One Month Milestone Broken!

Over the weekend my 31st day in Germany passed, and thus I have been in another country for more than a month.  My previous record was the 29 days that I spent in Costa Rica two summers ago.  Let's see...we can talk a bit about what I've been doing this week, although it's really nothing too crazy.

Welcome Packages


As I told everyone last week, I have been tasked with creating the welcome package for the Summer Academy.  By Friday I had a rough draft of the little booklet.  However, there is still a lot of information left to put in it, and the problem is that a lot of the information I need is in German.  I was supposed to have a lot more time this week to do it, but my boss then asked me to do like 5 other things and by the time I knew it I had run out of time.  What a crazy week this was...more info on these welcome packages as they get prepared and sent out.

The unintentional BHAG...


I am not sure if all of you have heard about this term.  A BHAG is used in goal setting as something that you should strive to achieve, but is many times unachievable.  It stands for big, hairy, audacious goal.  Well...my head was big, hairy and definitely audacious, though it was not really a goal of mine to get it to this level.

I look like a combination of Wolverine an Jack Nicholson...not pretty.

Now...I have actually been looking for somewhere to get a haircut, but paying 20 EUR to get my hair cut was not really something I wanted to do.  Therefore, I stalled...and stalled...and stalled...until my hair was looking like this.  I have reached the tipping point...can't do this anymore.  I was getting annoyed over how long it was, so I asked my buddy yesterday if he could take me to one place he knew where it was like 11 EUR.

My head looks bigger, haha.

Ok, so it ended up being 12 EUR, but I can no longer feel hair in my forehead.  That was more than 2 months, and by far the longest time I had gone without a haircut.  And that is the story of how I ended up getting a haircut after 2 months.

Erryting else


Besides working and hanging out with the people here, I have been watching a ver large amount of movies.  God bless Internet streaming, because I am yet to miss a recent movie that I wanted to watch.  Thor, Fast Five, Hangover 2 and many more...seen them all.  And then there's all new South Park, and Colbert/The Daily Show to give me my weekly dose of America.  These last two I usually watch all together at the end of the week.  It's a funny couple of hours every week.

Simply cannot believe I have been here for one month already, and now I'm simply looking forward to getting this Summer Academy ready to go.  Lots of paperwork to make sure these international students can come to Germany.  These Germans have as much paperwork or more than Americans, and about twice the amount of government bureaucracy.  This week should be pretty awesome as well because I SHOULD get paid, unless someone messed up my paperwork, which would really suck...but hopefully all goes well.  For now I'll keep working hard and actually having a good sleep pattern for once.

Parting words:

-Go Bruins!  Congrats on getting to the Stanley Cup Finals!  Beat the Canucks!
-Please, dear God...the Mavs better beat the Heat because I hate Lebron James.
-Germany beat Uruguay in an international friendly today.  Woo, Deutschland!
-Hangover 2 is good but not as good as the first one, and a little bit too out there for my taste.

Are you guys from the US? HELLO!!! ME TOO! (And we also talk about life-changing decisions...no big...)

As I may have mentioned before, there is a private university right by where I live, and they run on the same school schedule as Michigan and most schools in the US.  They are now in summer vacation and are running summer programs.  Some of these are for international students, so at one point I ran into a bunch of them on the bus who were coming back from the bars.  Let me tell you...when everyone around you is speaking German, and you don't understand German...hearing English is as close to hearing a choir of angels as possible.  A group of about 15 people got on the bus being loud and speaking...ENGLISH!!!


I asked where they were from and it turns out they were MBA's from all over the US and a couple from the UK.  Two days later, I run into 5 guys at the bus stop speaking English again.  Turns out one of them was from Michigan so we had a nice little chat on the way to Koblenz from where I live.  It's been a great week cause I've made some good strides at work and also met some cool people along the way.  Lately I've been speaking more Spanish than anything cause my boss is half Mexican and insists on talking to me in Spanish.  I guess it's cool.  My Spanish needs practicing, hehe.


Work is gradually getting better.  I am going to start working on the welcome package for the students of the Summer Academy, which starts in little over a month now.  It should be pretty exciting times this week.  I will write more about these welcome packages later as I start to work on them this week.  Other than this, most of work has been a constant communication between some of our participants and me, trying to figure out all the things they need for entering Germany, enrollment at the university and getting them a place to stay in for the duration of the program.  It's actually quite funny when I know some of these people so well even though I have never met them.


