Money, money, money, MONEY

I thought I hated financial accounting.

I was wrong; I didn't know a good thing when I had it.

I HATE cost accounting.

Finish First Term - CHECK!

My last day of the first term was last Thursday.  There are 5 terms in total for this program, which means I'm 20% finished with the MBA - woohoo!  In any case, we had one final exam per day and in Marketing we actually had a presentation and a final paper to turn in.  Needless to say, it was a stressful week with many hours spent working on all of the deliverables. All of last weekend I spent with my workgroup unless I went home to sleep or have lunch.  Many times we just decided to have lunch together so we could continue plugging away at our work.

In any case, right after our exam on Thursday, a couple of girls and I decided to go shopping.  Stress relief strategy!  In January there are post-holiday sales "re-bajas". For those of you who haven't been to Europe, it's a bit different. The sales season literally is once per year.  There are no other small sales during the year like there are in the U.S.  Throughout the year, everything sells for the originally set price (aka no clearance racks, no weekend sales).  So last week was definitely strategic. Go shopping while most Spaniards are working and find some good sales!

Later on Thursday night all of the students organized a night out at a bar with the professors.  It was great to party with them and just let loose.  We started at an Irish pub around midnight (normal time to start to go out in Spain) and then around 3pm we went to another club.  By 6am I went home in a cab.  Since it's not illegal to smoke in clubs and bars, anytime you go out here you basically need to detox your body with a good shower before going to bed, otherwise you smell like a cigarette.  Yuck.  In any case, we had a blast and now we're supposedly re-charged for our next term, which starts tomorrow morning.