Srikar Kalapala

It’s been a couple of weeks since I landed back in Milwaukee, and I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on my CIMBA experience. It’s been an absolutely wild ride. We started by meeting strangers from different universities and are now one big CIMBA family. Together, we’ve been through experiences ranging from the mutual anxiety of midterms to traveling the world together.

It is hard to believe, but we are right by the finish line. The semester has completely flown by, and navigating finals week while simultaneously soaking in the very last days of the program is incredibly hectic and emotional. Here are my top tips and tricks for surviving finals week abroad.

The semester is flying by, but the weekend trips are keeping us on our toes. For our second official travel weekend, my group of friends and I decided to take on Greece. We used Athens as our home base, staying there every night, but our actual days were spent bouncing all over the country. If you haven't noticed a theme with our trips yet, we definitely like to keep our itineraries packed and moving fast.

Ciao everyone! While my last post was all about the whirlwind of traveling across four countries in four days, life back on campus at CIMBA has also been impactful. A few weeks ago, I wrote about our Genesis workshop. Recently, we went through another intensive 2.5-day structured program called Live2Influence.

Ciao everyone!If you had told me at the start of this semester at CIMBA that I’d manage to hit four countries across two continents in a single spring break, I’d have called you crazy. And.. it was. Yet, it ended up being one of the coolest experiences of my life. Let’s get into it.

Time is definitely moving quickly here at CIMBA. In my last post, I wrote about the group of people I met at the Frankfurt airport after our winter weather delays. We've been traveling together on weekends, and we recently finished a great long weekend attending the Men’s Big Air Freestyle Skiing event at the Olympics (a few of us even made it on TV!). Traveling with this group has been a major highlight of my time abroad. To wrap up that weekend, we had an incredible day trip that came together completely by accident.

A couple of weeks ago, I arrived at CIMBA after scrambling with winter storm weather delays and the uncertainty of new airports. After barely making my flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, I was fortunate enough to meet several CIMBA students who were flying into Venice with me. It wasn’t long after that that I realized that I would be walking into one of the most transformative experiences of my life. I’ve been traveling on weekends and even planning a trip to the Olympics with many of the people I met at Frankfurt airport that day. Now, with a couple of weeks of getting settled in under my belt, I wanted to take some time to reflect on an experience that isn’t talked about often: Genesis.