More friends from AIESEC
AIESEC Koblenz, as I mentioned in earlier posts, is right in the middle of their recruitment cycle.  So far they have a couple new members, a couple of which I've gotten to know kind of well.  To top it all off, they also recruited two international people to come help them with recruiting.  This kind of "working for AIESEC somewhere else" is know as a CEED, or Cultural Envoy for Exchange Development.  For this reason, we now have another American in town with AIESEC.  His name is Daryl and he is the VP of Finance for AIESEC Yale next year.  Pretty cool guy, and we've hung out a bit the last couple of days.


Also this week, they brought in a girl from Brazil.  Her name is Carina, and she is a law student in southern Brazil.  Very nice girl, and the funniest part was when we went to pick her up in the airport.  The only person who had seen a picture of her had told us she was a blonde.  So obviously, when people are coming out we're looking out for all the blondes.  This one other girl is just standing there looking lost, but she's brunette.  Obviously, it can't be her.  The plane is emptied, and Daryl just yells "CARINAAA!!!" hoping she would hear us.   And of course, it was the brunette who was standing there.  Quite the funny story, if I say so myself.


We spent the night in Koblenz, at one of our friends' house, and then we went to old Koblenz in the early afternoon.  The weather was beautiful, and we had some breakfast at 2pm, which is always nice.  Then 20 minutes later it started pouring like I have never seen in Germany.  Weather so far has been great here, but it started to rain the likes of which I have only seen in Puerto Rico, which was pretty impressive considering it's a tropical island, which are known for heavy rain.  I had to get out of the car and to the bus stop so I got drenched, and then finally made it back home to a nice, warm shower.  But seriously, the rain was hardcore...and I'm usually not impressed by rain.  If you're one of those people who know and understand my hatred for rain, you will probably feel bad for me.  It was nuts...


I'm actually looking forward to this week because this welcome package should be fun to design.  I'm getting a lot of autonomy on what I want to do with it, so I'm going to try to make this into an awesome looking booklet.  I will probably publish it here once it's done so anyone can look at it if they so wish to.  More updates to come.  Now let's chat about something important...




So let's talk about life-changing decisions
I was talking to a friend recently, and she asked me what I planned on doing next year after I graduate.  I was actually a bit surprised because, I actually haven't been giving this as much thought as I should.  So after this I started thinking about it and that's pretty much what I've been doing all afternoon.  I think I have narrowed it down to 4 options, ordered by alphabetic order and in no specific order of priority:

• Consulting firm job: Consulting has become the field I want to work on.  It allows me to have projects that change constantly.  I'm not stuck doing just one thing, which will motivate me to always do more. There is also quite a bit of travelling involved usually, which is nice.  I think that starting in a consulting career is a great way to learn a lot about businesses quickly, then decide what I want to do later on, whether that is more consulting, going into an industry or opening up my own ________ (insert wild, crazy idea which may or may not be possible here).

• Higher education Master's program: Let's face it...I love college.  And the more I think about it the more I never want to leave this atmosphere, so it makes a lot of sense that I would want to work at a university.  And the reality is, if consulting is #1, then this is either #1b or #2.  If I can get a Master's in Higher Education I can most likely find myself working in upper management for a university in the next decade.  Wouldn't that be sweet, especially if that school can be Michigan?

• Law school: This one is mostly a "I can do anything after I get a law degree" option.  And it also gives me 3 years to decide what I actually want to do.  Having the knowledge that a lawyer has can be very beneficial, and let's not forget the value that the letters JD have when applying for a job.  The question is: how bad do I want to attend law school?  The answer to that is to be determined, and 

• Long term traineeship in another country: This is the wildcard option.  I'm doing it right now for 3 months, but wouldn't a year (or year and a half) in another country be something special?  My parents might kill me if I take this route, but this one can actually lead me into any of the other three options.  After however long I'm gone I'll have to come back and decide what I want to do again.  It would be a great opportunity and I would learn a great deal about business somewhere else.  This time I would like to find something in a country where I speak the native language, which is a bit limiting.  But I believe in my ability to find something.  We'll see if this can be done.

I have considered all of these options in the past and they are truly the ones that I can see myself doing in some way in the next 2-3 years.  However, each of these can take me in remarkably different paths.  The one thing I do know is that, for some reason, I really want to end up living in Boston.  If you have any thoughts, talk to me or leave a comment.  I have realized that this is something I should be thinking about right now and haven't been doing so.  There may even be other options that I'm currently not thinking about, also.  This is going to be one crazy year.  At least I got the GRE out of the way already.  LSAT soon? Maybe...let's get back to America first before we decide.


