Trip(s) to Asolo

So on Friday last week, we went to Asolo to tour the graduate campus located there. Asolo is a beautiful town but we were there after dark so it was hard to get some good pictures. It is a city built into the hills with a 1,000 year old castle at the top of one of the hills. Wow. The graduate campus there is actually a former convent. Students there complete there MBA in only 1 year -- a very intensive program and very competitive to be accepted (approx 30 students each year). A graduate student there named Brandon gave us a tour around the building --it is definitely nicer than our quarters! It almost makes me want to go to graduate school just so I can live there....but I'm not liking the idea of more school after I graduate from Iowa right now. Anyway, after our tour we had a little bit of extra time before the bus took us back so we went to "Caffe Centrale" and some people ordered a popular drink (spritz). I myself had some gelato and a fritella which is a round pastry that is only available before Fat Tuesday. I got the "fritella crema" so it was filled with this fantastic cream---so delicious. Italians just cook, bake, and make ice cream better than in the United States. It's great.

On Saturday, I did the "Da Vinci Challenge." It was basically an all day event in the gym where we completed all types of different challenges (getting 16 people through a spider web without touching the web, climbing a flat wall without a rope, etc etc) and it was suppose to teach us about all sorts of stuff relevant to business I guess (communication skills, overcoming obstacles, improving processes). I just thought it was a fun play day :) Later Saturday night some people organized a bus to go to Asolo from 10pm-2am, so I decided to go along. Honestly, I was very embarassed to be an American once we got there because most of the students drank a considerable amount before we even left so they were running through the streets and being loud and obnoxious. Not a very good way to blend in. A few of us split into a smaller group and went up to the castle where a classy bar is located. My friend Brittany and I ordered pina coladas and we all chatted and had our drinks in a 1,000 year old castle. How cool is that???

We went back to caffe centrale and got some more fritellas then headed to a different pub where some of the students were. A friend, John, and I heard they had burgers so we were extremely ecstatic to go get one (since we have been craving a burger for forever--hard to come by in Italy). So I had a great burger at this pub and this really dark German beer that wasn't extremely appetizing but it was ok. Overall it was a fun night :)