Semester 3: The Internship

А ето я и втората част от моя разказ: Това не сте го получавали - та четете! :) няма картинки тоя път - ама не съм снимала просто :(
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Reutlingen
The trip to Reutlingen was naturally as awful as possible – not only did I have to leave home; to travel more than 20 hours in a tiny seat, but also to try to suppress the feelings related to the fact that when I arrive I would have to put all my stuff into suitcases, clean up everything and move out of my room.
In the bus I traveled with one of the new Bulgarian IBs - Slavina (she's from my high-school too :) ), so the trip wasn't such a disaster after all.
Once I arrived in Reutlingen, I met Tsveti and showed Slavina around. Tsveti had to move from campus to the company’s apartments on Am Heilbrunnen, so I helped her with that… We moved two cars with her stuff!!! (half of a truck was shoes ;)..) My stuff fit in two suitcases and a backpack :D.. Equipped with these 3 items, I took the train to Munich at about 8 pm and arrived there shortly before 12. Fortunately, Maria (IB6+) agreed to meet me at the station (the two suitcases were after all a bit too much for me..)
We arrived at her apartment, where I’ll live this month and may be until the end of the internship. On the next day I woke up late of course. Opened the suitcases and put some stuff here and there. Fixed myself some food and as soon as I decided to go for a walk, the weather totally fucked up, so I spent half of the day answering Facebook messages. Then I went to the Aldi nearby to buy some vital stuff :D and finally there was no time left to show around the city. I didn’t do that on the next day either because the weather was still pretty gloomy.

First Work Day
If you know me well, you could easily guess how my first day began :). I was 20 min late :D :D :D. It's so amazing here in Munich – if I miss one of my trains, I can not catch the other one, so I accumulate about 30 minutes delay – and I’m an explorer – I have to try all adventures :D :D. So I arrived at the site about 9:20 and told the receptionists to call my boss and tell him I’m waiting in the lobby. They couldn’t find him (exactly this day he had forgotten his notebook at home so he had moved to an office with computer, but I thought he could be in a meeting or s.th like that)… The end result was that I waited some 30 min before they started to pity me and went up to the offices to find him :D. He came finally – excused himself and answered to my excuses that he wouldn’t have noticed that I’m late if I hadn’t told him (lovely attitude!!) :D. Then we drank a tea/coffee together and discussed shortly what our schedule for the day would be – generally: see my cubicle, meet some people, get a notebook and some stationery materials… stuff like that. And so it was – running around the entire day; drinking 10 cups of tea and god knows how much juice (isn’t it great – they are all free there), because e.one I wanted to meet suggested that we “take a break for a cup of coffee” and about the end of the day I got a task that you’ll read about in the next section, so I left work at about 8:30, reaching home after 9 pm (I have about 40 min of transportation and say 5-15 min of waiting on different stations). Happy happy happy :)

The First Work Week
I won’t go into too much details, but I can give you the overall impressions.
I guess I screwed so badly at work that my boss is trying to get rid of me ASAP. For this reason he’s sending me to a business trip in the headquarters of Intel in Portland, OR in the beginning of next month :D :D :D :D. It’s going to be almost a week of seminars and Business Development related training & I’m gonna meet the “big bosses” :D .. I just have to get the US visa.. (I already have an interview and all, but they can always decide to screw things up :(… )
Otherwise the week went well and busy. On the first day my boss got a task to write some promotional announcement related to products that I had heard about earlier in the day and I offered to write it instead of him. He was kind of surprised, but told me I could if I wanted to. I read a bit more here and there and I started writing. I’m almost done with 3 out of 5 texts, but the other two are very similar, so it shouldn’t take long. Later, I got another similar task. In the meantime I was meeting a lot of people in something called 1:1 here. You basically set an appointment with somebody via Outlook and you meet for 15-30 min to discuss some issue (or get to know each other as in my case).
I even managed to meet with some of the interns there at some point (nothing interesting to tell you the truth and I would prefer to s.what stay away because they mainly speak little or no German), but I made the contacts and who knows when I’ll need them :) Some time soon they are organizing some trip to some lakes in the region (I have to check the exact infos) and I’ll probably go – it may be fun – I’ll probably add another entry with some pics after that.
Basically, I didn’t have a free minute during the entire week :). I started reading some books about the tools that we are responsible for and I’m constantly reviewing previous presentations and materials. Next week I have to learn about the issuing of licenses and other stuff related to “work with customers” (mostly in German).
Another cool thing is that I speak almost entirely German during the day. My boss already got in the habit of referring to me in German and only corrects my mistakes from time to time. (Even 2 of the texts that I am writing should be in German and I submitted the first one in both languages, so that he could correct them more easily :D)… In other words, up to now the internship is even more than I hoped – I’m kept busy; the field is interesting and nobody expects me to do low-level work. And which is the most important – these guys have the best canteen I’ve ever been to!! The food is simply delicious and totally cheap. I’m pretty short on money right now, but as soon as I get my salary about the 24th (no idea why they give it so early in the month) I’ll start spending most of it there :D :D :D

