Hamburgers and Romans are fun!

It has been a while since I posted here.  However, when there are long periods of silence it usually means I've been busy, so once I get to actually writing something I will have some good stuff!  Therefore, I have good stuff right now that I want to share with everyone.

Hamburgers...and I don't mean the German city of Hamburg


Last week, me and Daryl had the incredible craving for a burger.  However, we went to the supermarket and burger buns just weren't up to par.  Neither was regular cheese, so we decided to go a little differently and try to Germanize our cooking a little.  Instead of burger buns we each bought a different type of bread roll and we got some cheddar made in Germany.  Turns out that Wisconsin cheddar is about 10,000 times better than German cheddar, but we made some amazing burgers.  Fortunately for all of you, I have decided to start taking pictures, so...we have evidence!

And I give you...EVIDENCE!!!

Mine is on the left on a ciabatta roll.  We each had two.  It was great.

After eating this I was pretty much in a food coma for the rest of the day.  It's surprising how used I've gotten to smaller portions, but I cannot turn down a good, big meal if I can get my hands on it.  This really hit the spot, since we were desperate for a meal that would fill us up to an American level.  We...mostly did.  Mission Success!


It's an AIESEC life!


Finally, the chance has come for me to come to an AIESEC conference outside of the US.  I could not have been more excited, and on the way there we got pretty lost because my friend didn't feel like asking anyone.  One and a half hour drive took three hours, so by the time I got there I was starving.  Fortunately, dinner was wrapping up so we got to have a good dinner.  The conference was in the small town of Simmerath, which apparently only has a couple hundred residents.  This means that while we were there we were about a third of the entire city's population.  CRAZY!

The highlight of AIESEC conferences is the new people you get to meet and the crazy parties that ensue when you put 100+ college students in a hotel (or hostel in this case).  You get to have a day of leadership development and great, inspiring sessions, and then you get to kick back and...well, you don't really kick back, you just party until the next morning and then maybe get an hour or two of sleep, then go do more soft skills development and intercultural awareness seminars.  I love AIESEC...

There were AIESECers from 7 different cities in Germany, all of which combined to make the Wild West region, which Koblenz is a part of.  I had the opportunity to participate in the Talent Management track, which was particularly focused toward transition from the outgoing VP to the incoming VP.  Since I had already done my transition in May, I didn't get as much from the sessions as I had expected, but I am very glad I got to meet all of the people I met.  I will be visiting some in the next weeks, and maybe some will come visit me in the US.  And of course...we need a picture, and the first party was one of the funnest I have been to in a while, certainly the most fun in Germany so far.

Of course, as always, leaving the conference was the hardest part.  After sleeping four hours each of the two nights, I was pretty sleep deprived but I definitely miss all of my new friends.  However, God bless the Internet and Facebook.  After getting home, the usual friending frenzy began, and I came out with a bunch of new friends.  Gotta love social networking.  The best part about leaving, though, was riding in my friend Robert's car.  He got to the conference on the second day, so we got to ride back to Koblenz in his dad's Audi, which he had borrowed.  And let me tell you...that car is amazing.  In this car I went from the airport to Koblenz the first day I arrived, but I was so sleepy I couldn't fully enjoy it.  This time...wide awake!  Cruising down the Autobahn at 240 kph is pretty sweet.  That's almost 150 mph!  Perfectly legal...

Work, work, work...like an ant


After this great weekend, I had to get back to work.  Things were getting a bit hectic in the office because we are on our last week until the students get here.  Therefore, we have spent a lot of time finishing up our planning and putting the finishing touches on all of our things.  There are 30 students arriving from various countries, and we get to have our first meeting on Monday with all of them.  I will be at the train station most of this weekend to make sure they arrive well and then my colleague picks them up and takes them to their accommodations.  This will be great because I get to meet them, but it sucks a bit cause I waste my weekend at the train station.  I have a feeling this will involve a lot of me being on my computer playing video games during the time in between arrivals...we'll see.

Now I will have to cut off here, and I will include my other adventures from this week in the next blog post, which will most likely go up sometime in the middle of next week.  I have some good stories, and hopefully will develop more over the weekend when I meet all my students.

P.S. The Welcome Booklet is ready and can be accessed here.