Enjoy the Break

Previously, I was planning to write a bit more about the program during the break, but actually its way more worth to write about British Columbia as place to visit. 

Let's start with Whistler where I stayed with some class mates for a couple of days after finishing the core. In the first night, we had 15cm of new fresh snow.... powder times on the slopes. Whistler is indeed a great skiing and snowboard area. We had a great time there not only but also because of the snow.

Saturday, Andrea arrived from Germany and it's now our third day together on Vancouver Island. After two days in lovely Victoria, we stay in a nice lodge in Sooke at the ocean close to Victoria currently. It's a great place to relax and enjoy good food. All you need after four month of extensive classes.

Actually, we arrived in Victoria by float plane, a unique experience I can highly recommend. The plane goes directly from Coal Harbour in Downtown Vancouver to the Inner Harbour of Victoria. You cannot describe only experience.

Tomorrow, we will go back to Vancouver, this time by ferry, to celebrate Christmas in Vancouver. My first time outside of Germany. 

  

me & the float plane

The parliament in Victoria @night

The Core is Over!

It's finally done. The second big step of the MBA is taken. The core is over. The last week was the appropriate finish of an intense time. Monday, we had to submit our last group report, a business plan about the implementation of a bakery retail chain in Vancouver - if you have a deja-vu about the German chains such as Baeckerei Kamps, Mueller or Wimmer - guess where the idea came from. Anyways, submission was 8:30 AM, we submitted 6:30 AM - after 21 hours non-stop working. Sounds like bad time management, and probably it was, but we were not alone: when we went to the copy shop we bumped into four other project groups. This alone was very funny. Apparently, 80% of all teams submitted sometime after 5AM.  

Yesterday, we had then the presentation of our business plan to the faculty and the other students. The grade is still pending, but we did well. I liked to work with my team mates Aliyah, Steve, Marco and Greg, an excellent team to work with. And after working for 21 hours in room I really need to say "thank you" to these guys!  

Now, at the end of the core I looking back with mixed feelings. It was a intense time with ups and downs. Ups like the project work, all the nice class mates and my improved english, but also downs as the academic content often did not fit to my expectations. Summarizing, it was a exciting time which I will never forget.

It remains the question, what's coming next. At the moment, it feels like a big hole, no assignments, exams, projects and pressure for the next three weeks. They call it holidays. So, a lot of time to do other exciting things. To use the time best, I will go skiing to Whistler next week and then Andrea will arrive in Vancouver.
I'll keep you posted.

the final days

December: time to shave again. My moustache is history now. Before, we had a last big picture of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:

Together we raised $4753, a considerable amount.

December is also: the core comes to an end. The final exam is already done. We did a company analysis about Ballard, a Vancouver based company who develop and manufactures fuel cells - semi-successfully at the moment. More successfully was my last case: I got 85% - by far my best case grade so far. Pretty nice to see, that's things work out finally.