Hey Folks!
The day has come... a) the day that you finally hear from me again and b) that it is easier for me to write in English than in German. Well... Maybe I change in the middle of the email to make it more fun. Let's see!
Today is actually the perfect day to write a newsletter. I know you have been waiting and wondering if I'm still alive but I waited until today so I could include the events of the passed weekend. Yes, I mean Saturday, November 14th and Sunday, November 15th. Actually also Friday. But I see you reading my email and getting totally confused right now, so I better start at the very beginning - the day after my last newsletter.
Newsletter No.14 was mailed on September 18th. Since then a couple things happened:
1. I started to work at Whole Foods Market
2. I started CPA class
3. Halloween
4. MBA Conference in Chicago
The day has come... a) the day that you finally hear from me again and b) that it is easier for me to write in English than in German. Well... Maybe I change in the middle of the email to make it more fun. Let's see!
Today is actually the perfect day to write a newsletter. I know you have been waiting and wondering if I'm still alive but I waited until today so I could include the events of the passed weekend. Yes, I mean Saturday, November 14th and Sunday, November 15th. Actually also Friday. But I see you reading my email and getting totally confused right now, so I better start at the very beginning - the day after my last newsletter.
Newsletter No.14 was mailed on September 18th. Since then a couple things happened:
1. I started to work at Whole Foods Market
2. I started CPA class
3. Halloween
4. MBA Conference in Chicago
Whole Foods Market
I work at WFM for almost 8 weeks now. It is amazing and I love my job. You might say "But why? Veronika, why? It is JUST a cashier position... why WHY WHYYYY would you LOVE that kind of job?" Let me tell you...
The store is amazing - the product selection, the atmosphere, the love in detail. Best thing... I get 20% team member discount!! *LOL* I work in a great team - everybody is kind and helpful, and jokes enlighten the teamwork. I have awesome customers - I get to talk to SO many different people every day, customers are mostly friendly and due to my very slight German accent conversations start very easily. ;-) And finally, I get to know so many American people for the first time I'm here in the US that my English improved so much more over the last 2 months than in the 12 months prior to that! I assume my motivation and enthusiasm are part of the reason why I get so many compliments by my customers (I have regulars that wait in line for my register even when all other registers are free!!!) and I was elected "Team Member of the Month" by my supervisors.
So you see, basically I study communication and social behavior, team, time and crisis management, customer service, problem solving and personal marketing - pretty much for just one job! Especially "just" a cashier position. :-)
The store is amazing - the product selection, the atmosphere, the love in detail. Best thing... I get 20% team member discount!! *LOL* I work in a great team - everybody is kind and helpful, and jokes enlighten the teamwork. I have awesome customers - I get to talk to SO many different people every day, customers are mostly friendly and due to my very slight German accent conversations start very easily. ;-) And finally, I get to know so many American people for the first time I'm here in the US that my English improved so much more over the last 2 months than in the 12 months prior to that! I assume my motivation and enthusiasm are part of the reason why I get so many compliments by my customers (I have regulars that wait in line for my register even when all other registers are free!!!) and I was elected "Team Member of the Month" by my supervisors.
So you see, basically I study communication and social behavior, team, time and crisis management, customer service, problem solving and personal marketing - pretty much for just one job! Especially "just" a cashier position. :-)
CPA
In October I started the 7 weeks CPA class. The first day of class I was trapped in a freezing conference room with 35 other people dedicated to pursue the CPA. The hotel must have thought they do us a favor by cooling down the room to 15C to prevent us from overheating our brains... (Just picture me every Tuesday and Thursday putting on every piece of clothing I got in my closet to prevent me from freezing. I didn't care about my brain any more but all the other essential body parts that could freeze off.) The last day of class there were about 15 people left in class and the room was still freezing. I rediscovered that I love accounting but that it is also very detailed and tedious to study. I plan to take the exam in the beginning of January. So much to study, review and especially UNDERSTAND until then. HAHAHA
Halloween
Nowadays this very American celebration invaded Europe and Germany as well, but over here it is not just a theme of a party but an event that requires weeks of preparation. Houses and yards are decorated neat and with love at least three weeks in advance. Costumes are mostly creative pieces of art and many times selfmade. In regard to the costumes I gotta tell you that it is not about having a scary, bloody or dark costume but about participating in general. Kind of like carnival in Cologne. So you see superman-boys and cinderella-girls, but also clown-men and police-women. Since I had to work at Halloween I thought I would not be able to dress up. But at WFM we were allowed to work in our costumes; So the store was taken over by mustard-bottles, witches, fruit baskets, hippies, cops, pumpkins, and Dorothy with the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz. And among all those costumes you could also find a pirate at one of the registers - me. I tell you, we had so much fun that night at work. But not only the employees had fun, but the customers loved it as well.
