spend the night down here. I am headed to Chile to do an internship that will fill my last requirement of my MBA at Edinburgh. I am working for a company called NESsT (www.nesst.org) that is a small consulting firm helping non-profits create a little money for themselves so they don't always have to rely on handouts and grants. That is what I think they do, anyway. It is my first time working with anything related to the non-profit sector so I am excited about the possibility to learn about something absolutely new to me. I got hooked up with the company from an Alum of the Edinburgh MBA program called Gonzalo San Martin. I am headed down for a month of language school (as my espanol es no muy bueno) and then 6 months with the internship. From the internship, I will also write a dissertation (much like a thesis paper) and then I will have my International MBA!!!

I am just hours away from heading to my 3rd continent, 16th country by my count, and a place probably unlike anything I have come across just yet. I do want to document that I really feel do feel fortunate for these neat things that I am getting to do and I'm doing my best to keep that in perspective and keep the "taking for grantedness" to a minimum.

All right. The airport calls, and I must answer!

Looks for updates more frequently! Until next time.

classwork, breweries and the beast

Before I talk about the last week or so, I have been thinking about some of the things that I have noticed about Denmark that are different than anywhere else I have lived. Here is a quick list:

• Everyone rides a bike. The city is completely flat and if you go to any public place (train station, school, bar, restaurant, etc.) you will always see numerous bikes all over the place
• Bathrooms are unisex. Yep. You walk into a bathroom (sans urinal) and there are usually 3 or 4 doors to stalls and it could be Bill or Lisa that walks out. No telling.
• Exits are not marked very well. I have apparantly gotten very used to large green exit signs (with a little guy running on them) and the lack of the obvious markers has thrown me for numerous loops. I have, while trying to leave a room, accidentally gone into bathrooms, closets, classrooms and one time a cinema. I miss the green signs. (current time is about 2 minutes after I just wrote this part, and I told my friend Shell how I think that exits are poorly marked, and she told me that they are marked extremely well, they are just in Danish. The word is Udgang. I am simple)
• When bar tenders poor a beer, they leave about 2 inches free at the top (a little for foam and just a little space so they don't spill I guess).

There are probably more, but none come to mind right now.

So last week I had off from school and one of my pals from Edinburgh, Evan Green, came to visit Copenhagen for a few days. He flew into town Tuesday and Shell and I met him out at the train station for a "welcome" beer at a sports bar called O' Leary's. Shell had to bid us farewell for the evening, so Evan and I ended up going to a very strange Mexican restaurant. We ordered some nachos as an appetizer and then a main meal. When the nachos came, there actually were 2 plates of nachos. When we asked the waiter about this, he said that he thought we looked hungry and that one nacho would not be enough for us. We thought that it was awfully nice of him to give us a free nacho, until we found out that we had to pay for it. After we found this out, Evan jumped up, tipped the table over and spilled everything on the couple sitting next to us as he yelled at the waiter. Actually, that last part did not happen, but I think it would have been funny. We ended up not paying for the extra nachos.

On Wednesday Evan and I went around the town and first off saw a huge demonstration that was focused on the government and how they were making education more expensive for students and how pensions would be decreased. Or something like this. We walked along the water and saw the new Opera house, Hans Christen Anderson's Little Mermaid statue, and a few other parts of town. The night was capped off by Shell making an authentic Chinese meal (hong shao rou = pork, rice, potato, cool spice). It was quite tasty.

Thursday was the day Evan, Shell and I toured the Carlsberg brewery. It was raining, and it is a brewery, so we thought why not? The brewery was pretty impressive, and the Danish have a long history in the suds. They also had some free samples at the end, and I will say, one of the coffe/chocolate flavored beers was quite good.

A seperate paragraph is needed for this part of Evan's visit. The subject: hot dogs. I have not put down how cool hot dogs are in Denmark, but let me try to paint a picture. Think of a pig in a blanket, make it about 3 times larger, and then instead of having the pig in the blanket, put it in a sleeping bag. A small, toasted sleeping bag of goodness. To make matters much, much better, there are hot dog vendors all over the place in the city. It did not take me long to figure out how great this was, and Evan was on board with hot dogs from the start. Lunch....hot dogs. A mid-day snack, how about a dog? After going to the bar, why not cap the night off with some processed meat in a bun? We could not get enough of them. To recap, I enjoy hot dogs. And so does Evan.

Thursday night was spent at a bar (located in the business school) called Nexus, then off to a bar called Out of Juice (where you get to roll dice on thursdays and if it comes up 6, your drinks are free) and then off to a club late. It was quite a good time. Evan was off on Friday early and I slept and then caught a matinee of The Da Vinci Code. Not my favorite all time movie, but it was entertaining in a lot of parts. It has been fairly well documented, but it is nonetheless true that Tom Hanks' hair was a distraction. Odd.

This week has seen me in my last 2 classes in Copenhagen (M & A and Business in Asia). Both have been really interesting, especially the M & A class. They have structured this class where different professionals will come in and talk about each process of a merger or acquisition, usually the process in which they are an expert.

