I'm so excited that in a few hours I will be in London! Today I had my usual classes but made a concious effort to finish as much homework as I could ahead of time. Even though Monday we are going to get back around lunch time I know I probably won't want to do any homework. Plus, Monday is a holiday in Spain so I'm sure there will be some festivals or something fun to do. I wouldn't want to miss out because of homework. Classes today were pretty interesting, of course I'm one of the only ones that thinks so. Most of the other students in my class just stay quiet the entire time either browsing Facebook on their Macs or phones. Sound familiar? Yeah. Anyway, I dont really mind because that just means I get to interact with the professor more and ask an excessive amount of questions. Today in International Business our teacher asked us, "What could we use to measure purchasing power across countries?" The answer was simple. I shot my hand up (even though it's completely unnecessary) and answered, "the Big Mac." Yes. That Big Mac. The one that's made by McDonald's. You think I'm kidding but I'm really not. See the way you compare purchasing power across countries with different currencies is to use a basket of goods (milk, eggs, bread), find the price of that basket and then convert that cost into a common currency (the US dollar). The countries that have the highest cost (relative to the USD) are the ones that have lower inflation, which means their currency is valued more than the USD. So what does the Big Mac have anything to do with this you ask? The Big Mac is a basket of goods. It has bread, meat, cheese, vegetables, labor, overhead, etc. All of these things are calculated in the price of the Big Mac; plus McDonalds is in a majority of countries across the globe. Tah-dah. If you don't believe me just check out this link: http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index Of course, I didn't miraculously learn this on my own. It was one of the many benefits I got from my finance class last semester with Dale Rosenthal. For those of you that don't know, that class was the hardest class I've ever taken in my entire life. Many a night did I cry. But I learned a lot about finance and how to think about things on a deeper level; not to just take what is given to me as fact but really question everything. I also learned how to use, sort and analyze data to predict things about our economy, which I ended up using for a class activity 10 mins after the Big Mac question. In Marketing today we studied a case on Amazon's business model and how they use Big Data to their advantage. They have a really interesting history and they're an amazing company because since day one they have been centered around the customer. I'm really going to miss our guest lecturer, our next class on Tuesday is our last together. So back to the more exciting stuff, London! Ive spent the past few days strategically planning with my friends our iternary for the weekend. I even made a schedule and managed to include most of the things on our bucket list. Some of the things on my bucket list are the Natural History Museum (they have a dinosaur exhibit!), London Bridge, Regents Park, Abbey Road, Buckingham Palace and high tea. Because when in London one must have high tea! I'm actually writing this at the airport because I got here a lot earlier than I expected. In fact, it took me less then 30 mins to get from my apartment to my gate at the airport. That includes waiting for the bus, the bus ride, going through security and finding my gate. Amazing! But now I'm here two hours early. Oh well, I guess being early is better than being late. Time to board the plane!
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