I talked with my mom on the phone today and she asked why I haven't updated all week and if i was just getting jaded by adventures and slacking on the blogging. So you can thank her for crackin the whip haha
the real reason is that I've been sick this week and work has been incredibly boring. I went to an art showing yesterday which was neat (I saw a lobster made of white feathers sitting in a desert, that was interesting) and a 2 hour long meeting today which wasn't interesting by any means but it was all in German and I got to listen. A lot. I also got put on the spot and had to explain some stuff I'd been researching (in German). That was a little nerve wracking, but it's a pretty small office so people are starting to recognize me like oh the little American intern! so they're patient at least haha
this week I debuted the concept of Mail Merging, which is basically when you send out mass letters but put individual names on it. So, you send out 100 letters talking about your organization but each one says , "Dear Mr. Jones" "Dear Mrs. Smith" at the top. Well, no one in the office knew you could set up the computer to do that for you, so they had been changing it indivdually. Holy wow. I don't even want to think about all the time wasted. Anyway, I set it up and that opened a can of (extremely boring) worms for me since this allowed them to send LOTS of letters in a much shorter time frame. So I paid for my ingenuity by spending hours feeding envelopes into a prehistoric printer. But it's nice to know I made the place more efficient. But that has essentially been the week-making up mailing lists, typing a lot of junk up, learning my way around a German keyboard, and going downstairs to ask for "Umschlägen ohne Fenster" the German word for envelopes without windows. Living the life of a office girl! :) It's not bad though, and I'm glad I can help them out. Matthias has been teaching me some new words and everyone has been trying to speak more German with me. Oh, and I got to ride in a Smart Car! I barely fit :P
Tonight I went out with Peter and Maria! I was really glad when he called since it's been over a week since I last saw him. We had a drink by the river and then walked around a bit and I learned a few new words from them. One thing I love about Peter is that he always takes time to explain words and phrases to me, no matter how random or useful. And plus he always includes the backstory or some weird detail about it and I'm always amazed how even the most random thing he teaches me will come up in conversation or in normal life and I'm like, oh, Peter told me about that! It's really funny learning a language that way cause every word has a anecdote attached to it. I remember the first time I learned "Entschuldigung" (with Robert and Peter at Christmas in a train station after I ran into someone) or "Type" (at the Bier Garten by the Spree) or "Mir ist heiß" (in Rouen at a Chinese resto when I was sick) or "was ist den los?" (with Anna on the bus en route to Bar de l'U). I know so many awesome Germans, it's cool that they've all been part of my German learning experience.
anyway, we hung out tonight but headed home when it started raining. I'm leaving the city this weekend to head to Weimar...kinda random but we'll see how it goes. Might be nice to see something different for a change! :)
hopefully i'll have something interesting to blog about by the time I get back!
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