I now have a MBA (well technically I don't graduate until Aug 12th) but for all intensive purposes school is over. I was so, so sad to see it end. Seriously I didn't think I would miss it this much.
We had a final dinner where we all showed the videos from our trips and recapped our experience in the program. It was a night of happiness and tears. Here are some pictures from the last few weeks of school.
The "Circle of Trust" from our FBE was missing our daily gelato so we went to Terra Mia after class.....
Melinda, Mary and I thought we were pretty funny making these car decals for the single guys in our program. Don't worry...we didn't actually decal them to their cars except with tape.
Dave, Melinda, Dr. Swenson, Chris, me and Mary on the last day of class.
JCW's after our final class!!
The EMBA dinner with Jeff, Brandon, Mary, Melinda, Dr. Jackson and me.
Some of my favorite people from the EMBA program after the final dinner.
And of course we had to do a "smolder" picture. Dang we look sexy as MBA's!
So I have been the biggest slacker when it comes to blogging lately, but I vow to be better in the future!
At the end of April and the first 2 weeks of May I went on my final foreign business excursion (FBE) for my EMBA program. The purpose of the trip was to take the place of an internship that the day MBA program does since in the EMBA program we all have jobs already. We visit businesses and see international business in action. We then do some reports when we get back and we get class credit for the trip.
Well our trip was originally supposed to go to Egypt, Morocco, Turkey and Dubai, but the recent political uprising in Egypt made the EMBA office scramble to replace Egypt with a different country. We ended up going to Spain, Greece, Turkey and Dubai. I was pretty sad to not go to Egypt, but in retrospect our entire trip changed because of this sudden change. Because we had to make last second changes to our itinerary it was very hard to get business visits scheduled. So while the other 2 trips in the class went on about 14-16 business visits we went on 6.....2 of which were US Embassy's (does that really count as a business visit??).
So I basically went on vacation with 30 of my classmates......and oh what a vacation we had!! It pretty much felt like adult EFY/summer camp, etc. To date I would say it is the BEST trip I've been on in my life and it was all because of the people I was with. We honestly could have gone to Scipio, Utah and had the same amount of fun with this group. It was a perfect blending of personalities and I think I laughed 99% of my time on the trip!
There is absolutely no way I can post all the pictures, but the best way to see how our trip went and what we did is to watch this video that was posted on my facebook account (I tried to upload it to youtube, but they stripped out the copyrighted music). I'll warn you it is 14 minutes long, but I love it (and it took a TON of time for a few of us to put together) and I don't think it is that boring to watch.
I've also posted a few of my favorite pictures that aren't in the video below:
Melinda and I found these awesome shirts in Spain.......
We loved eating Churros and Hot Chocolate was more like fondue than the hot chocolate we have in the US.
After churros and hot chocolate we went down to the Plaza Mayor because we heard it was a "happening" place at night. As you can see below there was quite a party going on there.....
Jumping photos were the theme of the trip.....well and "smolder pictures"
A bird took a pit stop on Mary, Chad and my head in this very location......
A few of us waiting out a thunderstorm in Madrid...
We played a lot of games on the bus, sang a lot of songs, took a lot of naps and completely analyzed the singles dating lives. I loved the "Back of the Bus, Circle of Trust."
Some of the group in Toledo, Spain....
Andrew, Me, Chad, and Melinda in Delphi, Greece.
The Parthenon!
They had the best pudding ever in Istanbul. We ate it everyday and a few of us may have literally licked our plates clean! Love Todd & Lori Berrett....the singles chaperones!
We went on this dinner cruise in Istanbul. It was beautiful, but a little cold.....
Dubai was awesome. We went to the beach and on this great sand dune tour where we off roaded, road camels and saw belly dancers (who could have shed a few pounds). Here is a picture of the girls on the trip...
Me, Melinda and Mary doing some yoga before dinner.....
Tallest building in the world in Dubai.....circle of trust around the column. Matt, Ben and me.
Don't fall...... I'm on a camel!!
I went skiing in the desert! Matt, me, and Dave....
Like I said...watch the video, but this was the best trip ever!!!
***Note this is a long one, but must be included in my blog book!!!
So this past weekend was one of the best weekend's ever!!! Definitely something to check off my Bucket List!! On Sunday me and a few of the married guys from work made a spur of the moment decision to go to Denver to watch the Cougs play. What a good decision that turned out to be.
After hours of waiting and arguing over text message on Sunday we noticed some tickets posted for $180 for all the games (not just BYU games) on row 7 in the lower bowl. They were priced below face-value and thankfully one of my co-workers decided to just purchase them because Stub Hub guarantees their tickets. So with that purchase we were committed.
With all the snow, I personally would have left Wed right after work, but that's because I don't have a wife (or husband) at home forcing me to stay and put the kids to bed. Anyways, we finally left Wednesday night at 11:30pm after a lot of delays (waiting for Joel to go to the basketball game, waiting for Joel to find his wedding ring he left at MonaVie. Such a diva that Joel is!!). The plan was to sleep in the car and take shifts driving. Well that didn't work and I guess none of us were really tired because we didn't sleep at all.
We got to Denver at 8:30am and were allowed an early check-in to our hotel!! We got about 45 minutes of sleep, showered and then headed to the Pepsi Center to watch the Louisville vs. Morehead State game and the Vanderbilt vs. Richmond game. We were a little skeptical that our seats would be real so we were extra happy when they scanned them at the gate and we were let through free and clear. Walking DOWN to our seats was SO fun for me. I never get to sit down low at anything, let alone the NCCA tournament! Our seats were row 7 behind the basket. Here is a picture from right after we walked in
Both of the first 2 games were excellent games. Exactly what you want (if your team isn't playing). Both underdogs won on last second shots! It was crazy fun and I didn't even care about any of the teams. During the first session some guys came that had our same seats. We started wondering how legit our seats were, but our tickets looked like this so we felt pretty good about it (I don't know why it won't rotate).