Next up, tests and papers for these classes, more work on internships, figuring out my next few months, a bit of travel probably on the way and who knows. Pictures above.

pictures update

in front of a cathedral in lundt, sweden



















shell in a large park in copenhagen














beautiful spring day in copenhagen















sunset in the park















shell at the open air musem in lundt, sweden














FCK (white on the right) and Brøndby (dark on the left) at a Sunday football match















at the open air museum














me feeding danish ducks















snapping pictures in sweden


















at an outdoor cafe by the park, looking like i am trying to whistle

more of copenhagen

The last few weeks have been filled with group work, and lots of it. The second one-week class that I have been taking is Managing Communication and Political Processes. I do not know what that title means, but what the class talked about was how a company tells everyone (customers, investors, government, etc.) what they are all about. What methods they use, what mediums, etc. It also has to do with Corporate and Social Responsibility and how this aspect of business is now becoming important. It was a fairly interesting class, as I had very little prior knowledge on the subject. And speaking of no prior knowledge, my next two classes (starting on May 22nd) will be 1) Doing business in China and Japan and 2) Mergers and Acquisitions. They will be in the same, intensive format. I am particularly interested in the business in Asia class as that seems like it will be fairly relevant for the better part of my life.

So groupwork. In both classes I have had small groups (3 in one class, 5 in the other) and our grade is solely determined on group projects. That said, everyone is fairly keen on doing whatever they can to get a good grade. As I wrote in a prior email to my friend Beth, it seems to me that when otherwise normal people get put into small groups and are told to do a project, they all go completely crazy (me included). Discussing and laboring on about fairly small points, that will have no real impact on our grade, seems to be our particular specialty. If this were a club, sometimes I feel as if I would be the president. At times it is fairly comical, especially when there is a miscommunication. That said, everyone in my small groups are nice people and are bright and articulate, there is just something about small groups with people who have strong opinions that bring on situations that will be nothing if not memorable.

As a side note (and not a super relevant one at that), there is a phrase that I think about almost every day when we are meeting in our groups and have no intention of using, but can not help but think someone in some group somewhere should use.

In my little daydream scenario, after furiously driving home a point that is not liked by the other members of the group, but is obviously so good and profound that it must be used, the person simply breaks the following news to them while making intense eye contact:

"That's why it's not called showfriends, group,........... that is why it is called showbusiness."

Perhaps it is lapses in paying attention, just like this, that cause some of the miscommunications stated above.

On with more stuff I actually have been doing.

The weather has been really great the past 2 weeks and I have tried to take advantage of it and get out and see some of the city. I went to the National Museum in Copenhagen with my friend Shell and 3 of her friends to see some Danish artwork. Also, there was an exhibit by Rembrandt there which was cool only for the fact that he is an artist that I have heard of.

I also visited 2 museums on modern art (one in Louisiana, Denmark and one in Lundt, Sweden) and they were really very cool. I did not know what to expect from modern art as the only galleries I had ever been up to that point had fairly old paintings, sculptures, exhibits, etc. In them. I really found I liked them and had a good time in both. Denmark is known for its design, and this really was on display in almost everything in these museums (including the actual museum itself).

I also went to a local football match between two teams, FC København and Brøndby, that have a long history. I went to the stadium and bought a ticket outside and had a good time listening to the fans sing constantly for the entire time I was at the stadium. They were cheering and chanting and supporting their side, and I had no idea what they were talking about because it was all iDanishsh.

I have also spent a lot of time looking for internships, researching dissertation topics, planning a few trips and watching movies. I do not have a TV so movies have been a big source of my entertainment.

This next week sees one of my friends from Edinburgh, Evan, come into town for a few days and I will be getting ready for my upcoming classes. Here are some pictures from the past couple of weeks. My computer is not working right now so I do not have access to a lot of the museum pics, but I will try to put up a couple of interesting ones when I get back up and going.

I also have a beard again.

copenhagen, swansea & london

I live in Denmark.

This has been the case for about 4 weeks now, and I am back and going again with school. Through my program at Edinburgh, I do an exchange with another business school (we have 8 from which to choose) and I chose to come to Copenhagen. I knew little about the city except for it was in Scandinavia, I heard it was clean, people were apparently good looking, and they had a well thought of business school. Most of those things have turned out to be true, and here are a few more things that I have learned since coming (in no particular order):

The city is beautiful. If I knew more about architecture, I wouldn't be reduced to describe it "the pretty building city", but alas.

People speak wonderful English here, but there is not much written English so this makes getting around more difficult than I thought.

Danish is (for me) a very difficult language to understand. And by understand, I do not mean that I am learning the language, I mean that I can not pronounce words or understand what people are saying. Analogy: Please : English as Vil du være så venlig at : Danish

It has gotten better, but a linguist I am not. As wild as it may seem, I am considered the one with the exotic accent.

They have amazing baked good here. I felt compelled to capture this on film.

pastries

More to come later, but those are a few.