Лятната ваканция 2008/ The summer holiday 2008

Вече някои от вас получиха това писмо, но реших, че мога да го сложа и тук :) Малко не върви с твърдата ми политика да пиша само на български, но просто нямам нерви да го превеждам ;)
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What happened to me in the last 2 months? Once I was done with the 2nd semester at Reutlingen, I traveled with the bus to Bulgaria (an awful experience in general, but I have noticed that I don’t really mind it in this direction.. :) .. on the way to Germany it’s much more frustrating ;)) .. And then the summer began :)

Once I was in Sofia, I met my sister and spoke to my parents, who told me to immediately come back to Kazanlak :( .. I really wanted to meet a couple of old friends, but it didn’t work out. In my hometown I had the pleasure of writing a 10-page report on a subject that was only vaguely clear/familiar, namely a final report on all activities of a project under an EU grand scheme.. bla bla bla.. I was happily done on time (I had to do it before I leave for the seaside) and could leave for the seaside with friends.

And there it was just amazing!!! We went to Tsarevo (a small southern Black-Sea resort), but spent most of the time in Lozenetz where the beaches were much better. I was rampaging in the town together with my best friend from Kazanlak until 2-3 am, sleeping 7-8 hours and going to the beach to spend the entire day there.. and the nice seafood (food! Food! FOOD! :D :D :D), and the beach volleyball and the open-air cinema in the evening.. eh.. I need just one entire year there and I promise I’ll get fed up with all this ;)

The last day was probably the most amazing, because on our way back we decided to stop at another beach for a couple of hours. Man! I’m so going there next year!!! It’s the beaches of the Youth Complex near Kiten and they were crystal clear with very fine sand – we could find clams and shells only very near the sea and they weren’t many at all there either – as if we were stepping on silk. Then the water was making a very smooth transition from shallow to deep and was thus so warm :D :D There weren’t too many people and no seaweeds were anywhere to be seen. And then the rocks… oh man! I get dreamy. We decided to look around in that direction, so we naturally went bare-foot and while we were making our way up to the higher rocks, we would stop near the water and look for the little wonders that had formed between the stones – tiny crabs roving on even tinier shells and observing the by-passing gigantic shrimps (about 4-5 mm each :D :D) like the gate-keepers of hidden treasures. A small universe which only the sea has the right to disturb with an occasional bigger wave…

We went up the hills and observed the beach from there and the fishermen who were climbing in our direction and trying to find a good spot for two feet and a bucket :D

I was so sad when we had to go back, but I had no choice – I was “booked” by my parents for a 2-hour presentation of our company to an Austrian firm (which turned to me more like 4 hours), who were coming for a visit. As usually nobody bothered to tell me that I would have to translate during the whole thing, but oh well – life is never what you expect it to be ;) and it’s surely better that way :D

In the meanwhile my parents had organized a summer holiday trip to Greece. I was pretty unhappy about it, because I had only 3-4 weeks and I really would have preferred to spend all the time in Bulgaria – preferably also finding some time for my high-school friends, who were in Sofia at the time. But alas! We left for a week to Paralia, Katarini. It was the whole family together, so it wasn’t that bad… I mean – we played in the water and made some sand castles with my brother, which was really fun. I taught him a bit swimming. We even went to the “deep” together :D and I had to carry him almost all the way back afterwards :D :D :D. Of course there always are some positive sides to going to the seaside even if this is Greece :)

I also went to a disco once with my sister (which was pretty horrible :D) We ate some good sea food (not a lot though – I was very unpleasantly surprised to find out that they had mostly fast food, namely giros (a.k.a döners), which I usually eat only in case of emergency). I tanned even a bit more (not too much though, because there was nobody to spend the whole day on the beach with). I had the pleasure of going shopping with my sister *_*, where she bought a couple of cheap useless items. And I almost finished my German book :D Good thing is that my parents also got a bit disappointed with the “Greece” idea (mostly because of the inadequate food :D :D), so next year we’re probably going for our good old Black sea, and there I could take the car for a day and go visit some friends in the nearby :D.
On our way back, my parents agreed to drop me directly to Sofia, so that I could take the bus to Reutlingen two days later. The trip itself, being so unexpected on my side, lead to some “minor” discomforts. I couldn’t for example take my new ID card (the old one expired so I filed a renewal), but it's alright :)