Thanks Bower for giving me that extra kick in the ol' arse to get me writing on this thing again! I need some good kicks every so often. I realize the last post was in July and it is October, but things are settling (a bit) for me and I know have somewhat steady internet access...
So, what to say? I started school again! There are times that I wonder what the hell I got myself into and times that really inspire me. All the time I ask myself is there anywhere else I would rather be right now and so far every answer is "Nope." I miss Portland dearly. I miss river floats in August with my buds, I miss going to pick apples and pumpkins with Dad and Pam, I miss election debate drinking games with Carmen and company, I miss 2$ microbrews at The Vern, and the Portland breakfast culture, I miss Ultimate!!, bike ganging it to a show/event, I had craving for tootsie rolls recently, but that could be from hanging at too many coffeeshops... But the thing is, I want to grow both in knowledge of the world and myself and this program, I am finding, is a good place for that.
Well, you probably don't want to hear about what I miss about Portland, but more what the hell am I doing and why I don't want to be anywhere else. I wish I could explain everything that has been going on in this post, but that just ain't possible, so again, I'll give a little summup.
The basic philosophy of the program is "action learning." We of course learn concepts, but in a practical how-can-I-use-this-in-the-real-world-way. There are 13 of us in Team 2 (second year of the school) and we come from 6 different countries. We have a team leader who has much experience in both teaching and practical business. She is not our teacher, she is more like a coach in that we run our classroom differently from day to day. We as a team make the decisions about our learning. We decide our agenda for each day as it comes. We decide about creating our room environment, decide when we want our vacations to be, how to spend our budget, etc. It has been a challenge to get 13 people to agree, but that is also part of the learning process and I can see we are already getting better at it. So, where do the real world projects come in you ask? Well, there are several opportunities. KP has 5 business partners who made an agreement to support the school financially because they believe in what we are. There is potential to do projects with them, there is potential to bring in other businesses to do projects and we can create our own projects of course as well. I will talk more about specific projects later.
As to personal things, I am still living in my apartment, but am planning to move in with some other students hopefully soon. I broke up with the guy I was dating when I first moved here in July. This weekend, I am going to a farm outside of Utrecht because I just need to be in the coutryside for a time. Things are moving along and I can see many great things on the horizon. I will post more often so you can come along with me. What good is having all this if you can't share it right? It has been a month now in the program and already I feel I have learned so much! Well, this is getting too long I think, but just know that I love you all.
