As I mentioned before briefly, a team of 5 of us that I study with here in my MSc program formed a team and applied for the Hult Prize Competition this year. We found out in early January that our team had been selected to compete in the London regional finals the first weekend of March. While we were super excited for the opportunity, that meant we pretty much dropped everything else to work on coming up with a sustainable social enterprise to help address the issue of non-communicable diseases in urban slums worldwide. We basically lived at school for 6 weeks or so thinking of nothing else, and then finally we took off for London to present our idea to a panel of judges among a 2 day program of activities put on by the Hult people.
Since one of our team members had never been to London, and the rest of us hadn't been in a while, we decided to go a day early and play tourist. Obviously with this being London it was entirely possible that we would be trudging around in the rain for 4 days, but instead we had ridiculously picturesque spring weather the whole time.
We spent most of Thursday just walking around, stopping here and there for a coffee or a bit of shopping, and lots and lots of photos.
One huge bonus to being in London was getting to see this girl! She was a camper of mine at Shiloh, so while in my head she might still be that little 11 year old at summer camp, she's now 19 and studying abroad for the semester in London so she was able to join us for dinner.
Friday's official program didn't begin until the afternoon so we spent the morning making some final edits to our presentation and getting in a nice stroll in the sunshine.
Our team's photo, sadly our 5th teammate wasn't able to join us in London for the actual presentation. While it did seem like some teams only formed for the purpose of this competition, our cohort is a fairly small one here in Vienna and we do lots of projects together in some combination or another so the photographers seemed sort of surprised when we we posed for our photo and looked like a group that's used to being together.
Saturday was the official presentation day, and then all the groups headed to the British Museum for the final round of presentations and a reception afterwards
Only one team from this London final made it past this stage, and no, it wasn't our team. The whole process was a wonderful experience though. Our project is something we hope to continue to develop once we're done writing our thesis and have a bit of time to spare hopefully.
Sunday morning, the three of us girls took off for another half day of sightseeing while Klaus and his cool fold-able bike began the journey through the English countryside for a few days and eventually to Brussels to then catch the train back to Vienna.
Back in Vienna the weather hasn't been too shabby either. It's making sitting in the library and working increasingly difficult, but thankfully there is still some time for enjoying the weather.
One of the perks to the Prater having no entry fee...when you and a friend are on your way somewhere and cutting through the Prater is the fastest way there, it is totally possible to just stop and ride one ride quickly...
Friends with roof decks which overlook the Prater are pretty awesome as well. Beautiful views over the whole city, although there is the odd screaming every once in a while as people launch themselves on these bungee catapult things or any number of other rides.
And finally our MSc semester kickoff evening on this roof. I think we're getting spoiled being able to be out on the roof at night in March, but we'll take it!
Other than that it's still pretty much just reading and writing for me these days, although an Easter break trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina has been finalized so it's giving me a nice little deadline for myself which should be helpful.
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