First proper working week 12-18.01.09

This week was my first proper week of work 9-6. Work has started off fairly quietly, easing me in to things, so to speak, but I’m sure that soon it will be really rather hectic. I now know which client accounts I’m going to be working on and my role within them is starting to take shape.

Other than work I have done a fair bit of sport this week. After sitting for 8 hours I REALLY need to move a bit so I have been going to classes regularly. Tuesday night I cooked Nasi Goreng for my friend Vittoria because inevitably eating together is the only time we actually manage to get together! On Wednesday I went for lunch to a thai restaurant with Ortrud and Anja. The food was delicious (I had red thai chicken curry) and it was a great opportunity to get up to speed on the office gossip . In addition to this full meal at lunchtime, I pigged out further that evening because my cooking group made beefburgers. Mmmm. Home made beefburgers ARE delicious.

Friday night I had my francophone friends over for dinner at the Kolpinghaus. I went shopping with Alex and Laure for the meal and you could tell what nationality I was with by what we bought J. We had the works, apéro (selection of crisps etc), beer and wine, main course and LOTS of icecream . We bought far too much food so I have now inherited a load of food.

Saturday, I went for a massive run in the Englischer Garten. I was sooo excited to see that the lake in the middle had frozen over. People were ice skating on it and curling. So I have now walked on water! I am very proud of this as I had never seen a lake frozen over before. I also needed to buy a present and design a costume because I’d been invited to a fancy dress birthday party of a colleague of mine who was turning 30. The theme was basically fairytale. So I went shopping looking for a present and inspiration. What I returned with was a present (score!) and new winter boots…hmmm…. I am currently wearing my furry winter boots ALL the time and I fear them might die in the near future. That’s my excuse anyway, they are very cool, brown suede with lots of buckles and furry inside.

This left me with less time than anticipated to construct a costume. I had decided on going as a grey cat as it was simple and I already had everything I needed for the look. Grey leggings over grey tights, a tail consisting of stuffed grey tights and a grey top. I made myself some ears from the cardboard from a box of chocolates and attached them to my head with clips. After that I just used lots of eyeliner for the eyes nose and whiskers and….miiaaooww!!

I was the only cat there, which made me happy and everyone had gone to a real effort to look good. We had Anne as the snow queen, a genie (Anja), a witch (Claudia), a forest fairy (Andrea), a fortune teller, a vampire, a wizard (awesome home-made costume by Anne’s mum), snow white, and we even had the 7 dwarves, including Rudi, Anne’s 7ft boyfriend. A very impressive turnout. Anne’s dad did the whole embarrassing dad bit by showing us a presentation of a selection of pictures over the last 30 years, not the flattering ones obviously. There was also a fair bit of champagne flowing and the bartender kept topping up the glasses so I’m not sure how much I drank, which is always a bad sign and I feel I may have overindulged just the teensiest bit, about which I feel quite shameful. An excellent night out.