First Day at EM Lyon

This past Monday was the first day of meetings for the MBA program. Technically, they were not classes but rather a chance for students from the full-time MBA and the executive MBA programs to meet, exchange information and make contacts which are supposed to be important over the course of the year. After one week spent with eight other international colleagues, finally the French -- but what a crowd! One person who was raised in France but worked and studied in Hong Kong and the US; a Brazilian of Polish descent (?!); a Cote d'Ivorien of Vietnamese descent (?!), and so on. Many of the French have worked abroad or here in American companies and speak fluent English, if not other languages.

One executive MBA who I spent four years in the Kansai area, and though he said he wasn't able to become fluent in the language he nevertheless enjoyed his stay very much.

After the self-introductions we had volleyball matches (although it was more like ping-pong then volleyball, with anything-goes rules) between makeshift teams of full-time and executive MBAs. Somehow, the teams I was on always lost; but then again, these matches were not terribly serious, after all. And yes, I did tape up my fingers before playing. Fortunately. My Chinese colleague had bruises all over her arm from the volleyball (I admit, not the best of ideas as a sport for those who have not played it much).

In the afternoon we divided into smaller teams and headed back down from the EM Lyon school towards the city center, to do a series of preassigned tasks. It was instructive, as we were given a list and told, "to go and do them." And so within the group, inevitably, some people took the lead, others decided to be followers, we divvied up the tasks and broke into sub-groups to divide the load, and finish the tasks. Some of the tasks: find the recipe for the trip sausage andouillette; take a tour of the traboules, the hidden passageways that connect opposite ends of buildings in the old Vieux Lyon quarter; find a statue of Bartholdi (also known for the Statue of Liberty in New York) in central Lyon.

As one of the old Lyon hands I took charge of half the group and led a couple of French executives through Vieux Lyon -- and how surprised they were when I found not one, but two, traboules!

We regrouped in the Place Bellecour plaza and headed back to the campus, right as it was about to rain. In the lounge where everybody met, everybody was falling asleep from the exercise in the morning, and the walking in the afternoon. More exercise than they had probably been used to.