I started into my Tulane-Semester early monday morning and it was a good decision to do it that way. As told before I had expected more work per credit hour but it took me just one day to find out why they call you a full-time MBA student for (just) 9 credit hours. I'm registered for 15 credit hours which sums up to 113 pages just of syllabuses. But at least it's clear to me now why most of the people here pay $20.000 per semester only for being here. Professors are excellent, all the courses are designed and held for just the right size of attendants and infrastructure is perfectly fitted to a student's needs. And, last not least, people really care about you here. But it's still a massive load of work. Any Questions why it took some time to write that blog entry? None? Good so. Second two inches.
We also had three international meetings which all had their specific highlights. The first one took place at the Freeman School of Business. All in all we didn't hear anything we hadn't heard at least three times before but I found out that there are 6 other Austrian students just at my department. After speeches were finished we left the room with at least one more hour of administrative paperwork to do. Orderly and brave I had filled out some online forms at the International Office the day before. That was really no good idea. Two more inches.
Columbia Business School and the Freeman School of Business are running a graduate exchange program that allows Columbian students to live and study here for the last two years of their studies. If performing well they finish with a double degree not only from the Columbia Business School but also from Tulane University. Why do I tell you that? Because the Columbian guys already had organized a party just for the new internationals on Tuesday and although I really didn't want to go there I decided not to miss that first international evening and showed up together with my roommate Charly. Over there I also found out, that Austrians seem to be the vast majority within the international exchange students at the Freeman Business School. 17 Columbians at that party, 12 Austrians, 2 Germans and around 10 more people from other countries. We ran out of beer at 10PM and out of other stuff at maybe 11PM. Thanks to Boot, the local 24/7 student-supply-shop this was no problem for us but I lost Charly on the way home. Fortunately he was already in when I came back to our apartment. That's the fourth couple of inches.
Why do I mention that this one time I lost Charly? That's because this was the only time when Charly himself got lost. Normally he loses things. Here's a little list of things we had to recover the last 9 days:
- keys
- jacket
- again keys
- his passport
- my Tulane campus map
- passport again (OK, he just forget to take it with him at his first attempt to leave the office but at least he tried to forget it once again)
- my New Orleans city map
On Friday there was one more international meeting. This time it was held by the people running the International Office and it was quite informative. I won a portable DVD player and for normal I would have to pronounce that as this evening's highlight. But there was really more: We had the great opportunity of getting in closer contact with the famous New Orleans cuisine when we were offered local specialites after the meeting: fried chicken, french fries, fried rice, some green salad and a piece of cake. It really wasn't bad but it's a little bit the same as with the beer here. Some kind of meaningless. Needless to say that that was not the highlight. The (mostly unnoticed) highlight of that evening was the local police-officer's lecture. I can't remember his full name but I'm pretty sure that it is somewhat like Pepper. Sheriff J.W. Pepper. I think that's it.
It was the next day for Charly and me to have a bicycle ride to Cox Cable, the local cable- and internet prividing company. It took us about 3 hours, we had a scary mile beside the freeway, I had a flat tire and Charly forgot his passport at the office. But all in all everything went pretty well and we had internet up and running from Friday to Monday morning. On Monday morning not only the internet connection wasn't working anymore but also the oven, the chargers, the water heater and central heat. In other words: We had no electricity on Martin Luther King's Day. As we found out later our landlord wants us to run the utilities in our own name but as it is really hard to understand their english speech we hadn't recognized that. The day was stressful and the night was really cold - 2 more inches - We made the best out of that situation and had a great Austrian evening with MaChlast, Wiener Schnitzel, parsley-penned potatoes, chicory-enhanced espresso and selfmade cookies.
Today was a great day. After the first course I got an email that there might be a possibility of getting an instrument, I got a free lunch from strange people grilling on the football field (unfortunately, one of Tulane's fraternities has my phone number now), and my bicycle eperienced a fantastic upgrade. Electricity is working, it's nearly 3AM and I want to sleep now. Finally, it's done.
Cheerio!
PS: I know i'm pretty late to contribute to The Days of Film and Beer. But I do my part.
PPS: Pics?
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ReplyDeleteSensational video. Congratz!
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