Last night in Bad Oeynhausen

Last night at dinner I got a pat on the shoulder from the guys. Usually they help me translate the menu and order for me. I started to ask S- to ask them if I could order the fish but substitute potatoes for rice. When the waiter came I stopped S- and decided to try for myself. The waiter understood me and the guys were very surprised! Before everyone is impressed with my german all I did was point to the fish on the menu and said "mit jasminreis" klein which means I ordered the small portion of fish with jasmin rice. I had learned that J is pronounced like Y so I really did say it right. Since I've been here I found that the germans do like it when you make an effort to learn their language.

Yesterday morning I went for a walk through town and got some great shots with the morning light. It was quiet with only a few people around. I was amazed at how pretty the town was. We haven't really had time to explore. Our assignment is in Porta which is 20km away and we are staying in the town of Bad Oeynhausen which is known for its spa clinics. Bad means bath and it's refering to the thermal bath houses that are around. It's killing me that I won't have the opportunity to take advantage of the spas!. I keep hoping that I could at least take in a massage at a small day spa around the corner from our hotel but it closes at 8pm. This week we have been leaving the office around 8, then go to dinner and are back at the hotel 9-10pm.

We were doing so great with our time schedule but on Tuesday our boss (who was is in China right now) threw a curveball and made an agreement without the team's knowledge. Ofcourse the guys were so pissed and upset over it. I think it was when they started drinking beer at dinner! Things worked out but it gave me a good learning opportunity on how it was handled.

Tonight we had dinner outside again. The guys talked me into having a caphrinia with dinner. I think I drank a quarter of it and poured the rest into Guido's glass. I thought I ordered spaghetti but instead I got a strange dish of flat noodles with small pieces of beefsteak. Oh well, it was good. Even though our big meeting is not until tomorrow afternoon we felt like celebrating tonight. It was the usual banter with E making fun of the germans and S and G making fun of the Turkish. For now they are leaving me out of the line of fire but I'm not sure how long that will last. Tonight I taught them some more lessons on american slang. I announced my nicknames for them. S- is Bulldog because he just latches on to something and won't let go. He has thick skin because we make fun of him so much and it just bounces right off him. He is our stick-by-the-rule guy but is very knowledgable in all areas. I called E our GQ guy because he dresses so fashionable and is very well spoken. I love his Turkish accent. He didn't understand GQ so we are going to buy him the magazine tomorrow. On the way back to the hotel the guys wanted to stop by the restaurant next to our hotel and have another round of drinks. It was such a nice night to sit outside (in the 60's). I went up to my room and grabbed my dice game LCR. We had fun playing a few rounds.

I have been learning about other colleagues on the team. I'm hoping my experiences with these colleagues will be just as nice. I've learned so much in the last two weeks. All three guys have been super patient with me. They have such a great sense of humour so even though it was a LOT of work it has also been fun. I'm amazed at some of the heated debate and how quickly they cool down and come to an agreement. I guess it's the maturity level but they argue but quickly move on. There's no sulking or holding grudges that I've seen in other working environments.

It's going to be a long day tomorrow. I have a deadline to turn in a document for my asia assignment, we have the final meeting with the site and then have to finalize the report. It will be at least 8pm before we can head back for DD and probably 10:30 before I'm home.

My first accident(minor) abroad!

