Florian Hollender | floho.com

Now this is what I call a successfull Monday. We started off at 10am, but not to go to the classroom - oh no! We don’t have classes on Mondays! We had a little To-Do-List and worked it all down. There was an issue with two courses that we could not elect - Carolyn, our Advisor at Moore School, resolved them immediateley. Now we are enrolled in that fancy wednesday-evening class, which actually is part of the Executive-MBA curriculum. NICE. We strolled through the different bookstores to see where the readings for the classes (we have to buy the books) were cheapest. Well, they are cheap nowhere, but at least we could buy one book for 75 Dollars which costs over 100 new. Now I spent over 200 Dollars just on Books, and there are minimum 100 Dollars more to come for another reader. I did not realize how lucky I was at IPADE in Mexico - from there I have folders full of Harvard-Cases, here I have to pay 75 Dollars for 13 of them. That’s outrageous! Sorry dad…. that’s really not my fault! Then we went and ordererd our TV and Internet. That’s pretty cheap, for the first three months we only pay 70 Dollars in total, but we had to make a 150 Dollars deposit for “security”, because we don’t have Social Security Numbers and therefore cannot be trusted at all. Sure… Michael bought himself a US-Card for his mobile phone, and in the end we wanted to get in the queue to get some free tickets for the football-match at September 1st… but well, what can I say - people lined up for at least 200 meters. No kidding - those who came in first at 7:30 still waited two hours. The weather was really getting bad by then, so we decided there must be another way to get some tickets. We have not found one yet, but maybe we’ll just buy some for gods sake and get around all the waiting. I am really eager to go to that match, though: Yesterday when we made a little walk in our area we came across the field where the marching band, the cheerleaders, the girls with the flags (how do you call them again?) and others were rehearsing for the show for the match. That was really impressive. I think at WHU there are not even enough students to get together such a croud, let alone so many talented people. It was amazing to see this huge crowd moving in exact sychronization to the music, following their individual paths on the field - while playing music, dancing, throwing the flags around, and so on. I am really looking forward to seeing them in the stadium - that must be great. Today I also finally got to talk to Christine for a bit longer, and that was the best thing of the day. The day was good, but talking to her after some days of “only” emails, it was just fantastic, and I think we made the most of this half an hour. She enjoys herself down there in Buenos Aires and has a really good time - already learned more Spanish in one week than I did in a month I guess, she’s just a natural at so many things - it seems like everything comes together just fine for her, and that makes me happy. Of course I am afraid that her having seen the world championship of Tango dancing from the first row might put me under some pressure to learn that dance - but I could make clear that what I cannot do I do not like, and that I therefore pretty much hate Tango, guys who can dance Tango and the whole Tango-Bango-Wango-Thing and refuse for now and forever to like the music, like the dancing or even engange in it. I was soooo serious about it, but you should have heard Tine’s laughter Well, we agreed on less Tango and more Situps - which is an Insider that you don’t understand, and that’s fine. With me. And Tine. Having all these expensive books now puts me under some pressure to read them…. well, yeah, I will actually. I plan to do so. Most of the stuff is pretty interesting - regarding the cover art - and maybe it will be some fun. Has to be more fun that most of the reading I did at WHU, but that is no big deal to achieve. I hope you all are doing just fine wherever you are - Tine and I are having a great time on two continents (but nearly the same timezone, which makes life considerably easier), and I wish for all of you to be just as happy as we are. See you tomorrow!