So for the 2nd session they made you exit the Pepsi Center and re-enter with a new ticket. They left 30 minutes for this. Very poor planning on their part. We were lucky enough to get in line pretty close and thus did not miss tip-off for the Coug game. Here is a picture of me from our 7th row seats right before the Coug game started. The stands were empty!
Well about 10 minutes into the game some people come down with tickets for the exact same seats we have. The usher asks us for our ticket and we started to get a little nervous. They weren't going to kick us out of the BYU game were they? The only game that we came to see? At half-time the ticket office girl came over and told us that they were going to have to move us. As we started to complain she informed us "you won't be sad" and with that we shut our mouths. Apparently the Pepsi Center had tickets out to people that should have been "returned" but this guy sold his instead. It was mostly their fault for not enforcing it I guess. Anyways, they gave us our new seats to the rest of Thursday games and new tickets for the Saturday games. These were 4 rows higher (row 11), but they were at half-court so I guess they were okay :) We were so happy because these were even better seats and we had them for Saturday's games as well!
BYU beat Wofford just as I would have liked. Jimmer had a decent game and they won by 13. I didn't want any nail-biters against Wofford.
Here is a picture of me from our new seats (as Gonzaga and St. Johns warm up).
Suzanne and I at the BYU/Wofford game
As the Gonzaga/St. Johns game started it became VERY clear that we did NOT want to play Gonzaga. They were big, athletic and scary. Although we were seated in the Gonzaga section and the Zags were the 11th seed we openly cheered for St. Johns. After Gonzaga won it appeared that our trip would end up with a sad ending. We just couldn't see how BYU could match up with their size. They were so, so big and way more athletic then us. That night we went back to the hotel exhausted and starving. Apparently everything closes at 1o in Denver and my "Good Times" chicken burger was not what I would call a "good time." The second I got back to my hotel room I crashed immediately on my bed and woke up at 9am.
On Friday morning Suzanne and I went to get our BYU pedicures. I'll spare you the details, but they were wonderful and here is proof of their beauty.
After pedicures my old college roommate, Laurel, came and picked me up. We had a great time getting yogurt and chatting all afternoon. Her kids are adorable and I can't believe it has been 12 years since we have seen each other!! Crazy!!!
I also received a phone call from the guys that Stub Hub had refunded us for our "inconvenience" with our tickets not being valid after they had called them to report that the tickets were not valid. Stub Hub really guarantees their seats! So our tickets to all the games at half-court were FREE!! That's right FREE!!!
Later that night we went to see a movie called "The Adjustment Bureau." It was an excellent movie that I highly recommend. Funny thing was that we were at the theater and it was $12 for the movie which seemed high, but we weren't in Utah anymore so we figured that was the price of movies now. Well this theater ended up having free popcorn, drinks and leather seats. Seriously what kind of a theater does that? It was very odd and we even asked them at the front if it really was "complimentary." We seriously didn't believe it was free, but considering how our trip was going so far we figured that pretty much everything that seemed too good to be true was in fact actually true!!!
The next morning I slept in, got a run in (which was desperately needed with the amount of fries and junk I ate on this trip) and then we headed to lunch and the arena. We almost didn't make it as Alex (my boss) tried to kill us and we nearly got taken out by a bus! I have to admit that I was completely not expecting BYU to win and I hoped they would just keep it close and respectable. Man did I learn to never doubt the Jimmer!!
BYU won by 22! I was there at half-court watching it all go down in the best seats I will likely have in my lifetime, watching the best player BYU will have in my lifetime and seeing them advance to the Sweet 16 which hasn't happened in my lifetime (okay I know it did, but I was too young to care). Here are some pictures and videos of the momentous day!!!
Me in our seats during the BYU/Gonzaga game
Me as the Cougs take the floor in the 2nd half (great timing for this picture!)
A bunch of the photos of Jimmer that I took
Brian (BH), Suzanne and I at the game
After the game I may or may not have gone down a little lower and got caught up cheering for Jimmer and trying to get on camera as they did the post game. Thankfully I did not get on video, but I laughed pretty loud when BH sent me this picture he took of me being a psycho fan. I'm normally pretty reserved, but I was SO excited.
After I was done being psycho I looked over and John Stockton was still sitting in his seats waiting for his son. There were no fans around him and I went over there to shake his hand. Of course he had body guards that would not allow it so instead I took pictures of him from about 10 ft away. It wasn't like he couldn't see me since there were no fans left, but I didn't care and Amy had required that I take a picture of him. So here is is.... I have several others, but at least he is smiling in this picture.
And finally, here are a few videos I took from my seats. My favorite part in these videos is all the men you can hear screaming at Jimmer like teenage girls screaming at Justin Beiber!
Jimmer right as the game ends, hugs girlfriend and coach Rose
"We love you Jimmer"
A view of a play towards the end of the game from my seats so you can see the game just as I saw it :)
I'm an aunt again! Sophia Noelle St. Felix was born on Jan 31, 2011 weighing 8 lbs 4 oz and 20 inches long. She is super sweet and I swear she never cries!
Sienna, Sierra, Sophia and me. Love these girls!!!
Dave, Melinda, Dr. Swenson, Chris, me and Mary on the last day of class.
JCW's after our final class!!
The EMBA dinner with Jeff, Brandon, Mary, Melinda, Dr. Jackson and me.
Some of my favorite people from the EMBA program after the final dinner.
And of course we had to do a "smolder" picture. Dang we look sexy as MBA's!
