Well, we had another dinner with Dr. Petrick (yes, we're becoming quite spoiled) and it served to renew my excitement even more about being here this summer. We're working on setting up meetings with some of the biggest names in Bangalore, and I'm seriously star struck thinking about the questions I want to ask to some of the executives in one of the most powerful IT cities in the world. This opportunity truly was once in a lifetime (maybe...), so I want to make sure I'm taking advantage of every avenue possible.

Some of the talking points Matt and I came up with were:

- Getting started in the industry, and moving up into leadership roles
- Entrepreneurial drive of young people in India/internationally
- Future trends in the industry, where will we be in 5/10 years?
- The next “place to be” – developing countries to keep an eye on?
- Opinion of western soft skills, differences in working across cultures
- Workforce habits and changes to adapt to a “follow the sun” work day
- Biggest players in the services/consulting industry going forward (Australia?)
- Most critical skill(s) to have to succeed in today’s economy/work world
- Important takeaways and experiences we MUST HAVE before we leave

These are just starting points, and I'd like to hear more about each person's specific passion and/or area of expertise, but still, there may be things we're not thinking of. So actually, I know I have a decent community of readership from IST and other technical people, what would YOU ask or what would YOU like to know? Let me know before I start having some of these conversations, as I'd be interested to hear what other people think.

And for those of you less technically inclined, sorry if I just went way over your head or at least way over your level of interest. I do have a decent story to share from a shuttle ride encounter today. I got to talking to the gentleman next to me (as I typically like to do) and he asked the standard fare questions about how I'm enjoying his country and how I'm doing. (I realize I'm taking them for granted as standard fare questions here as I'd imagine foreigners aren't always treated this way in the US, but so many people have been asking me how I'm doing and where I'm from, etc., that I can honestly regard it as commonplace.) Anyway, when I was asking him a little bit about himself, he told me he was going to Arizona next week for the first time and wanted to know what to expect.

I was so happy for the first time to be able to help someone or at least start to help someone in one of the ways I've been helped here. I enjoyed hearing about the perceptions he had and the reservations he had, as there are things that in the US we would consider normal that a foreigner would find odd just as I encountered here. He wondered if people in Arizona would have very difficult accents like some people he's dealt with in Kentucky do. He wondered if he would need warm clothes in Arizona if it was a cold state. He wondered if it would be possible to see the different colored leaves on the trees, as that's something he'd heard about that sounded like an awesome phenomenon to him. Although I've never been to Arizona myself, these questions weren't too hard to answer for someone native to the US, and I finally felt a small sense of giving back just like I've been aided so many times by people here with questions they might consider to be obvious.

When we were talking with Dr. Petrick last night, she asked us each what is the one thing we'd miss the most, and I had to think about it for awhile, but eventually it became obvious: the people. Not that we don't have good people in the US because we CERTAINLY do, I mean of course, but I was just surprised how eager everyone has been here to talk to me and I will miss that when I go back to being just 1 out of 42,000 "average" undergrads at Penn State in the fall. Today is July 9, and I will be home on Saturday, August 9 - it's so hard to believe that we'll be leaving in just one month's time, and really, I don't want to leave! I'm just very excited for the last month because we have a lot of awesome travels ahead, hopefully a lot of wonderful networking opportunities with industry leaders, and also I'm looking forward to really adding some value in the areas where I've worked hard on my projects. It's a heavy load for one month, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. Watch out!