So far my class has been nice as well. I will be here for approximately 3 months taking electives at Copenhagen Business School. My class size is a bit smaller (about 35) and the structure of the courses are different. They are intense one week classes that run from 9-5 for 5 days. Right now I am in Change Management and we will have 5 days of only Change Management and then will be tested on the subject matter. I have liked this so far because it allows me to only focus on one thing and put all of my energy into it. Being spread a little thin is a murmur you might hear from some students so this does help with that.

Here are a few pictures of the city.

downtown

colorful house close to christiana

the no cars shopping district

me at christiania - a place with literally no rules

As I had posted earlier, I played on a team from Scotland that had a tournament over the week of April 10th. It was a good time and was fairly cool for me to be flying into a city to play basketball. This, however, is where thextravagancece stopped. It was a lot of late nights in the dorm room / much cafeteria food / pints at the student pub / washing our own clothes type of atmosphere for the 4 days.

We played Northern Ireland in the first game and won by 15.

Secondly, we played against the host team from Wales and gave them a Scottiswallopingng of 36 points.

The last game (and, as many people told me, always the most important) was played against the English. Since its inception in 1993, the British University Games (what I was playing in) has always been won by England in Men's Basketball. Well I just have one thing to say to those English guys that thought they could waltz right and beat the boys from up north...

Good game.

We got 2nd place.

To chronicle this event as accurately as possible, I must disclose that yours truly was humbled a bit by his playing time. "A spark off the bench" is what I like to think of myself as. Unfortunately, sometimes the coach just thought of me as "that guy who looks in place on the bench." We had a good coach, by the name of Iain MaClean, that did get all of the guys very motivated. He is somewhat of a Scottish basketball legend.

Here are a few fairly poor pictures of my time there.

the team

the gym

me getting acupuncture on my (very curvey) foot

me and mike (the other american on the team) after a win over wales

callum stewart - our center, and possibly part of the tallest twin duo in scotland - six foot 8 - in a women's netball uniform.

I capped off my time back in the UK by visiting my friend Anthony in London. Anthony, his wife Maxine, two small daughters Mackenzie (2) and Emerson (1), and I enjoyed a couple of beautiful days in London going to few favorite pubs and restaurants of Anthony and Max (which included The Roundhouse in Covent Garden), seeing some sights, and watching a fair amount of a guy called Captain Feathersword from the Wiggles. I didn't know who this guy was, but here is a bit about him from the Wiggles website:

"Captain Feathersword is a friendly pirate who has a feather for a sword, which he uses to tickle everyone. He is a jovial character that loves to cook, dance and sing with his crew on his sailing ship "The Good Ship Feathersword."

Sounds like a heck of a guy

Well, if that doesn't make you never come back here again, I don't know what will.

Here are a few pictures from London.

sunny day in london

anthony, emerson (colorful beret) and mackenzie (with shades) at a market

london eye

fresh fruit and veg

a look at london from just south of the thames

captain feathersword

pics of edinburgh friends

Here, in no particular order, are some pictures of some of the friends I have made in Edinburgh. I wanted to get some of them up before I moved on to my Copenhagen post.

I will try to name names and specify countries. I can only guarantee on thing.....I will misspell names.

Hope you like them





jim (us) talking about football to anthony (canadian/irish/hong kong mut) and ian (scotland) at shadi's party










ian and shadi (uk via iran)




















ben (us) and ana (mexico)














brian (us) and anthony biking in the mud













me and my beard trying to make madhu (india) laugh













hamutal (israel) sidling up to the villager bar - one of our favorite haunts

















teambuilding exercise at a weekend in the highlands with trish (ireland) adrian the thunderfoot (ireland) anerban (india) annabell (germany) summit (india) shahed (bangladesh) matt (us) and me
















this is in the common room of my flat with pei (china), mei (china) and zoey (china)













a family friday dinner with merle and romy (both from south africa)













a party at ana and shalu's place with jay (canada) sporting an afro wig -- as you do -- and martin (england) wearing a cool hat....a reason for dance if ever there was one













more dancing led by summit













stretching before thursday football with justin (us) anthony and makis (greece) and an unknown leg













summit (india) and mariela (costa rica) surveying the scene at the opal lounge dance club












the finance guys trying to figure out something led by jay, jim (us) anthony and evan (canada)












anne (holland) dancing with rania (egypt) at the opal lounge on the last night in town












hiro (japan), shell (china and also in my exchange in copenhagen), annabell, saify (india), helga (iceland) and marc (spain) mugging at shadi's shindig












me and ian showing pearly whites


















nadia (barbados), aneela (trinidad), rania and brian somewhere doing something probably












anthony and laura (scotland) at one of shadi's many parties


















shadhed in the coolest t-shirt i have seen in a long time


















jay and marieke (holland) dancing at pivo bar


















justin and nick (england) drinking beer














machiko (japan), girgios and laura (us) all wearing red shirts









Hooray for friends!