After one week....

A week has flown by. It has been exhausting but so interesting. I wish I could go into details about my job because that part is so interesting. I know that with each assignment I will see different situations and experiences. We had a prelim wrap up for the general mgr and his mgmnt team on Thurs where we gave him bullet points of our findings and what will be in our report to headquarters in dd. I was told by my team that it could go either way but ours went well and they agreed to the points we made. THe gm was very serious about making the easy changes right away. The plant was very old and originally a brickmaking plant. In parts of the warehouse there were actually catacombs! It was hot & danky when we were going through those part. For those who knows me can imagine how hot & sweaty I got!

On Thursday we had dinner at a restaurant in the city center in bad oyenhausen by our hotel. A had a nice dish of huge grilled shrimp on top of risotto. It was bad timing that Guido mentioned he gained 13 lbs when he started this job, which was only 6 months ago!! Crap, I can see how it could happen, especially when i reluctantly agreed to eat Burger King on Wed so we could get back to the hotel for more work. So junk food along with big meals at restaurants, great bread at breakfast, cheeses, coffee with lots of cream & sugar - I might hit that 13 lb gain in the first 3 months! This morning back at my apt I forced myself to eat a bowl of cereal and a yogurt for breakfast.

Anyway, after dinner Emrah, Guido & myself decided to walk back to the hotel while Stefan drives the car back. The city center was so quaint and quite crowded. The streets are of cobble stones so my rolling laptop bag felt really loud and obnoxious. We stopped halfway to get gelato. It was an afterthought that this was not helping my goal to not gain weight during this assignment! By the time we got to our hotel I realized that the city center was only a couple of blocks away! I will definitely do more strolls and take pictures next week. I also plan to book some massages as well! The main tourist draw for this small town are the spa clinics. I learned that it's not so easy to get massages in DD. They don't have spa resorts like Scottsdale that's for sure!

We left the Porta office at 6 for the 2 hr drive back to DD. Had to stop for dinner at McDonalds midway. OMG, more junk food! I don't remember that last time I ate at McD! Guido loves fast food but at least Emrah is the same court as me and likes to eat decent meals. When we were driving to Mcdonalds there was a strip joint right next to it with big billboards of naked women. What the hell?! We parked our car right in front of the pink door that leads into the club. I offered to take a picture of the guys in front of the 30 foot cut out of a naked woman but they declined :-) I think they said something to the effect of careers being ruined over a picture.

Before dropping off the company car at the hkl campus the guys drove through and showed me parts of the campus including our office building. In a word, it's ugly! Our building looked old and in the same area as the detergent factory buildings. We are not near the big wigs who are in the much nicer part of the campus.

Last night I walked to the grocery store to buy some misc stuff. I needed hand soap and literally walked by it 4-5 times looking for rows of choices. At home there's at least a dozen brand and types of hand soap so I was expecting the same. I finally found something I thought was hand soap. It was in a bottle and it had a pump in it. I forgot to look up the german word for handsoap and was hoping to see a picture or a word or brand I would recognize - no Dial brands here! I also had to buy dishwashing soap and it was mixed in with the soaps for soap for dishwashing machines. Again, no pictures to help me! Then I had to figure out how to buy yogurt, not so easy either! No yoplait brand so I just took a guess. What I bought - Sahne Joghurt lime flavor - turned out to be sooooo yummy! I am going back to get more later! Whew this was a much more challenging shopping trip than last week. I know bread and fruits and veggies when I see it!! They don't have grocery bags here so you have to bring your own. I am SO glad I threw in a recyable grocery bag when I packed. This and my big roomy purse is enough room to carry what I need. Again, I used the basket instead of the shopping cart to make sure I only buy what I can carry home.

It is challenging not knowing german but I seem to get by. I already know a few simple words like please, thank you, days of the week, 1-10. I found that I do like the german language and really do want to learn it. Each day I try to learn a new word and my colleagues have been very helpful. I am confident that I will at least learn broken german within this next year, only because I will not be in germany the whole time. It's also helpful being around people speaking german. Sometimes the guys forget I'm there, or I come into the room later and they are deep in a conversation in german. They try to convert to english after awhile! Now I know how Gary feels when he's in my parents' kitchen sandwhiched between my brother in law while they yak away in vietnamese. SOmetimes they remember he's there and speak some english to him. What a good sport he is to stick to the custom of the men sitting together to chat while the women hang out separately.

I slept for 9 hours! I guess I needed to catch up with my sleep from the past week. This morning I decided to go for a long walk. Put on my merrels and looked on the map with a destination in mind. THe Konigsalle shopping is easily reached by subway but I wanted to see if I could walk there. The long and short of it was I only got half way when I realized I was a little overambitous! I had already walked 2 miles and getting hungry so I decided to turn around. On the way back I stopped in a chinese take out place to pick up lunch. The menu was in german as most are here and I asked the lady if she spoke english. Ofcourse she shook her head! Crap, I was trying to figure out how to say to go in german and I didn't quite have my meats in german yet. Then suddenly I heard the cook say something in vietnamese. what luck! I was then able to talk to her in vietnamese and place my order. I would come back to this place but not too much since they only took cash which makes it more of a pain when I do my expense report.

After lunch I decided to take a quick nap. Well, for the first time I used the eye cover that the airlines give you. OMG, I passed out for two hours! That thing is great! Parker had texted me to see if I wanted to meet him & family earlier to shop before we eat and I only had half an hour to get ready. Parker had been here since June and is doing a 2 year expat assignment. He was my old boss and a great guy. I met his wife Melissa and 5 year old daughter for the first time. We got along great. Parker & Melissa never had a chance to travel so they are so excited about this new adventure. This was Melissa's first time out of the country. I was amazed at their daughter's ability to pick up the language, they actually just got here 2 weeks ago. Parker would tell her how something is said in german and she just repeats it perfectly. The expats have an international school where the kids can go. It's taught in english but they get at least one hour a day of german lessons. It's definitely a different way of life. The tram stop is right in front of their house and it stops right in front of the supermarket so that's house she does their shopping. THey did bring their bmw over from the states and Parker is already zipping around in the city. I was amazed at how quickly he has caught on in the ways of german life in the 2+ months he's been here. Anyway, I was very happy to have a chance to hang out with them. We had dinner at an italian restaurant - Ga Noi. It was sooo yummy, I will definitely go back.

3 more weeks before Gary gets here! I can't wait to see my guy. Last week I booked our hotel in Amsterdam. We'll spend 5 days there. I still have to decide where we want to go the weekend before that. Either Berlin or Hamburg I think.

Need to read over the report tonight. The guys are appreciating the fact that I am a native english speaker as they are using to help with grammar and overall writing of the report. We are meeting at 5pm tomorrow to work in the office for a few hours before driving north to the plant.