Days 61 – 67: Monday, August 29th – Sunday, September 4th

First of all, I feel that I should apologize for not having kept up with this blog the past week. I was pretty busy and there were a few days when I was sick. Still I feel a little guilty for not posting. So I’ll try and make this week round up as interesting as I can.

Monday – It was pretty much a standard day of waking up, heading to work, and a not overly stressful morning. In the afternoon Navina, Stephen, and Anne-Sophie brought the group of students from Nigeria for their first class and I had to set up the rooms for their “Welcome.” Setting up the rooms was easy and I took some video and photos of the reception before going back to work and continuing on with my day until I had to meet with Erfaan and Sinem to discuss our plans for the marketing video that we’re wanting to create.

Tuesday – I had quite a few people asking me when my boss Andrew would be coming in that morning and later found out that he was sick and wouldn’t be coming at all that day. One of the teachers that was taking care of one of the Nigerian student groups came in to complain about the kids spilling soda and making a mess in the room. I apologized to him since Andrew wasn’t there and assured him that the drinks provided to the students were only there on Monday for their reception and that there wouldn’t be any more for the remainder of their classes.

Later in the afternoon I took a group of students to the Museum für Kommunikation (Museum of Communication) as a trip because their teacher was actually gone and in the hospital and we had no chance to get a substitute that day. I actually had quite a lot of fun going with this group of students. We went to the museum and then afterwords went to the hostel where a lot of them are living. We ate some chips, apple crepes, nuts, and drank some tea with their friends there before we all headed out to go eat at a restaurant. We ended up outside Friedrichstraße at this restaurant that had a nice mix of different types of food. I had to help a few students with questions about the menu, since it was mainly all in German, but I still had a lot of fun eating with the others. I had the spinach pizza and it was really good.

Wednesday – Andrew actually sent an email out saying he was sick and wouldn’t be coming to work on that particular day. So I was at least glad that he sent a message letting us know, that way I could just tell everyone he wasn’t coming in that day when I answered the calls. It was actually a pretty uneventful day other than people coming in to have a meeting at the table in Andrew’s room where I was working. They were kind of loud, but it wasn’t too difficult to ignore them.

Thursday – So I got to EURASIA early and started working at 8:00, then I was surprised when the new secretary showed up and Andrew not long after her. Apparently she was suppose to start that morning and so Andrew told me that I needed to move out of the desk and to another office. Which didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, until I needed to check the email’s I was getting. I have never set up a computer to use outlook before and I didn’t even know where to begin. So I ended up asking Andrew to please set it up since Noemi, who normally sets up emails for people, was on vacation and won’t be back for at least another week. It didn’t work correctly so I was able to see not only my emails, but also a good number of emails from others’ mailboxes. Oh and to make the day even better the computer I had to start using died about five times suddenly during the day while I was working. Yeah I love my new workspace!

Friday – Friday, Friday, oh how long it takes to get to 4:00 pm on Friday. I started working at my new desk again and had to fumble trying to remember the new password for this computer. I did my normal work for most of the day but around 2:00 pm I had to answer student questions and such while pretty much everyone else on the staff, excluding some of the teachers and us interns, were in a meeting with the boss and t seemed to last forever. Erfaan, Sinem, and I had arranged a meeting with Andrew at 3:00 in order to show him our idea for the video and to get approval to go ahead with the project. It was a little after 4:00 when we got to have five minutes to explain our idea very quickly. Erfaan did all of the talking even though he was stumbling through it, but I couldn’t get a word in to help so I just answered one question when it was asked. I also called home and talked to my dad, my mom, and my aunt on Friday night. I tried calling my brothers but they were busy and didn’t answer. I’ll just have to try calling them another time.

Saturday – I was actually really looking forward to this day all week. I slept in and had lunch around 12:30. I just watched some tv and relaxed until it was later in the afternoon before I got dressed to head out. I went to the Olympic Stadium and bought a ticket to Pyronale, the World Championship of Fireworks. I was really excited and didn’t mind waiting for an hour for the gates to open. I wish I would’ve known though that I could bring my own food and drink inside, but by the time I found that out it was already too late. I went and sat down on the ground near the front of the field, since it’s standing room tickets it just means there are no chairs. I had to kill about two and a half hours before the fireworks would start. I read some on my Nook until it got too dark and I couldn’t read any more and proceeded to grab a soda and listen to my mp3 player. The soda was really expensive, as I figured it would be, but they charged me an extra euro for the cup that said it was from the Olympic Stadium. Needless to say, I took the cup home with me later. The firework show was really exciting and fun to watch. I only got to see three of the six teams compete since the others had performed the night before. I saw Finland, England, and Poland and I have to say that I really enjoyed Finland and Poland, but I wasn’t really that fond of England’s. I did take some pictures of the fireworks and they turned out pretty nice. I’ll put a few of them up later to add to this post. I stayed late to find out who won the competition and the results were: 3rd place – Russia, 2nd place – Finland, and 1st place – Poland. Poland also won the “Best of the Day” award which was voted on by the crowd sending text messages, whereas the whole competition had judges to score all six teams.

