Peru Immersion Experience

Hello faithful readers! It has been a crazy couple of weeks here at HBS, hence the reason I've been slacking on the blogging. This week, EC company presentations began so I've been bopping around to those (and their accompanying dessert receptions...can I say yum?), taking care of the duties that go along with being an officer in two clubs, managing school work and trying to have a bit of a social life now and then. But all complaining aside, I have some very exciting news to announce:

I am going to Peru for two weeks in January!

Background Info on my Peru Trip: HBS hosts a series of programs called IXPs, short for Immersion Experience Programs, and every winter term they offer student trips to a variety of countries where you are intended to both learn and have fun. The trips are lead by a member of the faculty and are designed around a specific subject matter. The educational component comes into play through company site visits, panels with executives, alumni events and usually some sort of capstone project. So in the end, it's less of a vacation and more of an educational opportunity, but they do include several cultural activities, some free time and gorgeous, picturesque accommodations. This year they offered IXPs in really exotic destinations: Rwanda, UAE/Bahrain, Vietnam, India, China and Peru. I went to the info sessions for each of the desintations and, in the end, fell in love with Peru, despite the fact that it's probably the least "out of the ordinary" among the countries.

The Peru trip is called "Escaping the Natural Resource Curse" and the business education side is focused on a combination of economics (i.e. building up an economy that has become entirely reliant on the benefits of abundant natural resources, and therefore suffers in most other industrial sectors) and ecotourism (which is totally my thing!). We're visiting some really interesting companies (Brescia, Inkaterra [a rainforest lodge...and we're staying there!], Inca group, Ingrid y Gaston [a 5-star restaurant that we'll also get to eat at!]), visiting the Caral-Supe archeological site, touring Machu Picchu, touring the Sacred Valley of the Incas, AND going ziplining through the Amazon rainforest (how amazingly amazing is that???)!

It's a 13-day trip, and get this, with nearly everything included, costs less than $2K.

Now if I could only figure out how I'm spending the other 4 weeks of winter break, I'd be set!