Hello! Well it’s Thursday and it’s a sunny and beautiful day! Cody Kelly and I just went to McDonalds for the first time. We had to experience an American icon first hand in Germany. We found that the food is the same, and you still feel just as terrible when you leave a McDonald’s in Germany.
We have our first business test tomorrow in “Organization.” The Professor was definitely interesting to say the least. We all believe that he is a private coach for businesses and not a real Professor. He has changed a lot of concepts that are known throughout the world into his own ideas. For example, instead of using the PDCA cycle (Plan Do Check Act), which we learned from Marla, he made up his own cycle, which he feels is better. It’s called the PICCA cycle (pronounced: Pee-SSSS-uuuugh). It stands for “Plan Implement Check Celebrate Adapt,” probably the most interesting part of this new idea is the “Celebrate” part. Our professor feels that we need to celebrate after checking, and I mean celebrating like a cheerleader. He brought a “pom-pom” to class. He also had a wooden toy that was the most annoying sound I have ever heard ever. I wish I knew what it was called, but instead I will explain it. It’s a wooden toy, where you hold onto one end and there is a piece on the top of the stick that spins and makes a really loud and annoying sound. I have one more story I would like to share about this class. I asked about LEAN practices in Europe and Germany and if it this kind of thinking plays a major role here. The German students hadn’t ever heard about LEAN before so I gave them a short definition: LEAN is reducing waste, eliminating non-value adding processes, and continuous improvement. Our Professor apparently thought all I wanted to do was shut down the business because the way to eliminate waste is to shut the business down, from his perspective. Needless to say this test should be interesting. Overall, we had fun in his class even though he was a bit odd. Plus its always-helpful going over concepts multiple times to really gains a better understanding of them.
We are all really excited because on Monday we are leaving for Berlin for 5 days with 20-30 students. All from Germany, America, and Singapore! We get to see some amazing museums sights and even a river boat tour that I’m getting pretty stoked for! We are averaging about 1,000 pictures a trip so I can’t imagine how many pictures we are going to have after the Berlin trip. I am missing my camera charger so I have been sharing Anjali’s camera, which is why I have such amazing pictures. Wes, Anjali, and Kelly all have really nice cameras and lenses so they get some pretty amazing shots. Getting to use their cameras has really gotten me interested back in photography. I have a nice camera back home but it’s a FILM camera!
Wes and I have been skateboarding with our new buddy Phillip it has been a lot of fun. They are both really good so it makes it fun to skate with them. I still am not very good, being I haven’t skated in several years but I still have fun with it. I built a skateboard from old parts I found in my dorm. I bought a new deck and some little parts to make it work and its not bad at all!
As many of you know my grandmother has been in and out of the hospital for the past year and she has made some great progress. She just had another surgery this week and is recovering well. I ask that you keep her in your thoughts or prayers.
Thanks for reading!
-Chad
