According to my calendar, the month of February should be semester break, but this year that's not anywhere near the case. I was lucky enough this year to have all my classes finish up before Christmas even though technically the semester lasts until the end of January, which is what allowed me to be at home for as long as I was. So when I returned back here the middle of the month, many of my fellow classmates had been in school since just after New Years, and were ready for their month off. Our new semester begins early March, but again, doesn't mean much for me now that my days are mostly spent researching and writing.
In addition to my thesis, and the continuation of a research project I'm working on with a professor at school in cooperation with the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, a team of 5 of us who are graduating this July were informed that we had been selected to compete in the regional finals of the Hult Prize Competition in London this coming March. It is a social entrepreneurship competition run by the Hult Business School and the Clinton Global Initiative, and involves teams of students from around the world working to provide solutions to a common problem (this year's is preventing non-communicable diseases in urban slums). This stage of the competition consists of 6 regional finals (in Boston, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, London, Dubai, and Singapore) with about 50 teams competing in each one. So our team is working hard now to come up with a presentation of our solution. We're very excited to be competing, but it does require a lot of thought and preparation in these few weeks we have left before London, while all still trying to keep our thesis on track.
Of course it's not all work all the time though, we took some time for an excellent International Potluck Dinner with a bunch of us from school. I contributed my approximation of banana pudding, and in case you're wondering, vanillekipferl are a great stand in for nilla wafers.
Cheering on Jelena's fiance Jakob running a race on a freezing cold Sunday morning. Thankfully there was a little hut serving hot tea close to the course, so we could hop in there between times he ran past.
My view most days from the library up at school. The semester break is helpful since it means the library is fairly quiet and a good place to get lots of work done. Even though we haven't been seeing much of the sun here lately, we have had a few days of some picturesque snow, especially up on Kahlenberg.
And of course now it's Olympics time! We had a fun little viewing party for the Opening Ceremonies here, which were shown live, but that's about 5pm here, so we did the best we could. Sadly I'm not sure how much of the games I'll actually have time to watch, but hopefully at least some of the events.
And that's about it for recently. The weeks seem to be flying by, trying to get as much work done as possible during the days so I have some time to catch up with friends in whatever off time I can allow myself. As I'm getting ready to mark 2 years in Vienna it really is feeling more and more like home which I didn't quite realize was possible. We seem to be experiencing a lot of "life" these days, the best of it and the not so great of it all at the same time, which is helping to add a deeper richness to everything in this season. Still looking forward to lots of things coming up in the next few months, and hopefully not completely neglecting blogging so I have some written record of these things!
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