Life@CIMBA
Arrival
After ‘graduating’ the LIFE program
The sunrise as we flew into London
The sun sets, the other dorm building
Taking it all in
Modern AND convenient
Last week I had the opportunity to go to a University of Iowa Professor’s apartment who’s teaching here along with 3 other Iowa students for dinner. It was definitely one of my favorite nights here so far. Just being able to get off the campus and hang out was such a nice break. It’s really great that we are able to get to know our professors so much more here. Classes have begun to pick up and we are now on a regular schedule. The realization has set in that I’m going to have to work very hard on school during the week in order to travel to all the places I want to go on the weekends.
After a 7 hour bus ride through the night, we arrived at the Balmers Hostel in Interlaken, Switzerland at 2 am. Just enough time to sneak in a night-cap soda at the hostel bar The manager, Marcus, was really cool with us and very accomodating. Kupe and I transported our bikes on the bus, and he even let us bring them into the room. The Balmers Hstel is rated the #1 hostel in Europe, and for good reason.
Me with some locals - Interlaken, Switzerland
After a day of Canyoning - Interlaken, Switzerland
The same team of students who went through the LIFE program together experienced what’s called the Da Vinci Challenge. It was awesome! We reviewed problem solving and decision making skills which we learned through Kepner-Tregoe by putting them into action. We were broken into three teams, and had a full day of mental and physical challenges on the low ropes course here on campus. First up for our team was “The Wall”, which is similar to the obstacles used in military training. Our objective was to get every member of the team over the wall as quickly (and safely) as possible.
Hello to all back in the States!
This is my first blog entry and before I get started I would like to let my audience what to expect. First, I would fully expect many grammatical and spelling errors during the duration of the blog, but I will do my best to avoid them. Second, I will make my blogs as humorous or as serious as need be. However, I tend to do things on the humorous side haha! So to start I will walk you through from pre-departure to now, which is September 11, 2009.
Per-Departure
This week was intense in many ways. We had 2 days of normal classes and a 2.5 day program called LIFE (Leadership Initiative For Excellence). LIFE was definitely full of emotional and mental stimulation. For the sake of confidentiality, I won’t go into details about the activities in LIFE. There was a lot of laughter, some tears, and periods of action and reflection. Everyone was exhausted by the end , but I can tell you it was life-changing experience. The benefits of LIFE made it all worth it.
