Piling up.....

To all the financial engineering students interested in possibly doing a semester in Lausanne: I will eventually get around to describing the classes and course descriptions....maybe we can even talk Emma into posting a few thoughts on the classes. If Emma does it, it may get done much quicker. To the non-financial engineers: when I start talking about class it will most likely be as boring as the 1 hour weight lifting orientation-- it was an hour of talking about how to lift. Normally this would be okay, but of course it was all in French.

Piling up....

That is what my school work continues to do. I spent most of Friday afternoon trying to knock out some school work. The classes here are fascinating-- okay not all of them, but one in particular is. While the courses are interesting, I'm finding them to be a bit more work than I anticipated. I need to prepare a 15 page case study report by Wednesday. Lucky for me it is a case study on the derivative trading losses in a company named Metallgesellschaft-- which is actually pretty exciting to learn about, but difficult and time consuming. This is a great example of what not to do when trying to hedge in commodity trading.

Non-school rambling....

Thursday night was very refreshing. We went to a small organizaiton called International Night. It is a club that gets together to discuss life, goals, and culture-- added bonuses: all in English and they had great food. Normally in the states I would have probably ignored a club like this, but it is great to talk to people with such diverse upbringings. There was a bit of a lack of diversity though: I did meet a girl from Nebraska. It was a great organization and it was nice to have an exchange student function not at a dance club where you can't carry a conversation because of the blaring techno-beat(don't get me wrong those nights are fun too). I plan on attending the monthly meetings and the special events that may be planned.

Emma and I were supposed to go on a glacier hike on Sunday with the Xchange organization. I was absolutely stoked about it. I was told the tickets go fast and there was as limited number that were being sold starting at 10 AM Monday through Thursday. So I went to the place to buy tickets at noon on Monday and they were sold out. I had figured if they are on sale between Monday through Thursday there is no way that they would sell out in less than an hour. Needless to say I was pissed.

Emma cooked an amazing supper tonight and we even had a bottle of Swiss wine. Although Swiss wine is not world renowned, it was very good. Some people say, mostly Swiss people, that it is not world renowned because the Swiss drink it all-- take it for what it is worth. The supper consisted of couscous, and chicken in an eggplant/onion sauce-- it was a Burkina Faso recipe. And was followed by some really good chocolate I had brought over.












Tomorrow since I went to the boring orientation I can go excercise-- but most of the day will be spent studying so I can take a road trip on Sunday if the weather cooperates. As you can see in the photo the weather is starting to get much cooler here, at least by Southern California standards. Don't know where I'm going Sunday but possibly Gruyere or Fribourg....I'll keep you posted.