Sunday – So since Sunday is usually my day for relaxing and cleaning I did laundry and cooked up some vegetables with yellow curry sauce. I used about ten potatoes, half a thing of celery, half a box of carrots, and about 8 of the tiny tomatoes. It turned out really well and now I’ve got enough of the vegetables to last me most of the week. I kind of like cooking a bunch of vegetables at once and just having to make rice, noodles, or some other side dish to go with them.

Day 60: Sunday, August 28th

This morning I was still kind of sick and tried to relax most of the afternoon. I had a major headache that was all centered back behind my temple and in a fairly good sized area. I hate having headaches and feeling like crap on top of that. I did have to get up and go to Schonefeld Airport to meet with Navina and Anne-Sophie to meet a group of students who were arriving from Nigeria that will be studying at EURASIA for a few days as they tour around Berlin and then go to Paris on their week travel. It took me an hour to get to the airport because it is in the most southern area of Berlin. I was the first to arrive so I waited for the two girls who were suppose to be their guides for the week. I was told to go just to try to take some pictures and video of the group’s arrival. We finally got the group out of the airport after waiting about an hour for them to pick up their things and took them to the bus waiting for us. On the way to the hotel we found out that none of them had eaten dinner, so by now it was already after 10pm and we had to kind of scramble to figure out how to find them food. We got them checked into their hotel and then managed to take them all over to this italian restaurant across the street so they could eat. We left after they had ordered their food and by the time I got home it was already 11:15. Hopefully I can take off early one day to make up for the extra four hours I put in today.

Day 59: Saturday, August 27th

Saturday is a day that I usually use to relax and catch up a little on sleep. My original plan for this Saturday, however, was to work on writing my paper for my university about my internship. This failed miserably because I was sick and couldn’t focus and after struggling for awhile to try and write something, I gave up knowing that I was too out of it to actually write anything of worth and that I should rest more. I didn’t really do anything until the evening when I cooked myself dinner. Even after that I just went back to my room and laid on my bed to try and sleep. The fact that it was gray and rainy all day didn’t really help much of anything either.

Day 58: Friday, August 26th

Today at work wasn’t too difficult. In truth it was kind of boring. We had a meeting at 2:30 with most of the staff and people talked about the changes in offices and phone numbers. So to try and make people happy I updated the phone list as much as possible and gave people copies before having to have a meeting with the video editor who will be helping with the marketing video. I was kind of annoyed when I was at work an extra hour or so. Friday night I went out to a cafe and sat reading for a couple hours before heading back home. Unfortunately it was really warm today so the office was a small oven, but opening the windows didn’t help because there was no breeze and just made it so much louder from the construction outside.

Day 57: Thursday, August 25th

Today wasn’t all that interesting. I had to help some students with paying their bills, take care of some applications, and directed people to where peoples’ new desks where. I did get to create a new format invoice from scratch and around the third draft I got it to where it looked the best and fit our letterhead perfectly. That was about the most interesting part of my day.

Day 56: Wednesday, August 24th

I was really tired today after staying up a little late last night talking with a few of my friends. I got to work early and started working at the normal time. It was strange to see my boss come in at about a quarter after 8:00, normally he doesn’t come in until much later in the day. I had to help Imran move his desk out of his office and into another office down the hall. It was very strange because Imran wasn’t the only one who switched offices today. Anje moved offices as did Jing Ji. So now I have to memorize all the extension numbers again since they changed.

I worked on two admission packets, created a new invoice for a student who needed to pay for their airport pick up, and met with Imran and a new student intern to discuss the marketing video that we’re wanting to put together. It was good to be able to talk with someone else and get feedback on ideas instead of just sitting at my desk trying to think up ideas for the video presentation.

Day 55: Tuesday, August 23rd

Today I helped some more students with their accounts, admissions, and searched for more liquid shoe polishes made in Germany. Yeah that’s right. That last one is a strange request my boss had for me to do and so I’ve been trying but finding liquid shoe polish made in Germany and sold in a 220 Liter drum is extremely difficult to find. It was storming on and off all day and it was rather strange because it was raining harder with the sun shining than it had been when it was dark from being so cloudy.

I did enjoy talking with my friend Tabi from my German class and my former Japanese instructor Tomoe on facebook. Tabi and I were just discussing tv shows we like, but I was discussing linguistics and graduate school with Tomoe. We also talked about the differences between going to college in the United States, Germany, and Japan. It was a really interesting conversation and a lot of fun.