mbat (paris!)

partners make a great cheering squad

Howie and Houssam schooling the opposition

mbat- i have no idea what it stands for, but means something about mba students pretending to be athletes for a weekend and competing against all of the other european mba schools.

team strategy- easier than accounting?

celebrating after the win

paris? kind of. the mbat event was hosted at HEC Paris. Which, is not really "in" paris at all. apparently HEC hosts this event every year but uses the event as an opportunity to teach their students about operations or some other business-school related stuff.

IMD had the best team spirit!

Nisha and Lois brought Shakira with them everywhere

Caroline, Howie & Hannes cheering on badminton players

so the IMD students organized themselves into teams, made arrangements and set off to the mbat for a weekend. many of the partners joined as well, hoping to get a glimpse of their husbands, wives, girlfriends, fiances etc. for a few hours while they were on this short 4 day break. this was my plan as well, including hopes for seeing paris again after about 10 years since the last time.

as much as the weekend was a disaster, it was also great fun. i enjoyed cheering on Howie at his basketball games (they won one game!) as well as some of the other sporting events. i also enjoyed my short time in the city- i had forgotten how amazing the street life is in paris.

another glimpse at the Pompidou center

good memories

the disaster part is the fact that our hotel was even further out of the city than HEC, even past versailles. the event was so poorly organized that there were no shuttle busses corresponding to the schedule, and parties were so horribly done and difficult to get to that we went to none. it was even difficult to get around campus as many of the events were spread out to other venues.

paris has amazing street life

despite the run-around, it was great to have a weekend off, some time with howie, and great food in paris! we're definitely going back to that amazing city.

Howie and Rali

enjoying a drink after an amazing dinner of foie gras & duck!