Some last words
My cousins graduated from high school last week.  This is scary.  I remember them as little kids and now they're all grown up.  They're going to Indiana to study, which brings up some amusing thoughts.  With me being the first in my family to go study in the US (at least in my generation), some family members freaked out and asked "BUT WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT??!?!?!?!?!"...and 3 years later my sister left and now my cousins leave.  No one's making a big fuzz about it.  You're welcome, sis and cousins, for me getting all the "you're crazy for doing this" comments.


No, but really...this isn't about that.  It's about the fact that I feel old.  Friends graduating college, cousins graduating high school, deciding what to do after college...I feel old.  I guess life happens, huh?  Sorry for those of you older than me (parents and the such, particularly) cause I technically am calling you old.  I would like to think I've changed a lot in the past 4 years, mostly for the better.


**Damn, this post is long.**

Heigh Ho!!! It's Home From Work We Go!

"Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”      
-Francesca Reigler

One of the most important things I learned during my change management class is that most people are resistant to change.  Whenever some system is being changed, most people will resist because they are either afraid of change, they don’t see a flaw with the old system or they simply are complacent with current methods.  As it turns out, I have experienced this firsthand since I started work.

So first off, what does my job involve currently?  Well, as I mentioned before, the University of Koblenz has a Summer Academy program for international students/professionals.  This will involve a series of classes on management, computer science and information science, all of which are given in English.  The program runs from June 27-July 22, and before I arrived registration had opened and the scholarship applications had been received.  Just before I arrived, the scholarship application was closed and the recipients chosen.

Enter me.  I am given access to the email account and told that it is my job to handle all communications between the applicants and the Summer Academy Team (which currently consists of me and 2 others, including my boss).  I am told there are Excel sheets with all the information I need, but that I need to install Dropbox to access it.  Problem #1:  I install Dropbox on my laptop, but I can’t edit the tables because my Excel is not compatible with the PC version the have it on.  Problem #2: I can’t do it on my work computer because I don’t have Admin privileges to install it.  Took me a whole week to get someone to give me permission to install it.  Meanwhile, emails kept pouring in and no one was updating any of the data.

The learning curve was pretty high because so far we had about 90 people registered, of which around 13 were given scholarships.  Some of them hadn’t applied for scholarship and were simply paying themselves.  Others are simply in the system and I haven’t heard from them at all since I started working.  I finally got to install Dropbox and it took me 2 full days to get that entire table sorted and updated and with everything it needed ready to go.  I am quite happy with the progress I made.

I’m quite happy that my work hours have ended up being 9:30 am to about 5:30-6:30pm.  I go in and the first thing I do is check emails.  Does anyone need anything new from us?  Who has paid?  Who has some dumb question I’ve been asked a thousand times?  You have to be very patient with some of these people, but at least I get a kick out of reading their applications, resumes, and everything.  Confidential information, of course, but I have access to it.  I definitely have some names that I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

Besides all the email back and forth, I also have to ensure that all participants who are coming get invoices so that they pay, and once they pay I need to send them an invitation letter so they can get their visa process started.  It’s very detailed stuff, especially with so many names.  The amount of things I am expected to remember is truly large.  However, I have been blessed with a good talent for remembering names and people, so I have been getting better at this every day. 

The days continue to pass by and every day I do the same.  For now this is what I am meant to be doing.  Once this process is over I will have a different set of tasks, mostly related with dealing with the student affairs part of the Summer Academy.  More details about that once the time comes, but for now I simply spend a lot of time emailing and updating tables.

However, one thing does bother me.  These people apparently are yet to discover the wonders of Google.  Gmail, Google Docs and Google Forms to me are synonymous with efficiency and productivity.  Making a registration as a Google Form is the easiest thing I have ever done and it makes it all into a Google Doc which is easily accessible and shared to all people on the team.  However, registration for the Summer Academy is done via a system they created using mySQL, which probably took them twice the time to make than what it would take me to create a Google Form.  And the email service crashes at least once a day for about 20 minutes at a time.  My umich.edu account is so much more reliable.  I’m supposed to evaluate this project once it’s over and give feedback for next year. 

Recommendation #1: Scrap your system and just use Google.  It makes life so much easier!

So yes, my plan is to show them the Google way and hopefully have them use that system next year.  You’re very welcome, Google…

Quick Sports Shoutout!

Some quick thoughts on the going ons in the sports world.

