July 25th, 2011

Today, I don’t think my mind woke up until about 2 hours after I got out of bed. This morning came way too soon and for some reason I had a foggy mind for a while this morning. Maybe it was the cold, rainy weather. Not too sure but once we made it to the AIB building this morning for guest lecturer I didn't really have a choice but to get going. This lady who owns her own business working with contracts and negotiations gave us a little activity. In a group of 4, we had a scenario where one person was a pro basketball player, another agent, and two people were a team negotiating a contract with the agent and player. Let me just say I realized I don’t know much about that aspect of sport and I definitely felt lost. The good news: Emily, my agent, ended up getting me the best contract out of the other groups! Whoop! If I am ever a celebrity I think I know who I will be hiring as an agent! After our activity the lady spent another hour talking to us about the impact and importance of culture when dealing with international business. A lot of us were intrigued by the different point of view that she explained.

After class we grabbed a quick lunch and headed to Deutsche Telekom. Deutsche Telekom is the US T-mobile but monopolized in Germany like AT&T in America. The ‘field trip’ as I have started to call these escapades was quite interesting. We started off with a tour of their T-Gallery which is where they display their new technological inventions and future ideas for all components of life. From the office, to house, to kitchen, to TV, to medical advancements, to increasing the length that the elderly can live in their house without physical attention and just have the help of technology. It was so mind boggling and kind of scary and makes you wonder about the security of the future technology. I could go on and explain everything but honestly the amount of new technology kind of creeped me out so I’m just going to ignore it until it comes out commercially. The guy did say that about 30% of the ideas actually get used and the other 70% of ideas and concepts get thrown away.

The day was a 9-5 day so we all came back and just hung out and relaxed a bit then a few of us went and grabbed some yummy Italian food. They had every type of Italian food you could think of and it was reasonably priced! You just go up to whatever line you want (pasta, salad, pizza, etc.) and then they swipe your card that they give you when you walk in. Then they just keep everything tracked on the card and you had it to the cashier and pay when you leave. Super convenient with bigger groups. I will definitely be going back there before we leave. Well we are off on a two hour bus ride to Frankfort for a pretty awesome day tomorrow, or so we have been told! Can’t wait to tell you guys all about it!