BARCELONA TRIP - DAY FOUR

Date: Thursday; March 13, 2008

Time: 8:30PM

Where: Scheduled Business Meetings

Overslept a little but woke up on time to get some breakfast and catch up with the others. First stop today - ESEI Business School. We had to take a train ride to that part of town. My first train ride, woohoo! Well actually I found out later that this was the Metro, my first train ride comes later during the trip. Anyway, the Metro ride wasn't anything spectacular but I guess it was nice to be underground for once. Took us a while to locate the school but oh weel, I can say it was worth the walk. Got a nice welcome from the owner of the school, then there was his son, and Karen. Nice lot of people! It was absolutely wonderful to hear from the three American students who were there on an exchange program from California, Washington State University, and Seattle. I need to think about this option seriously soon. Well, I thought Jonathan Hayes', our guest speaker, presentation on healthcare issues was very insightful although he claimed he wasn't an expert in that area. My 'whoa' moment was when we were told how intense people were trained for the healthcare field, precisely 11 years!, and yet weren't getting paid much. Kpssshhh not here, I'll tell ya that much.

Then we finally went downstairs to the patio. There were drinks and all sorts of food for us - very nice. The patio was very beautiful and it was really nice to just stand there and talk to different people. My conversation with Mr. Hayes made me realize that moving here wasn't or shouldn't be all there is to my learning process; it's okay to keep my options open to all locations in the world. I made sure I got lots of pictures hehehe, so far I had been doing okay with taking pictures. Next, I introduced myself to three ladies (in our group) who who in turn introduced themselves as Arlene, Angela, and Helen. Arlene and Helen just enrolled into the program and Angela is their mom who tagged along. Great ladies! We hit it off immediately; we talked about everything from education to graduation to finding jobs to marriage (lol on that one, hilarious!). We even talked about piercings and tattoos!!! And then I asked if they were already in a group for the scrapbook project. I almost couldn't believe it when they told me "NO". Everyone I have asked has told me they were already in a group and I was starting to get worried. Anyway right there and then our group was formed and I couldn't have been more happier. We talked some more, with one other guy pitching in once a while, and then we threw out some ideas for our project and became comfortable. It was time to leave.

*ESEI School* *Food display on patio*

*Mr. Jonathan Hayes* *Sour orange tree*


*Owner of ESEI*