Graduation: On May 15th we received our MBA diplomas at the graduation ceremony in Philadelphia.
Erwin the happy graduate Lucija and family
INSEAD Exchange: After finishing our Wharton classes in Philly, we qualified to take part in an exchange program with Wharton’s partner school INSEAD. Thus we spent 6 weeks in May and June at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. We had fun trading in our urban Philadelphia lifestyle for the French countryside. We lived on a beautiful farm (with chickens, geese and horses…), enjoyed French cuisine, met some fun European students and made the most of our last days as students.
Château de Bellefontaine, where we lived A lunch at INSEAD with other Wharton friends
Training for the Big Ride: After some heated discussions with US Airways over whether our bicycle boxes qualified as “oversize luggage” or “sporting equipment” (which determined the relevance of an extra $400 fee!), we managed to bring our bikes to France with us, where we did most of our training rides. We liked to joke that, like Lance Armstrong, we were “training in France”. Unlike Philadelphia drivers, the French seemed to be quite accustomed to sharing their roads with cyclists, which made our training rides through the many picturesque French villages very pleasurable. Fortunately our school was located 15 miles away from our home, so it was easy to squeeze in daily 30 mile training rides. In the end, our longest training ride was 80 miles, and our longest weekly mileage was 220 miles. We hope we are adequately trained (stay tuned…)
Lunch break next to a church water fountain Lucija on bike