German MBA Conference - The Perfect Weekend
This last weekend I flew to Chicago, IL, to attend a conference for German MBA students along with German companies. It was a networking event and I got to know many German students from all over the United States but also Europe. Most of them study or studied at well-known business schools like Harvard, Kellogg, Wharton, INSEAD, UCLA, Cornell and others. Along came me from Fairleigh Dickinson University, not even bothering to tell the others the name of my business college since no-one even knew about FDU, let alone ever heard of Silberman College of Business. *LOL* Anyway, I got to meet great people with impressive resumes and current or past work experience at renown consulting companies.
Friday started out very early in the morning - I had to leave the house at 5am in order to catch a flight at 8. The night before was very short since the CPA professor took forever to finish his class and then it took me forever to finish packing my suitcase. I shouldn't say "finish" - by the time I got home from the CPA class (11pm) I haven't even started packing. (So me! *ROFL*) I went to bed at 1.30 and got up at 4 which gave me around two hours of sleep - I was surprisingly fit. Of course I had to rush in the morning to not miss my bus. I don't understand why it is always such a pain with me and travelling... :-) Leaving New York in extensions of a hurricane Sven and I (we travelled together) arrived in Chicago with awesome weather. The hotel we picked was super super awesome times two! Especially coz it was downtown and in walking distance to every location of the conference. The afternoon was filled with some tourist walking through the city. Once again I overestimated the size of a city (a New Yorker's mistake *hehe*) and it turned out that the city was pretty easy to explore by foot. At night, the conference started with a cocktail party at the Trump Tower, a meet-and-greet and get to know each other. From there we headed to a cool lounge and then to a club. With every drink people felt more familiar with each and "people" became friends.
Saturday, many of us (not me!) woke up with a pretty bad headache and a big lack of sleep (totally me!). Two hours once again... At the awesome facilities of Chicago Booth we listened presentations of McKinsey, EON, and Morgan Stanley. During lunch we mingled with company representatives; a scavenger hunt around the campus of Chicago University challenged us later to teamwork and creative thinking. At night we had a dinner gala at the 70 floor of Lake Point Tower with view over Lake Michigan and Chicago. Awesome! Again, we were mixed in interesting combinations at the tables so that conversation, fun and networking was the key to a enjoyable evening. After the open bar ended, everybody felt ready to go to the next location of the evening - a nightclub called "Funky Buddha Lounge". What would you expect from a place with that name?!? Mmh... Well, maybe oriental decoration. Maybe fancy drinks. Maybe even unfamiliar music and dance styles. What did we get?!? A place with a black proportion of 100%. A place with a DJ who only played R'n'B music but didn't play one single song for longer than a minute. A place where everybody stared at us, all wearing formal attire, button downs and dinner dresses. *HAHAHA*
Friday started out very early in the morning - I had to leave the house at 5am in order to catch a flight at 8. The night before was very short since the CPA professor took forever to finish his class and then it took me forever to finish packing my suitcase. I shouldn't say "finish" - by the time I got home from the CPA class (11pm) I haven't even started packing. (So me! *ROFL*) I went to bed at 1.30 and got up at 4 which gave me around two hours of sleep - I was surprisingly fit. Of course I had to rush in the morning to not miss my bus. I don't understand why it is always such a pain with me and travelling... :-) Leaving New York in extensions of a hurricane Sven and I (we travelled together) arrived in Chicago with awesome weather. The hotel we picked was super super awesome times two! Especially coz it was downtown and in walking distance to every location of the conference. The afternoon was filled with some tourist walking through the city. Once again I overestimated the size of a city (a New Yorker's mistake *hehe*) and it turned out that the city was pretty easy to explore by foot. At night, the conference started with a cocktail party at the Trump Tower, a meet-and-greet and get to know each other. From there we headed to a cool lounge and then to a club. With every drink people felt more familiar with each and "people" became friends.
