First days of class

Hello my faithful readers:

I've been very busy with moving into my studio and starting the first week of classes at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. It's currently 7:21 AM here and I should be getting ready for classes soon. We have to be at class by 9 AM daily and thankfully this week most of our sessions have been related to orientation topics. The school has also been kind enough to provide lunches in the school's restaurant for the past couple of days. I'm quite impressed by the effort they are putting into our welcome week considering our Full-Time International MBA program is only a small percentage of their revenue stream.

In general this week will probably be one of the longest that we'll have as far as activities organized by the school. Our classes go from 9:00 AM- 17:30 (5:30PM) daily with a 1 hour lunch break in between. This week in particular we have events after the classes, such as:

• Guided tour of Leuven on Tuesday (I skipped this to move into my new studio)

• Opening Day Ceremonies in Ghent (required last night)

• Cocktail reception with alumni testimonials in Leuven (tonight - another required event)

• Reception at the Dean's house in Brussels (required event on Friday)
  

All of the events with the exception of the tour lasts from 3-4 hours after classes are done and the trips to Ghent/Brussels require getting on a bus and driving to each destination. Some of my classmates and I are planning to go experience a little bit of the Brussels night life after the reception at the Dean's house. I'm hoping I'll get a little bit of energy by that time because I'll admit right now on Thursday morning I'm wondering how I'll make it through today.

We have been required to wear business attire (suits) for the first couple of days of classes, but no one has mentioned what the attire should be today. I'm hoping that the business attire rule will be the exception and not the rule for most days of classes, but so far I can't tell how often we'll have to do it.

My studio so far has been pretty good it's a pretty large sized studio; maybe 30 meters squared. I'm bad at guesstimating size, but I think that's a close approximation of the actual size. I live in the busy area of town near the main square called Grote Markt. At night I can hear talking and music from the bars near my place, but so far it hasn't affected my ability to sleep. I'm not so sure I can get any studying done here, unless it's in the early mornings when it seems to be most quiet around here. I officially moved all of my belongings here yesterday on the first day of classes and now I just need to finish unpacking everything.

I still have a pretty long shopping list for my place and I'm hoping to make a trip to Ikea with a couple of my classmates this weekend. The Ikea is located somewhere between Leuven and the Brussels Airport area, we actually passed by it on our way to Ghent last night. I mainly need storage/organizing units and bedding from Ikea. I'm also considering purchasing another mattress b/c my bed is SUPER low to the ground and I'm way too tall to comfortably get out of the bed each day without another one or somehow lifting the bed off the ground. I also realized that my studio doesn't have an oven so I'll need to purchase a microwave at some point soon. I have two stove top burners, but no oven. From hearing about some of my classmates rooms I think my studio is on par and not too bad, considering the location and rent that I'm paying.

This week has been a whirlwind of activity and I'm just hoping I can hold everything together until this weekend. I'd love to paint my new studio, but I'll have to figure out the best time to get that done - I don't think it will be this weekend with all I need to do, but I'll try to at least buy all the materials I need for now. I'm hoping that the rain we've had over the past couple of days will go away, but I suspect we're going to have a lot more to come. My fingers are crossed that we get at least one more nice weekend here this month.

I hope that you're all well and having a good life! That's one of the biggest lessons I learned yesterday throughout all of my courses they want us to live well and have a good life. I wish that for all of my family, friends and loved ones. I'll try to squeeze in another blog this weekend if I have the time. As always - thanks for reading!

Mwuah,

Georgia Peach