St. Petersburg- Day 5

Julie,

Today hasn't been anything too exciting, but overall its been a good day. The morning started out with the Career Management Center doing a case discussion so class started an hour later than usual. That was nice because it gave me some time to sit down and do some studying for accounting and operations that I had put off.

Both classes also went really well. First we had accounting, then lunch, and then operations. Operations tended to feel like it was dragging on quite a bit, but that was more due to the fact that it was the afternoon class and not the morning class.

Class got out about 4:15pm and I decided to go out and try to find a supermarket where I could find a bunch of candy and things to bring home. What I forgot was how weird candy is packaged here. They are all saran wrapped on a foam plate like you are getting ground beef at the grocery store. AND they don't come with very many pieces. So anyway, I ended up spending 30 minutes there only to walk out with nothing... oh except for some youbollenya cookies--we'll see how they compare to lorna doones. And by the way, big side note... I realized that now that you done nursing Cole that means Milk is 100% off the list for you. Which is good cause these cookies have milk in them.

Tonight we had the CEO Event with dinner. Kirill Korniliev, the General Director or IBM Eastern Europe/Asia came and spoke to us. He was a very knowledgable guy, but boy was I having a hard time staying awake. After the speech was over, it was time for dinner. I was going to take some pictures but there really wasn't anything to take pictures of.. except maybe the food.

The funny thing about the food here is that none of it has been amazing. Everyday for breakfast, lunch, and dinner they essentially serve the EXACT SAME THING! Eggs, fruit, cereal, and juice in the morning. Chicken, Fish, Pork Medallions, salad, and dessert for lunch and dinner. For me it really hasn't been that bad because I have been able to eat relatively healthy and the desserts aren't even enticing. Well tonight for dinner it was like the pulled out everything they had been hiding. I didn't go overboard, but I definitely wasn't as strict with what I ate. They had prime rib, tempura shrimp, spring rolls, beef skewers, chicken skewers, fish skewers, asian beef skewers, cold shrimp, salads, vegetarian foods, and a whole table of desserts (some of which I tried and none of which ended up being very good). They even pulled out the soda they had been holding back. Usually they only give us Coke and Diet Coke and water. Well tonight (on top of the alcohol for everyone else) they had fanta, sprite, coke, diet coke and even some others. We were all just laughing about it trying to figure out where all this stuff had been the whole rest of the week we have been here.

Well that was our day. Tomorrow is going to be a beast. The worst day of all. Besides an hour break for lunch we will have class and a speaker from 8am to 6:30pm straight... ouch! Sure glad we are on the downhill now. I'm feeling a little behind in the material for the classes so I need to catch up in that, but I am glad we are winding things down.

Love you so much,


Brock