Football: Seriously, the NFL needs to get their shit together and reach a new collective bargaining agreement.  If I don't see the Patriots playing next year, I am going to freak out.  Some weird picks in that draft also.  Oh well...

Basketball: I love the fact that the Lakers are about to get swept (if they don't I'm gonna be very surprised, cause this looks bad so far!) and that every series has been very good.  What I don't like is that the Heat won the first two games against Boston.  I need the C's to step up and win the series.  PLEASE!!!  Go Celtics!

Hockey: The Bruins swept and that is wonderful.  At least they didn't give up a 3-0 lead again, which would have made me fly back to Boston and choke someone on the team.  Since I also follow the Wings because Michigan made me a hockey fan, then I'm kinda cheering for Bruins-Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals.  The Wings need to win...and then get beat by the Bruins in the finals.  I can only hope.

Baseball: Oh, this is still happening...?  K...we all know I don't care about baseball until the playoffs.  Though go Red Sox!  Always!  And %*& the Yankees!  :-)

Moving In is Fun!

Lately I've been living with people from AIESEC, and all has been well.  But as of May 1 I could move in to my own apartment so I did as soon as possible!  The trip involved going over the Rhine, which was pretty cool, and then going again over half of the Rhine to get on the island.

A is the University of Koblenz, B is home.  This is by car.  Not bus.

When I got to my place I met my flatmate, and he seems like a pretty nice guy.  His name is Wolf Kolb, and he is doing his PhD at the private university in Vallendar, which is literally on the other side of the bridge from Niederwerth.  He is close to his university...I am not.  It's ok, though.  I have simply had to learn the bus system at Koblenz really well.

The only big problem with this whole "using the bus system" thing was that buses here are DAMN expensive.  2.50 Euro per bus ride is not something I was prepared for.  And I shouldn't have to because I should have had my student ID by now, but I didn't because of some problems that had to do with AIESEC.  A bit frustrating, if I say so myself, but something that I managed.  But I will tell you that I was a bit fed up with it and went on a couple of buses without paying.

Let's stop here for a second...

Riding a bus without paying, or "black riding" as the locals call it, is really scary, yet there shouldn't be that much to worry about.  Local buses are VERY RARELY checked (unlike buses to travel between cities and trains) and most students just get on, so I simply joined the mass of students getting on and prayed to the Lord that no one would check.  Turns out it worked and I saved myself quite a decent amount of Euro, but seriously...that scared feeling is not something I want to try again.  If you know me well enough you know I hate cheating the system most times, but if not I was gonna go broke.  And that would have been worse.  So...I saved some cash and now I have my student ID and all is well.

Now let's go back to the original story...

Main view of the room from the door

Main view of the room from the window

View from the window

View from the window to the right.  That's the Rhine right there.

Das Badezimmer

My apartment is awesome!  It is on the 3rd floor of the place (floor 2 for Germans...cause they insist of the main floor being E, then 1, 2 and so forth...) and when you enter the door you step into a hallway to your right and left, at the ends of which are both rooms, and halfway to my room is the bathroom, and halfway to Wolf's room is the kitchen.  Decently sized, and I really like it.

I'm quite happy with everything here except for the fact that it's far from everything else.  But whatevs...I'll live with it.  It is a very nice island and I can't complain.  Next post will be all about work, as I try to explain what it is I'm going to be doing.

Life Without a Laptop: Part Zwei (April 28-30)

I came in to this experience thinking that Germans were fun, yet could be a bit dry in their humor.  Uptight people who have fun, if that makes sense.  Since then, I have learned that there's the whole spectrum of people, just like in the U.S.  Some of my friends are very fun to be around, some are a bit too serious and some are just really shy.  It's an interesting experience.

I had the opportunity to go to the LC (local committee) meeting for AIESEC Koblenz yesterday.  I intriduced myself to them and showed them how to do a lecture presentation for recruiting new members.  As the VP-Talent Management in AIESEC Michigan, I think I have some experience recruiting new members.  Thus, I will be helping them out with what I can in their recruiting efforts.  They have 13 members and are looking to take as many people as they can.

Tour de Koblenz!

The day I had been waiting for finally arrived!  Today I got to go to the city and do some people watching and sightseeing.  Turns out I am still missing an insurance document so we couldn't sign the paperwork I need to open a bank account.  This should be solved soon, I hope...

Anyway, moving on to the city.  Annemarie, one of the members of AIESEC Koblenz, took me to the center of town.  Another AIESECer (member of AIESEC = AIESECer) dropped us off at the mall in town and then we started walking all over the old part of town, Altstadt.  It's a really colorful town, and Annemarie was a lot of fun to hang out with.  We ended up sitting next to a beautiful church talking about books and politics.

