The First Day of Official Work

Surprisingly, I woke up the next morning not being sore at all. There was just a little bit of stiffness in my hips, probably from walking uphill for so long along all the rocks and such, but I was feeling marvelous.

We all get into the computer lab of the college of business, waiting to here the projects we have been placed on. Jumping right into it, our advisors start naming off teams that will have to meet with the client within the next couple hours.

I am called off to be working on a health innovation centre with one other American student and two Hungarian students. Our meeting was originally scheduled at 10:30, but got moved up to 10:00. He says that we had better leave now to go meet our client at the medical college. My group meets together and the Hungarian students tell us that the medical school is clear on the other side of the city, so we run out of the building and get on our way. We introduce ourselves on the way and begin talking about the project and coming up with a strategy as to how we were going to be asking questions, even though no one knew what the company did or anything about the project.

No one was joking when they said we were going clear cross the city. We walk directly past our apartments for about another ten minutes, and arrive at the school. We wait outside with the other team who had to interview their client at the medical school and find out they simply took the bus…oh well.

We are summoned by our advisor to head up to the conference room and that we would be meeting with the dean of the college of medicine to discuss the project. We sit and wait because he is running late, so we decide to invite the other team in since they were also meeting with the dean for a project that was related to ours. We figured that instead of splitting the time to combine and work off each other’s questions.

The dean arrives, and after introductions, begins to talk. Like most Hungarians, he speaks very softly with a strong accent, so it was extremely difficult to understand him, especially since we had no idea what the company was before going in there and a lot of medical jargon with long technical words were being thrown around. Fortunately, he had some sense of what he thought the problems were and tried to address it with the teams.

It seemed as though the other team was working on creating a business model to encourage creating relationships between the company and the outside. Our project had to deal more with creating a marketing plan for the innovation center, in how to find companies internationally that our products and services could best be utilized, how to find funding, and how to channel the local knowledge and skills. I actually felt more comfortable with the other group’s assignment, because when I was asking critical questions about the current situation, I was not getting clear answers at all. At some points a little light bulb would go off and I felt like I would understand the objectives more clearly, but then I would suddenly fall back into the shadow of having no idea what was going on at all. Unfortunately, no one else in my group understood anything of what was said either. And since we were rushed at the very end in addressing our part of the project, we were not able to get the desired amount of information before the client had to leave.

My group decides to head to lunch and discuss anything that we actually did understand about the project. We head to the mall, where I get a gyro with chili sauce and baklava. Who would know that probably the most popular fast food here are gyros...but I guess I just never realized how close Greece is from here. The other American student and I sit down, waiting for the Hungarian students who were still waiting in line; however, we think they could not find us and decided to sit elsewhere, because they never showed up. After finishing, we finally find them sitting on the other side of the food court, because they really could not find us. So we decide to meet back up at the computer lab to discuss the project in a half hour to give us time to shop and them time to finish eating. I end up buying an umbrella, as much as I hate them, because it started to rain harder.

We just have a quick meeting with our American advisor, which we find out that the health innovation centre we were actually working with is a network of companies in the health industry that are trying to create a parent managing company. We research a little bit from the minor website they had, but it helped a little bit. Now I actually understood that it was more of a consortium and not a company with definite products and services. We also find out that the main building has not even been built yet and that the company was mostly an idea at this point.

After messing with the research and stupid Hungarian keyboards, where random letters are all switched around, I started to get a headache (could also be my wisdom teeth coming in). We decide to head home, first hitting the bookstore we pass every day to look around. I love foreign bookstores because I wish I could read the books. We find a whole bunch of books on Pecs, but since a lot of construction and renovation has occurred within the last year, many of the books’ pictures seemed a little outdated. As we are getting back to the apartment, a strong gust of wind comes and completely shatters the umbrella in like five different places, of course...so now I refuse to buy any other umbrellas.

I sleep for a few hours, wake up with a headache still, and just decide to write since everyone else was sleeping. I get dinner at the Italian place right by our apartments; not realizing what I ordered was a clam dish. Since Laura like my dish better, I was happy to switch, as I hate clams. So instead, I enjoy a wonderful gnocchi dish. Since you tip the waiter/waitress personally, I keep trying to remember which person was waiting on us. This time however, I tipped the wrong person (and a lot of course), so I felt a little bad afterwards.

I just end up relaxing with everyone outside, watching the videos I recorded from our adventure to the TV Tower the day before with everyone else, and listen to Marcel (a Hungarian student) playing the guitar and sing amazingly. It made me so jealous.