What a Great Team

What I feared would happen, did happen, but it turned out to be a really good thing. Go figure. When I got back after lunch, the groups that has established themselves began to assemble at different tables. There were several other people that were not already grouped up, but the funny thing is, NONE of them are the ones that I "feared" getting grouped with, but instead, are several of the ones I had on my "wish list". I'm not going to put names here, but rather a bit of a description. There are three women and two men on our team. One woman is our "remote" user and will be working online, but she is extremely interesting, accomplished, and has great ideas. She has a strong knowledge base about India, including the language, as this is her home country although she now lives and works here in the U.S. She also has ideas that run all the way out to the edge of the box and tries to go even further. She is a great asset on the team. [P.S. If you look back a couple of messages ago, you'll find mention of a woman I met when I first arrived. Well...this is her!] The other woman is young, and the quietest of the Taiwanese group that I've been "hanging out" with. However, she has a very strong incentive for being here, and has moved here just to attend the program this year. Although she doesn't speak up as much as we think she will later, when she does, she is very intelligent and has interesting ideas to share. One of the men is very young, out of undergraduate school only a couple of years. He is quite lively, and has a very strong computer skill set. It's funny that we have teamed up on conversation before, and have ended up together on this team, as we are at extremes in a lot of ways (old/young, female/male, tame/wild) but still find a huge amount of common ground. The other man is quite interesting, and is from Houston (lives, works, runs a business there). He was one that I selected on day one as someone I didn't think I could work well with, but I swung to the other extreme after we worked on a small activity together. He is extremely intelligent, well read, has a wide range of interests, and is very plain-spoken (forthright!), but has some incredible insights and is willing to share them, open-mindedly, with the group. So...that's us...we have a TEAM and I like it! We have tons of homework to accomplish, so I'll be up half the night, but I am so looking forward to this semester and finding out what kinds of things we are able to accomplish together. Whoo Hoo...I have a TEAM, and it's a GOOD one!