Laralee in NYC

Happy Halloween!

I’m looking forward to going out tonight and tomorrow (when it’s actually Halloween) , walking around in the neighborhood and see what’s going on here. Some most front yards sure look very spooky!!!

Last week it got so cold, that on Thursday it even started snowing in Pennsylvania (which was converted into rain in the NYC area). And I didn’t have my winter coat yet!! All my winter stuff like heavy wool sweaters, scarf&hat&gloves I left at my Mom’s so she could send it to me in the WINTERTIME Didn’t think it would get so cold so early…

So on Friday I went shopping and I bought:

• A nice winter coat (DKNY – reeeeaallllyyy warm)
• scarf&hat&gloves (Victoria’s secret – extremely cute I think).

So what happened? The weather completely turned – again. Now we have mild temperatures, lots of sunshine, no wind… beautiful!

But that’s just Murphy’s Law I guess. If you don’t want it to rain, make sure you take the umbrella with you when you leave the house!

Nevertheless, here are some pictures of my new winter-stuff which I love to death (but won’t need in the next days for sure):

OK, lunch break is over, have to go back to work. BTW, last week was really great. I was assigned the task to put together an application binder for a large-scale solar project, so I needed to come up with ideas how to present our company. Also, there were strict guidelines in the RFQ (”Request for Statement of Qualifications”) So even if we do not get the job, at least now we have a complete file with everything we need to get other jobs in the future. And if I may say so, I am a little proud of myself because all the work I did last week was completely new to me (”Neuland”) and the result was not too bad, my boss liked it and I hope we will be picked against our competitors! This week so far is not so great, but I suppose not every week can be as exciting as last week.

Take care, Greetings from Pennsylvania!

Author: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cuppini/

Hello! Not only is the battery in my computer broken; now the power adaptor left me for good, as well. So until I’ve figured out whether to buy a new computer or a new adaptor and battery there won’t be many posts.

Check out my boyfriend’s site* to see some of the pictures we took during the German-American parade in NYC last weekend!!! There were German groups from everywhere (from the North Sea island Amrum to tiny villages in Bavaria…). The music they featured was also very diverse and ranged from traditional Bavarian folklore to anything that included drums. We had a blast watching the parade…

If you should ever be in New York in September, you should definitely try to see it.

* http://www.cocktailschirmchen.net/blog/

Edit: my dear friend Andrea kindly informed me that I had misplaced the apostrophe in the word “boyfriend” (1st sentence).

Do all agree that if it’s written: “my boyfriends’ site” – that’s how it used to be before I changed it – it would imply that I had more than one boyfriend?

Is it correct now?

I’m not a big fan of placing apostrophes…. *g*

(And I always wanna write apostrophy and apostrophies [pl.] but that’s another Grammar topic. Gosh!)

‘Time flies by when you’re having a good time’. This would be the American way of describing my situation right now; in Germany we would probably just say “Wo ist bloss die ganze Zeit geblieben?” or “Die Zeit rast wie verrueckt!”, am I right, my fellow Germans?

Aaaanyway I just realized that I need to update my blog. First AND second week of my internship are over; it was the second day of week # 3 today. A good week so far. On Monday, my boss and I had a little talk about the general situation, i.e. we talked about my hours (How many hours am I going to work each week?), money in general & the payroll system aaaand about the thing. that, originally, we had agreed on me working from home (New York) like 2 days each week, but so far I didn’t see how this was ever gonna work out. Because for example last Thursday I didn’t arrive in NY until 8:30PM even though I got on the bus at 4:30PM – the problem was the normal, disastrous NY traffic.

However, I am positive now that this thing. actually CAN work out, all we ought to do is make better plans in the future.

On Monday morning on the bus from New York to Stroudsburg (1.5hr ride) I actually had prepared a little three-way work – week – scheme*..to present/show to my boss in order to get this sorted out with him.