Saturday, many of us (not me!) woke up with a pretty bad headache and a big lack of sleep (totally me!). Two hours once again... At the awesome facilities of Chicago Booth we listened presentations of McKinsey, EON, and Morgan Stanley. During lunch we mingled with company representatives; a scavenger hunt around the campus of Chicago University challenged us later to teamwork and creative thinking. At night we had a dinner gala at the 70 floor of Lake Point Tower with view over Lake Michigan and Chicago. Awesome! Again, we were mixed in interesting combinations at the tables so that conversation, fun and networking was the key to a enjoyable evening. After the open bar ended, everybody felt ready to go to the next location of the evening - a nightclub called "Funky Buddha Lounge". What would you expect from a place with that name?!? Mmh... Well, maybe oriental decoration. Maybe fancy drinks. Maybe even unfamiliar music and dance styles. What did we get?!? A place with a black proportion of 100%. A place with a DJ who only played R'n'B music but didn't play one single song for longer than a minute. A place where everybody stared at us, all wearing formal attire, button downs and dinner dresses. *HAHAHA*
Sunday, we finally had some more time to sleep since the day program started and finished with a brunch. Again, organized perfectly, this time at a restaurant at the riverside. After saying goodbyes, arranging meetings with friends who live in NYC and area, and promising friend requests on facebook, the group disolved to different airports and from there all over the USA. Me and three friends - Philipp, also from FDU, Sven, and a new friend from UCLA - decided to enjoy the view from Sear's Tower before leaving the city.
The journey back home was supposed to be super organized but turned out to be full of luck. I tell you, me and "relaxed travelling" are not such good friends! Sven and I arrived at the airport just in time for bag check-in. 5 minutes later and we would have had to throw out all liquids, hairspray, make up, razors, all that kind of hazardous things... but we were lucky! When we arrived at the gate it was already closed. The staff mistakenly checked us in before without us being on the plane at all. So nobody even noticed that we were not on board. Kind of weird and probably a technological problem. The plane almost left without us... but we were lucky! Sven thought he got the good seat right behind Business Class with the more leg room. I was seated all the way in the back crammed in with lots of other people. But since the weight of the plane was unevenly distributed the stewardess needed people to move up front. I volunteered... and got lucky! Upgrade to Business Class - fancy dinner instead of peanuts, real glasses instead of plastic cups. And the best was: All that for free! :-)
Now I'm back home remembering the events of the weekend, still laughing about jokes and funny incidents, tired but too hyped to sleep. It was the perfect weekend! I would say "Wenn Engel reisen..." ;-) I have new friends all over the country and in future hopefully in influential positions. Noooo... I'm not selfish, I just want everyone of them to be happy and successful. And in case someone turns out to be in need for a good employee... I would volunteer - I got lucky with that strategy before! *MUAHAHAHA*
I hope I didn't bore you with yet another one of my oh-so-long emails about stories from my oh-so-eventful life written in my oh-so-enjoyable descriptive phrases. :-D
Hope to hear from you soon! From Veronika with love!
P.S. Since I wrote everything in English today I extended my newsletter recipient list to a couple of my friends from the new world. Well, let's say only-English-speaking friends. Welcome to you guys - hope you enjoy reading about my life!
P.P.S. Now it is 3am and ... once again ... I get only little sleep tonight. Seems to become my thing. Good night everybody!
The journey back home was supposed to be super organized but turned out to be full of luck. I tell you, me and "relaxed travelling" are not such good friends! Sven and I arrived at the airport just in time for bag check-in. 5 minutes later and we would have had to throw out all liquids, hairspray, make up, razors, all that kind of hazardous things... but we were lucky! When we arrived at the gate it was already closed. The staff mistakenly checked us in before without us being on the plane at all. So nobody even noticed that we were not on board. Kind of weird and probably a technological problem. The plane almost left without us... but we were lucky! Sven thought he got the good seat right behind Business Class with the more leg room. I was seated all the way in the back crammed in with lots of other people. But since the weight of the plane was unevenly distributed the stewardess needed people to move up front. I volunteered... and got lucky! Upgrade to Business Class - fancy dinner instead of peanuts, real glasses instead of plastic cups. And the best was: All that for free! :-)
Now I'm back home remembering the events of the weekend, still laughing about jokes and funny incidents, tired but too hyped to sleep. It was the perfect weekend! I would say "Wenn Engel reisen..." ;-) I have new friends all over the country and in future hopefully in influential positions. Noooo... I'm not selfish, I just want everyone of them to be happy and successful. And in case someone turns out to be in need for a good employee... I would volunteer - I got lucky with that strategy before! *MUAHAHAHA*
I hope I didn't bore you with yet another one of my oh-so-long emails about stories from my oh-so-eventful life written in my oh-so-enjoyable descriptive phrases. :-D
Hope to hear from you soon! From Veronika with love!
P.S. Since I wrote everything in English today I extended my newsletter recipient list to a couple of my friends from the new world. Well, let's say only-English-speaking friends. Welcome to you guys - hope you enjoy reading about my life!
P.P.S. Now it is 3am and ... once again ... I get only little sleep tonight. Seems to become my thing. Good night everybody!
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