Monday night we had just gotten back to the hotel and getting our laptop bags from the trunk. I must have laid my hand on the opened trunk for a few seconds while I figure out how to get onto the sidewalk when there's a row of bushes blocking the way. My colleage S- didn't notice this when he slammed the trunk door shut. My first thought wasn't pain but rather a detached thought that something didn't feel right. I was still thinking, did he just shut the door on my hand? S-was ofcourse was horrified and immediately rushed to me to grab my hand to see if it was alright. It really didn't feel extreme pain and was able to close and open my hand. Apparently it shut on the knuckle part of the pinky of my right hand because that was the part that hurt! All three colleagues were ofcourse concerned and kept asking if I need to go to the doctor and I kept insisting that it was fine because there was no blood and I could move my fingers.
G- ran into the restaurant next door and somehow got a bag of ice from them. S- wouldn't let me carry my laptop roll-on bag. I was a little embarrassed all the unneccessary attention. And E- observed the pandemonium with amusement and whispered to me that I could totally milk this for a long time. He was the only one that calmly asked if i was alright and once I said yes he shut up. I could see that S- was very upset about what happened even though I showed him that I could open and close my hand and was ok. It hurt like hell but I didn't want him to feel worse saying that. Meanwhile G was probably thinking, shit, my first gig as assignment leader and there's an on the job incident!

We had made plans to walk to the town center for dinner. We chose a spanish restaurant for tapas and it was so nice sitting outside enjoying a few drinks before dinner. It would have been perfect to order 2 tapas each but apparently there was a minimum of 3 per person. It was a little feast. One of the tapas I chose was grilled shrimp (gambas a la plancha) and I didn't realized it comes with the head on it. The guys weren't too keen on shrimp heads so needless to say I got the dish to myself! The whole night S- kept reminding me to keep my hand on the ice bag. I could seriously milk this for awhile! As it was, the next day, when I was trying to calm the guys down during a heated debate, I just turned to S- and announce that my hand hurt. He immediately shut up and started being concerned about me. It was so cool. I enjoyed it for a few seconds but had to tell him I was jesting. I did tell him that my husband wanted to see him when he comes to visit.

The language barrier sucks!

Yesterday we scheduled a visit to an external warehouse where the people did not speak english. When we toured the facility it was ok but then we sat in a conference room for more than an hour while the conversation was solely in german. I felt stupid just sitting there. Wished I had my BB so I could at least do some work! I was also feeling frustrated I couldn't speak german. I thought back about Gary's comment about this - he thought that there should be a language chip that you can install in your head as needed. Wouldn't that be nice! Better yet, why can't there just be one language per planet! It would make life so much easier. Oh well, enough whining. All in all I was lucky that 90% of the people we had to talk to for this assignment spoke english.

Raining today

It rained all day today. I guess this is the weather the locals are used to. I was told I should carry umbrellas with me at all times because you never know. No wonder the europeans go on vacation in July & August when there are better chances of sunny days. Actually the weather here has been very nice. It has been mostly sunny and in the 70's. Now I understand why few places have air conditioning. I remember being worried when i discovered that my apt did not have ac, neither did our office, or the plant we visited or the hotel.... I am getting the trend! Emrah told me it does not get too hot in germany and if it does the time is very short, so ac is not needed. I keep the windows and the patio door open so it has been fine so far.

THis morning I walked to my favorite bakery down the street. Actually it's the only place opened on Sunday. It's so great to pick up fresh baked bread for the day. Let's forget about my carb intake since I've been here. I also ignored my goal to eat healthy and bought one of those yummy desert. The lady was nice and was explaining to me what each desert was. I thought she would have known my limited german by the way I bought the bread (by pointing to it and said zweit bitte which means two please). As she is explaining nicely what each desert was, I put her out of her misery by pointing to one in random. It turned out to be a sweet concoction of thick custard with peaches on a soft pie crust. OMG I ate the whole thing in 5 minutes! OK, I need to walk more that's all.

Let me just say that the ipad is the best thing ever! I am so glad I bought it and brought it with me on this trip. I have music playing most of the time and have my music library of 5000 songs. I can play scrabble on line with friends and family in the states (I'm totally addicted to Words with Friends). I can watch movies that I downloaded before I left. I can also download pictures into my photo library as I take them. Need to figure out shutterbug so I can post them on the blog. Stefan also has an ipad and convinced me to buy Flight Navigator so we can play against each other.

