Rome & Dublin

Friday came and flew by fast. Apart from our Oxfam presentation, I worked most of the day on getting my luggage prepared as well as writing my 10 articles for Principles of Marketing. To give you a little more detail on the 10 articles, our major paper that was due during our time abroad consisted of breaking down in detail 10 different articles that related to international marketing. Of course, like most, I decided to procrastinate on the majority of the articles, and since I knew I wasn’t going to attempt to do them while in Rome or Dublin, I decided to finish all the remaining articles in one day. The articles really made time fly by, turning the clock from 2 to 6 in one big sweep. Once Saturday morning came, I woke up early to start getting the finishing touches on what I was taking with me before we left around 11:30 for the bus station to take us to Stansted Airport. Even with all the time we left for ourselves to get to the airport, we barely made it. Our National Express bus broke down twice and it was only supposed to be a 3 hour bus ride, but because of all the mishaps it took 6 hours. Also, talking with the driver about our situation made me even more frustrated because his motto was, “if you are late to the airport because of us the bus drivers), oh well, should have planned better.” It irritated me a little because that would be $135 down the drain, but we finally made it to the airport with 10 minutes to spare. Once we were past security, we were still in a rush and found out we had another 10 minutes before our plane was going to board, so luckily everything worked out for the best.

Once on the plane, we did make a friend with a local named Giulia Grenga that helped us tremendously with where to go in Rome and told us much needed information about the public transportation. For instance, in Rome the trains will stop running around 10:45 and when we got there they were already going to be closed. However, Giulia just came from South Africa and one of the reasons she said she loved it so much was because the people were extremely welcoming and helpful. Therefore, when we landed she called her dad who was picking her up and asked him if we could hitch a ride because her house was probably 5-10 minutes from our hostel. Now on a side note, I do not recommend you get in random cars with random people, but we were desperate in this situation and really did not want to pay a taxi fare for the 30-40 minutes of driving. So, thanks to Giulia and our extroverted personalities, we made it to Tiber Hostel. At night, it was hard to tell what it looked like but in the morning it was amazing! We had a pool, a big café, own mini market, and the atmosphere was so relaxing. I highly recommend Tiber Hostel; it is completely worth the 11 Euro’s to stay there.

Sunday rolled around and we started on our journey, of course first to the Vatican. Since it was Sunday, admission was free, but the wait was about three hours. However, since we looked like tourists, a man that worked for a touring business asked us if we would be interested in paying 25 Euros to skip the line and receive a personal tour guide of Vatican City. Once I talked him down to 20 Euros, we made our way over to a little café where they gave us stickers, then they took our group of 10 up to only a 20 minute line to get into Vatican City. I won’t be going into too much information on The Vatican because there is just too much information to type about. However, as a helpful hint, make sure you get a tour guide. The Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Church, and the rest of the Vatican would not have been the same without someone explaining all the interesting history and facts to us. Also, make sure you save at least half of a day for The Vatican and St. Peter's because it is worth taking your time.

Before our trip to Rome, I heard instead of buying tickets to each museum and attraction there is a special called the Rome City Pass for 28 Euros which will get you into a lot of different places as well as free public transportation for 3 days. So, after the Vatican we set out to find that pass and then worked our way over to St. Angelo’s Castle which was okay, but I do not recommend it if you don’t have the Rome City Pass. Following St. Angelo’s Castle and food, we walked around aimlessly for a little while near the Spanish Steps and other places until we realized we had to get back to the Hostel because Giulia was going to take us to an authentic Italian restaurant. It was such a beautiful sight! The restaurant really looked like it does in the movies, such as Letters to Juliet, with the green prairies in the background and outdoor seating with the patio over us. It gave us an excellent feel of Italy and made us feel even closer to the culture. After dinner, the five of us sat there for hours until midnight just talking about life, religion, Christianity, our struggles, and just everything. It was one of the best deepest conversations I have ever had! Then once we actually realized how late it was Giulia drove us back to the hostel where we got our much needed sleep.

