MBA Enterprise Corps Orientation
We’re now 4 days into orientation in Washington DC. Most of it has been taking place on George Washington University’s campus, which is a beautiful campus. Apparently GW is so beautiful because, 1) they charge a crapload for tuition and 2) they are one of the largest landowners in DC – owning, for example, the land the World Bank is on. Now that’s a pretty sweet deal.
My entire class consists of 10 people. In the picture we have (from left to right) Norm (Azerbaijan), Mike (Romania), Paris, Ryan, Julia (Bulgaria), John (Angola), Joel (Bulgaria), Tom (Angola), Manish (Kazakhstan) and Amit (Romania). Poor Manish is going to the far north part of Kazakhstan which is basically Siberia. He’s been spending the last few days trying to buy thermal underwear and other cold weather essentials. He’s from Bombay so the weather will be exactly the opposite of what he’s used to – something that the rest of us like to poke fun of him for on a regular basis.
Anyway, orientation takes up most of the day. It involves, among other things, panel discussions with former MBAEC members, introduction to the rest of CDC (MBAEC’s parent entity), and generally trying to understand the large number of acronyms that are thrown around. The evenings are consumed by drinking heavily. Two nights ago we went to Marrakesh restaurant for Moroccan food. The building is not readily identifiable (to me at least) because the sign is in Arabic, but is fairly well known in the DC area. It must be well known by many because inside the restaurant, on the way to the bathrooms, are many pictures of celebrities posing with the owner – or at least I think it’s the owner. Such famous people as Mick Jagger, Clint Eastwood and Sen. Paul Sarbanes. The dinner was a delicious 7 course meal with beef kabobs, coos coos, chicken, fruit – all washed down with Lebanese beer (apparently Moroccan beer isn’t so good). The best part, however, was the belly dancer that entertained us for 15 minutes in the middle of all of it. She was amazing. Despite the fact that she was half Italian and half American we resolved that perhaps a visit to Morocco was someplace we should move up on our to-do list. After dinner a few of us went to “network” (drink) at Brickskellers pub. Brickskellers is famous in DC because they have over 1500 beers. We managed to get through 30 or so between the 6 of us. One of the guys in my program, John, was fond of challenging the waitress to bring any beer on the menu which he would then attempt to guess. Needless to say he lost several times. We did find out that one of the popular Russian beers tastes just like Pabst Blue Ribbon. Perhaps the Russians should stick with vodka. Really, the best part of all of it was my weathly lawyer friend picking up the tab for all of us (thanks Lisa!).
Today we did a ropes course for various team building exercises. It can be rough when you have a bunch of MBA students all trying to work together – too many bosses and not enough followers. However, we still managed to make it through all the exercises. Tonight I’m sure will be another night of drinking – the only question will be where…..
