Demasiado trabajo

Ok, I know you are supposed to go on exchange to study, but no one really studies on exchange, right? Well, guess I didn’t pick the right school for that!

HSE obligates me to take 4 courses, which means I have the following schedule:

Horarios	Lunes	Martes	Miercoles
10-13.30	Liderazgo para desarollo sostenible		Cross Cultural Management in Latin America
14-17.30		Doing Business in Mexico
18-21.30	Responsabilidad Social Corporativa

See: I have a four day weekend! Not. With all the homework, groupwork, reading and assignments, we are lucky to have one day off a week. I only have one final exam in one course, and the rest of the grading is based on course work, final projects, presentations and group discussion.

The teaching here is very different from Finland, where you have mass classes of 200 people, and you can easily sleep during lectures if you like. Here the professors lecture a minimum, and most classes require active participation in the discussion during class.

You have to have good lunch to have energy in class. This Ceasar salad cost me 3€ in the school cafeteria!

As you can see both of my classes on Mondays are in Spanish, which makes it a tough start of the week. So far I understand what the professors are saying, but my fellow students speak so fast that it is really difficult to follow the discussion. My theory is to be the first to comment, and after that it doesn’t matter if you get lost in the debate : )

All in all, I really like the teacher here, they are really encouraging, and want to hear your opinion. Most of the time they also try to make sure we non-native Spanish speakers understand what is going on..

Lucky the two other courses I have are planned for exchange students, and the work load for them is significantly smaller than for the two others.

Here is a picture of the campus where I have class. It’s called EGADE and it’s around 20 min by taxi from my place. The campus is a lot smaller than the main campus, and most of the students studying there know each other. Here we are only 40 exchange students!

EGADE, the red building to the lef, is located in the more expensive part of town called San Pedro.

Tonight we are on our way to see a rodeo show, we are expecting a lot of fun!

p.s. the weather is still cold, and we are still relying on the hairdryer… The promised warmer weather for Saturday.

p.p.s. As you can notice, it’s starting to be difficult to express myself in Finnish. Maybe the next post will be in Spanish?!