On Monday morning, we hit the sites early, traveling first to the Coliseum where the Rome City Pass allowed us to skip a Long line really started out day out perfect. We walked around in amazement in the Coliseum just imagining years ago that it was completely packed of people cheering on gladiators. Right after the Coliseum, we made our way over to where Caesar used to live as well as the ruins surrounding the Coliseum area. Rome was all around just a perfect place to visit. After our morning attractions, we went to a nice, quaint, cheap restaurant down the road from the Trevi Fountain. Afterward, we went to the Trevi Fountain which has the most beautiful architecture I have ever seen. Seeing as it is “The King of the Wishing Wells”, we each had to get a coin and toss it in backwards and make a wish. However, I encountered a little problem because when I flicked the coin it decided to go straight up and fall back down to my feet, so I completely missed probably the biggest fountain in the world. I don’t know what kind of luck that brings, but the second time was the charm and I made it! The Trevi Fountain was so eye absorbing that somehow our group got separated. Even though we had Walkie Talkies, it didn’t help because the two people that had the walkies were right next to each other. It probably was not the best plan we'd made, but we all knew that the next stop on our adventure was the Pantheon, where we were going to meet up with Giulia. So, we made our way down Souvenir Road to the Pantheon where we found one another and Giulia under the most famous architectural design of its time – the hole in the top of the Pantheon. From the Pantheon, Giulia took us to the best ice cream parlor I've ever been to. It was like a Baskin Robbins on steroids with 118 different flavors of gelato ice cream. After our tasty dessert, we wandered around Rome seeing other major attractions like Foro Di Traiano, or “The Wedding Cake”, Piazza Del Popolo, and the main shopping street. We then parted ways, said our goodbyes, and thanked her for all her help. Having our own personal tour guide really delivered the best feel of Rome we could have ever received. We really didn’t know what to do with the rest of the late afternoon so we took a nice leisure stroll through Villa Borghese where we came across the FIFA fest in Rome. It happened to be the best game-viewing yet! Unlike in Paris, the structure of this consisted of, not just a huge TV and stage, but a turf soccer field with goals, the South African mascot, a peek of the Sony 3D TV’s, foosball tables galore, and other various attractions. The rest of the night was a blast! We played soccer with a few Italian guys on the soccer field and, following the game, St. Angelo’s Castle shot off fireworks! What a way to end our Rome excursion! It was depressing to leave Rome the next morning. We'd had such a fun time and saw the most amazing places. The entire feel of the culture was so unlike anything I have ever encountered. Only a couple of hours from the beach and a few hours from the Alps, Rome has like everything you would ever need/want from a city. If you ever have a chance to pick one place out of the places we have gone, I highly recommend Rome.

After traveling all over Rome once we arrived at Dublin we knew that it was going to be a relaxing time. Because we left Rome on the 29^th and got back in London at 11, we knew ahead of time we would only be in Dublin for a few hours, which literally ended up being 5 hours. We were not planning any huge tourist adventures. We just wanted to go to Ireland to say we went and because it was a very cheap plane ticket. Which is exactly what we did. Once in Dublin, we hopped on a bus to the center of town, stayed on the same street, and just sat down in different pubs meeting new people everywhere. After about 4 hours, we hopped back on the bus to the airport and left. I know you’re thinking that that was probably the dumbest idea ever, but it was rewarding because we were able to relax and feel as if we were blended in with the culture. It was a very short trip and, if you go to Ireland, I recommend that you do it on a short weekend and go to Cork because you can at least tour Blarney Castle, which I heard was even better than Warwick Castle in England. To wrap this up, and I am sorry for the length of this blog, Rome had the most influential impact on me that gave me the highest appreciation for history and the European culture, not to mention the finest food I have every had. And you also need to visit Ireland, even if just for a few hours, to get the feel of a completely different culture. This past week was more than I could have wished for and my next blog will be my last where I will wrap up the trip and explain our last day of the program.

Lloyd's of London & Oxfam/Nielsen

Today, Wednesday, we had a break from our projects to travel to London for a speech given by a former ACU Alumni, Doug Lacoss, who currently works for Lloyd’s of London. The speech gave a Christian's perceptive into the business world. Mr. Lacoss started out his presentation by explaining about his time in college, and then proceeded to talk about the many cities and cultures that brought him to the Christian life he lives now. He has encountered a few situations which he has had to overcome since working in London that have increasingly tested his beliefs against what can be “tolerated” with the European business sector. When I say “tolerated”, I don’t mean complete morally wrong issues, but situations that are written down as a rule but can be stretched for certain circumstances. For instance, one situation consisted of hiring a new employee and the benefits this employee could bring to the company. However, with European businesses, the former company that employed an associate can choose to hold/employ this person for up to 6 more months, so now the employee “technically” can’t get a new job during that time because they are still part of the other company. Now, this rule is stretched a little and isn’t completely bad if another company starts employing this person. But Doug saw this as a strong moral conflict which, on one hand, will benefit the company very well during that 6 month time span, but, on the other hand, he would be risking his ethics to create more money for the company. This is one intense double bladed sword! There are actually no serious physical consequences and will be very beneficial to the company therefore raising stock holder wealth, every businesses goal, but will add a trade off of his Christian moral standard to make more money. His decision, of course, was to tell the employee that Lloyd’s cannot work with him until his employment is up at his current job. It was a great moral insight into the European business, and the rest of his presentation dealt with similar ideas.