The church from my sitting point of view

After this we went to the place where the Rhine and Mosel rivers meet.  This place is called Deutsches Eck, or German Corner.  There is a huge statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I, who is the founder of what can be considered Germany.  He brought all the German kingdoms, duchies and principalities together and was the first German Emperor.

The statue of Kaiser Wilhelm

Across the river

Also in this area there is a huge festival that the German state decided to throw for the first time, and they picked Koblenz to host it.  The festival is all about gardens, and it is called the Bundesgartenshou, or BUGA.  I am yet to go, since you have to pay to get in, but I will have to hit it up later.

Finally, it was time to go back to the university.  It turns out that Annemarie gets very carsick and thus hates buses.  She asked if we could walk halfway and take the bus the rest of the way, so of course we proceeded to walk the entire way.  A combination of not wanting to make her carsick and how gorgeous the walk was made me decide to keep on walking.  The hour-long was was worth it because the entire way we walked alongside the Mosel, which was beautiful.

You know that feeling you get when you walk a long distance?  The one where you feel like you could keep walking to the end of the world as long as you keep walking, but then feel like you want to die as soon as you stop?  Yea, that's how I felt...I got back to the apartment where I've been staying and passed out for hours.  Great day, fun times and I hope this gets only better.

The Most Laziest Day of My Life...AWESOME!

So a combination of jetlag and not sleeping very much recently has led to me being really tired.  So when I was told we weren't doing jack-diddly squat today, I was ecstatic.  Literally spent the day talking to the president of AIESEC Koblenz about German, education system in the US (I'm missing two grades so I am annoyed at it) and American football.  I could not have asked for a better day.  We only left the house to buy some food.  And we watched Armageddon in German, which was interesting.  I have seen the movie a thousand times, so I know it by heart.  I knew what they were saying even though I didn't understand it 80% of what they said (ok...fine!  90%...95%? haha)

I need a haircut as bad as Michigan needs to win a Big Ten championship in football right now (or basketball...).  We'll see if I get one soon.  This much hair is starting to annoy me.  And I keep thinking hoe long this post is gonna be when I post it.  Maybe I'll break it up into 2 (or 3) parts.

(As we can see, only 2 parts were needed.)

Life Without a Laptop: Part Eins (April 26-27)

The following series of posts were written on paper so that I could then transcribe it on the computer and post when I had my laptop and Internet back.  I am sorry for the delay, and I am sorry for the amount of posts that will come within the next hours.

For those of you who don't know, I have a thing about listening to people speak in other languages.  It sounds fun to me.  What I didn't know was that I enjoy it because it usually is for a short time, and then I can have a full conversation in English with the person.  When it is ALL the time, it can be a bit frustrating.  But, oh well...life goes on and I am slowly learning how to speak some German.  So far I have avoided creating any international conflicts, which is a success.  And ordering food is quite simple...you point and say Bitte (please).

Jetlag hits hard.  However, I had the blessing in disguise that came from my awful sleep pattern that I developed over finals.  Pulling all-nighters and sleeping at 5am-noon back in Michigan, I was able to simply pull one all-nighter and be so tired that I simply fixed it in a couple of days.  I did, however, pass out at 4pm for 2 hours the first day I was here.  That was quite funny for me cause I NEVER nap.

Other than attending official matters for my contract, I have been hanging out at the university.  Germany just started their semester a couple of weeks ago, so my friends are all in class and busy during the day.  I hang out mostly in the cafeteria, or in the student bistro (StuBi for short), which is a bit more pricey (though still pretty cheap) and also has a bar.  If you have never tried beer with banana juice in it, you should.  It's good stuff.  Pretty refreshing.

Today I will get to meet the people in AIESEC Koblenz.  There's only 13 people in their LC (LC is local committee, for those of you who don't speak AIESEC. It's the chapter of AIESEC at the university level).  I will meet them at their meeting tonight.  So fa they have been very friendly and I look forward to making some good friends soon.

And last but not least, I finally know where I am living.  It seems that island life is my destiny.  I won't be in Puerto Rico until August, but it turns out that even in the middle of Germany I found an island for me to live in, right in the middle of the Rhine river (I am told it is the only inhabited island in the Rhine river).  The small island of Niederwerth is just north of Koblenz, in the town of Vallendar.  My bus ride to work is 30-45 minutes, which ends up being not too bad.  I get to move in Sunday!