* What do you mean “you’ve never heard of this”?!?! Well, let me explain :

The so-called Three-Way Work Week Scheme works as follows:

=> There are three different ways my work week can look like:

1. The “Normal” Work Week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, plus Thursday until noon work&stay in Stroudsburg. Rest of the hours left: work from home. (This week applies whenever there’s more office work but still some other work like translations etc. – work I can do in NY as well)
2. The “Extended” Work Week: work&stay in Stroudsburg Monday till Friday. (This week applies whenever there’s loads of work that cannot be done from anywhere else than the office in Stroudsburg).
3. The “Short-stay-in-PA” Work Week: work&stay in Stoudsburg e.g. only Monday till Wednesday noon. Or even less/ and/or not one day in the week, whenever my boss is on business travel. (This week applies if there’s loads and loads of “homework” to do – I might as well to that in NY then.)

That’s it. Easy, huh?

As I said, I wrote/scribbled this into my filofax during the Monday morning  Bus ride. I’ve talked about this with my boss, but I can’t really say whether he thought it was good or bad, interesting/annoyingly German, serious/funny – you name it- because all he said was [quote] “okay.” [end of quote].

Too bad I didn’t come up with the genious title for it until like – now…

Otherwise I could have really made a point. Damn.

That’s it for now. I’m instantly hoping that I will find more time to write this blog and I’m sorry in advance if I won’t. I also need my own camera so I can post more pictures especially from the days I spend in the city. There was this AWESOME German-American Parade on 5th Avenue on Saturday (19th) – The 52nd Annual Steuben Parade – and we took more than 100 pictures that day. I will post a few ASAP.

Here’s a link to that parade

The first week in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania was preeeetty good… So far: I ♥ my new job.
Now, I know it’s not very grown-up to say something like that after having only worked a couple of days. However, since EVERYTHING worked out so well, I think everyone in my position would say that.

Now I’ll define “everything”:

#1: The Commute: I was kind of afraid of the fact that I have to get up at 5-something-AM, take the subway to Midtown Manhattan (Times Square), get my Bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal (if I should ever miss that Bus I’m srewed!!!) and then the Bus ride… but let me tell you guys. It’s really not that bad. In fact, if millions of people can do that twice every day, so can I.

#2: The Accommodation: hmmm, don’t want to make my boyfriend jealous, but if we’re talking luxury, style and comfort here, it’s actually better than our place in New York. My room is like twice as big. It has a walk-in closet, a beautiful&cozi King size bed, TV and so on… I absolutely love my room. I also have my private bathroom with a tub and shower, marble floor…. it’s impossible to not like it.
The house itself is huge and very pretty. It is surrounded by nature and the property that belongs to the house is huge. It is 4 miles to Stroudsburg but I have a car that I can use whenever I want after work, which leads me to

#3: My New Job: so far I have the feeling that it’s going to be everything I have been told it would be i.e. helping my boss with the startup of his company- which includes a variety of tasks. If needed, I will do translations (mostly German -> English and mostly texts that have to do with solar thermal systems); help setting up the new Software; general secretarial tasks such as making travel arrangements (I’ve already booked a flight and hotel – on day 2) etc.;

long story short: there’s enough work to keep me busy, which is good because I hate not having enough work to do – the way it was during my previous internship – there’s nothing worse than feeling superfluous & like you are not really doing anything meaningful…. well enough of that; this job hopefully won’t be like that, period. By the way, my hours – I am working from 8.30AM – 5PM with a lunch break of 30 minutes. Sometimes three, sometimes maybe 5 days a week.

So, I know, I shouldn’t be toooo excited and over the moon. But I think I can definitely be glad and optimistic or what would you say?

Thank you for reading my blog and have a nice week everyone!!!