After the presentation we said goodbye and headed for a lovely lunch along the Thames River. Following lunch, about 10 of us made our way around London in search of the US vs. Algeria soccer game. However, we were lost for about 30-40 minutes and missed most of the game because every pub around was only playing the England game. Finally, we found the Texas Embassy where, naturally, the U.S. game was on. However, the “bouncer” wouldn’t let us in because there was not enough room. Even though we saw a couple of free tables, and we even offered to stand, the answer was still no. So, we decided to leave and went around the side of the Texas Embassy to watch the last 20 minutes game through the window. As you may have heard, the U.S. won, and we all celebrated on the sidewalk with locals and tourists watching us jump around and scream as we were chanting for USA. Shortly after the game we walked to the Underground and took the next available train home. Unfortunately, we had to do a little unexpected train/underground changes because all trains to Oxford from Paddington Station were delayed for roughly an hour or two. This made the trip there a little more exciting because once we found a train, we got to sit down on the nice hard ground instead of the comfortable seats due to an overcrowded train.

On Thursday, back in Oxford, all of Nielsen’s team finished preparing their speeches on Wednesday night and decided to travel over to Nielsen to listen to their presentations they had worked on. They did a remarkable job presenting all their statistics they had collected on the three different gums and how each one measures up in the current market environment. The extensive and in-depth marketing research they gathered was astonishing, even to Nielsen who was shocked that their team collected around 600 surveys from the Oxford community.

Following their presentations, the rest of the day was spent getting our presentation together, which we worked on till about 2:30 Friday morning – it was a very long night. Then once morning came around, we brought our A-game to the table and delivered an incredible presentation to Oxfam targeting all the exact problems while giving concrete solutions to each one. After our presentation and the little extra side job, Nielsen spoke to Oxfam about creating a value gum. We all headed back to the houses for relaxation and a few hours of sleep. The rest of my day was spent getting laundry together and preparing for our Rome trip. (Hint of advice, prepare everything in advance, so at the last minute you aren’t running around trying to figure out how to get to the airport. You can always buy direct tickets online to airports for 20 Euro’s, but if you want to save a good amount of money you can book Megabus online to London for 1 Euro and EasyBus from London to either airport from 2-7 Euro’s.) My friends and I didn’t leave for Rome till Saturday around six which will be all covered in my next post. Next stop Rome & Dublin!

June 21-22

The past couple of days have been quite strenuous. With our Oxfam project and Nielsen’s project due right around the corner, everyone has been working pretty intensely to get them perfect. On Monday, the “Oxfam Headquarters Committee” made a visit to Oxfam’s HQ’s (we are very creative when it came to naming our committees). The visit was extremely beneficial and clarified our needed-to-know questions. We wished we could have planned the meeting a few days earlier so that we would have had a little more time to analyze the answers and how it related to our ideas. However, one thing I found out about projects are that they don’t always flow in the most ideal ways. Also keep in mind that through these different experiences, if you attend a study abroad program you will learn that there is a significant difference in consulting with a company and the group projects we receive at ACU. The guidance we receive with a group is much more helpful on what specifically you need to accomplish, however, your group has to all agree on a certain goal. This project by far is the most difficult yet rewarding project I have faced so far in my college career.

Apart from working together, the feel of this international business class is much different than our marketing class. From a classroom standpoint, we gather in our own groups, on our own time, and get done what we feel is needed most. Within our groups we create the different ideas and guide ourselves. We've learned, through various interviews, how to distinguish what Headquarters has asked of us, how to determine if this is an actual problem, how to analyze data we collect to create an answer to their problem, how to research a wide variety of solutions that will benefit the company, and then finally how to narrow down the best solution and present it. Again, this has been the most challenging project I have ever encountered, but has given me amazing insight into what it is like to be part of a group of individuals that work together as real consultants to create solutions that will benefit a company. Now our trip is coming to an end, but we get to kick it off with a bang by getting to visit Lloyd’s of London tomorrow, which is one of the biggest reinsurance companies in the world, where we get to learn about having Christian ethics in the business world.