Did some research on my asia assignment in September. Since I'm leading that one it's up to me to coordinate the workload and also do the little things like choosing hotels and meetings and such. "Unfortunately" due to proximity of the assignment we will have to book a VERY nice hotel near Manila. It's reasonable for expense budget but high by Philippines standard, or so I'm told. I'm coordinating the asia assignment with another hkl colleague who lives in Hong Kong. It's tough with the time difference. I just tried to set up a conference call. My laptop is set to Scottsdale time so I had to make sure I understood it's the right time for where I am in germany and where she is in hong kong. It was confusing!
I already got a note on my assignment in France in October - colleagues from France asking me if I had any dietary requirements. Hello, french food, what's there not to like? I think I'm in bigger trouble there than here with the weight gain. Just remembered that I downloaded Turbo kickboxing on the ipad (have I said it's the best toy ever?!) and have to get into a daily routine. Who wants to diet with so much good food around?! I remember my friend H* saying that she excercises so she can eat whatever she wants. What a great motto.

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.

Third day on assignment

Assignment is very interesting so far. I could tell by the 1st day that this job is going to be fun. It takes me longer to write the reports but the topics are at least familiar. The days have been grueling so far. We start early in the morning and go back to our room after dinner to continue working. Next week will be much better. The people at the plant are very friendly. They are very shy about their english but I tell them it's much better than mine. It was fine for me since I had no trouble understanding what they are saying. I felt bad that they have to make special efforts to speak english when I am in the room. Last night we had dinner at an Italian restaurant around the corner. Stefan is always helpful with translating the menu for me but this time I told him I could manage since they also had italian on the menu. We talked about age and all three are 30 or younger. Oi vay, I felt old.

Our hotel in Bad Oeynhausen (20km from Porta) is nice but not fancy. Great breakfast. Crispy bread, cold cuts, cheeses, fresh fruits and yogurts. The germans love their nutella! I don't eat much cheese at home but love the local cheeses in europe.

I hate to say that I have become a coffee drinker. I never drink coffe at home because it upsets my stomach and it doesn't taste so good. The coffee here tastes much better and I am liking the custom of a cup of coffee after lunch to give you a boost for the rest of the afternoon. Today at lunch I told the group about employees in AZ have asked for a special area where they could take "cat naps" during their breaks. They had a good laugh and said they don't need a nap, just coffee.

Today we agreed to have a quick dinner at Burger King in order to get back to work. I told them I will only do this once in awhile since it's bad food! Stefan showed me how to eat fries with a small wooden fork. I thought it was funny, who needs to be dignified in a fast food place?!

1st day cont'd

Found a little bakery on my morning walk so ofcourse I stopped in to pick up a fresh baguette. Very happy with this find since everyone warned me that everything is closed on Sunday. On top of that a few doors down was a small florist shop so I bought some fresh cut sunflowers to brighten up the apartment.

I met Megan for dinner. She showed me how to use the tram/subway when we used it to get to Altadt (old town DD). What a difference to the mellow neighborhood of the apartment. It was a bustling area of shops and restaurants. WIth the nice weather everyone was sitting outside and people watching. Megan warned me that this area gets crazy on Saturday nights with party groups. I will have to come back when I'm in town for the weekend. We found a nice french restaurant in the area. I ordered the day's special even though I wasn't sure what it was. There was a 50/50 chance I would like it so what the hey. It was a whole long description in german but what I got was a salad with chicken. Not bad but not great. That will teach me to be adventurous.

Got back just in time to meet my colleagues at 8pm for the drive up to Porta, a small town 2.5 hours north of DD. A group of 3 young guys. Very nice but very different in personalities. We had fun getting to know each other. Two from germany and one from Turkey. Emrah just got back from the mandatory military service. I remember learning about this and always thought it would be a good thing if we had this law in the US. The whole ride up we made fun of stefan who had points against him from a previous ticket and could not afford to get a ticket, so he barely drove above speed limit. 1st day of work tomorrow!