Many of you, namely my mother and my cousin, have been asking why there haven't been any recent updates to the blog. I have to say...I was a bit lazy last week and didn't do anything. So I will go for a little bit longer today and talk about the last two weeks.
Work has been pretty steady the last two weeks. It has been a combination of sending the participants a bunch of forms they have to fill out and finishing up the welcome package. Thanks to those of you who helped me decide what information to put in it, and special thanks to Mom who helped give me some ideas with the design. Turns out my boss then went and changed a bunch of things, but...oh well. Womp, womp, we can't have it our way all the time.
This week will be pretty filled with work. We are now in the process of getting all of our students enrolled, and helping any that have visa problems. We only have two weeks until they arrive, at which point this will get a lot more interesting because I will have to get to know the 30+ international students who are coming here for one month. About 20 of them will be living in the same area as me, so I hope this will lead to me having more fun in the weekends. Next weekend is the AIESEC conference in a town a couple of hours away, and I am looking forward to it.
Event Planning at its Finest
Planning the Summer Academy has been an incredibly large amount of work. It is quite unbelievable that this has been planned basically by two people and a third who did my job before I was here. I was comparing this to my experience planning an AIESEC conference, which was planned by four people. This has truly brought to my attention how much work I have actually been doing. The Summer Academy is a more complicated event than a weekend long AIESEC conference, and there are less people working on it's planning. But I have to say that I do love event planning. The one thing I wish was different is the starting date on my job. On things like this, I prefer being there from the beginning because the learning curve is so steep. When I first got here I made mistakes left and right, but now that it has been more than five weeks, I know what I can and can't do. Although, I gotta say...I hope to plan one more AIESEC event before I graduate. We'll see what happens...
Hanging out in Koblenz
I have come to the conclusion that Koblenz is definitely not a party city. To get to a party city we have to drive a couple of hours at least to Cologne, Frankfurt or Stuttgart. Therefore, what we end up doing most of the time here is hanging out at people's apartments and maybe going to the clubs here once every couple of weeks. However, last week two of the AIESECers decided that it was time to properly inaugurate their apartment that they had moved into recently. So...they threw a nice, little party where I made some new friends and had good fun.
Holidays in Germany
Last Thursday and tomorrow are national holidays in Germany. Therefore, I didn't have to work. Woohoo! I had the chance to get some much needed sleep and I actually spent a LOT of time sleeping. However, I also came to think about why Germans celebrate national holidays for the Ascension of Jesus or Pentecost. I guess it is because they are traditional holidays, but it is certainly somewhat surprising in a country where, according to a 2006 poll, over 25% of the general population is atheist or agnostic (including over 50% of people between 12-24). Going back to the whole division of church and state, I'm not really sure how I feel about religious holidays in general, particularly because they seem to be biased towards Christians (at least here and in the US). However, I'm not going to complain because I truly did need some days off. I get to write this today and not have anything to worry about for tomorrow because I don't work.
Sports are Almost Over...
As you all probably know, I am a bit obsessed with sports. Unfortunately, I'm not that huge of a baseball fan, which means that my sports watching is about to be over in a couple of days once the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA finals are over. I just want the Mavericks to win tonight so the Heat never win a championship with the Lebron-DWade-Bosh triangle. Seriously, if you're gonna make fun of Dirk Nowitzki for playing sick, that is the last straw. Neither Wade or Lebron have any class and they don't deserve to win a ring this year or any year. As for hockey, I just want the Bruins to win. It has been a goaltender's dream what Tim Thomas has had in this series, so hopefully he can continue playing at such a high level. He just need his own players to score...
Sorry all, for the lack of pictures. I'm being pretty lazy with my camera. I'll try to take some more soon and then post them to here (and eventually, to Facebook...).
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