P.S.: Below are a couple of pictures from the House and the property where lucky me lives now from Mondays – Wednesdays (or longer, depending on the workload). I didn’t take them; my boss’ wife gave em to me so I could show them to people and they are from last year. But soon, when the leaf-peeping begins, it will look pretty much like on these pics…

It was almost unbearably hot yesterday. I could only stand it underneath the trees in Prospect Park, another gorgeous park in Brooklyn, also designed by Vaux and Olmsted =>click this website for interesting facts about this park.

Then at night we hit a few bars in Williamsburg, was a lot of fun; one was a german beer garden where we drank Franziskaner from the tab *yummi* and ate Bratwurst& Sauerkraut and afterwards we went to a Brazilian bar called Miss Favela which was definately something else and the Mojitos where quite shocking

Today we ate breakfast in the garden right in front of our bedroom – wonderful – and now we’re packing our things to check out Rockaway Beach.

Have a nice Sunday everyone!!!

Before I started this blog I actually had trouble deciding whether I should write it in German or English. I even thought about making it a bilingual blog – after all, I’m a translator – so if that would be too challenging for me, I clearly would have chosen the wrong profession

I chose English now because I expect my smart german family & friends to be able to understand everything I write and like this, my dear friends from Brazil, France, the United States and other countries, who don’t speak German, can also read what I’ve been up to.

The idea to translate every blog entry didn’t proof to be so good after all; it’s weird to first write your new post and then, when you’re ready, you have to rethink every word/sentence/paragraph and make sure that you’ve translated all the content… way to time-consuming plus not the way a blog should be. A post in a blog shouldn’t be work, it should be fun, creative and spontaneous! Sooo… I hope it’s okay for everyone?

Anyway, now it’s been one week since my better half and me arrived in New York. So far so good. I talked to my boss yesterday about the start of my internship which is next Tuesday. Monday is Labor Day, an important holiday in the U.S..

Since the company is not located in NY but in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania,  I will usually be out of town for three days per week, mostly Monday till Wednesday afternoon. Thursdays and Fridays are reserved for all the work I can do at my computer so I can work @ home. At this point I don’t know exactly what kind of work this will be, but probably some translation work of technical documents for solar thermal systems (i.e. parts of these systems).

I’m glad I know my schedule now and I’m looking forward to finally get to work!

Below are some of the pictures I took yesterday… did I mention that I LOVE THIS CITY?!?

(Click on the picture and then click again to enlarge the image.)

Spent most of my time strolling around Central Park today (Sunday). This has to be one of the most beautiful city parks in the entire world… I love it -  no one could possibly not love it We were sitting on black stones which were heated up from the sun and watched a baseball game for a while and just relaxed. Then we had a slice of delicious New York Pizza, all cheesy and yummy – what a perfect day.

Yesterday was the day when finally I knew for sure that all the stressful, challenging moments in the past six months did lead me someplace good after all. It ain’t easy finding an internship in the USA; it ain’t easy finding a Visa sponsor and it’s certainly not easy to apply for and get a Visa for a six months internship. But if in the end it all works out, the negative part is almost forgotten. Who cares if I had many sleepless nights anxiously waiting for form number 374B to arrive in the mail? Who cares if it drove myself crazy {more than once} that it so hard to get that little sticker in my passport- not to forget that it costs a fortune? I don’t . Right now, I am exactly where I wanted to be. Tired, but happy.

We were very lucky with our appartment search. The landlady is sooo sweet, the house gorgeous (no ugly surprises – it is just like it has been described to us, old but very neat) and our room is perfect for us. It has lots of shelves, a desk, a comfortable bed, enough closet space and a hardwood floor. We also have access to the garden from our room which looks very peaceful – I’m sure you can only find something like this if you don’t live in Manhattan. Who wants to live in Manhattan anyway?? The noise there is always on an extremely high level, it’s even more expensive… Brooklyn is wonderful. So far I love my neighbourhood (Park Slope/Prospect Heights) and I can’t wait to see everything.  A little less rain the next days would be good. My first day of work is not until Sept. 7 so that still gives me some time to explore the area and getting used to living in the big apple.