Friday, January 4, 2008

a very financial day.

After going to bed at 8, today i woke up at 1 am and was 100% awake. i was really annoyed. after laying there for an hour, i fell back asleep... giving me a total of almost 12 hours of sleep! amazing. i think i'm pretty much over the jet lag.

today we put on our business suits and went to the ECB- European Central Bank. after dr. fields got us slightly lost, we made it there. we had to go through crazy security, it was insane. then we had a lecture in this awesome room. it was a really cool boardroom type place and we each had our own microphones and stuff. they also gave us coffee and cookies and stuff, pretty sweet. i really liked the lecture. the speaker made it really interactive and i learned so much about the Euro and the European Union. i feel like i learned more about finance and economics at the lecture than in my entire finance clas at delaware.

after the lecture, we split up for lunch. i went to the bull & bear restaurant with teri, katia and alicia. i had a really yummy thin pizza, so good. i kept seeing starbucks but i'm fighting the urge. i'm determined to not drink starbucks until i'm back in america. too bad i keep drinking straight up coffee instead, oh well. i guess at some point i had to start the coffee addiction like everyone else.

after lunch we met back at the bull & bear (statues, not restaurant) and then went inside to the Deutche Boerse. our speaker was so cute, he could hardly speak english and i felt really bad for him. he told us it was his first lecture in english. then his powerpoint broke too. sooo the lecture wasn't great, but i learned some about the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and how it works. they have a physical floor like in NY, but also have a computer program too. we got to watch the computer thing and it was pretty cool.

i tried to get money out at an ATM and it said "unable to process this transaction at this time." i got a little worried but eventually found another ATM that worked. yay.

after that we had some free time. we walked back to the hotel, bought some postcards and then i took a nice long nap. for dinner we went to this really good pizza place. they sold individual pizzas for like 3 euros- too bad the drink cost almost as much. it was funny though- this tiny pizza place way off the beaten path, they rushed out and it was funny. people would just sit at tables with other people too. very entertaining.

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