Jour Quatre

I'm getting better at French already. Not.

Well today started out like any other day. Bad. See last night I decided I should be prepared for my first day of work, so I took the train route to the office and it was perfectly smooth.

This morning I got up, got ready, walked to the train station with plenty of time to spare, got on the train, arrived at the main Geneva train station and transferred to my next train. Wait. Where is my next train? Minutes tick by and it still hasn't arrived. It's now a few minutes after it's scheduled departure. Big uh-oh. The Swiss are very on-time. 9:08 a.m. must be at work at 9:30 a.m.

There's a small sign posted that looks like it might tell me why the train is nowhere to be seen. Of course it's all in French.

Option 2. Take a taxi. Problem 2. Taxi driver does not speak English. I show him the address I wrote down for the office where I'll be working, which is located in a building called the Air Center. He starts speaking for what seems like 5 whole minutes none of the words in which I recognize then drives off. Note that taxis in Geneva start (without even driving a millimeter) at $7.50 (that's in Swiss Francs of course). Jesus.

I end up at the World Trade Center, right next to the airport. I have no clue how to get to the office from there. But I'd already spent $27 on maybe a 3-mile taxi ride so I'm having no more of this taxi driver.

I start walking and walking and walking and finally conclude I'm lost. So what does any American girl do when she's lost in a big, foreign city. She goes to the Ramada of course. I step into the Ramada and ask the concierge (who's well versed in English I might add) and she points me in the direction of a cab (a Mercedes Benz of course), sounds like more money trouble to me. But as I'm walking to the taxi I find a business card for my boss (in French). Thank you lord.

I try my best to say, "Je ne parle pas Francais," which as you can probably guess means, "I don't speak a lick of French so don't try to have a conversation with me." I show him the business card and 5 minutes later I'm standing in front of the Air Center (at 10 a.m.) only 30 minutes late.

Fantastic. I'm off to a running start.

I meet the HR lady who I've been in contact with and she's quite nice and probably only slightly older than myself. I read the company's lame-o red book of guidelines that basically told me not accept gifts or give gifts to anyone, don't participate in insider training, and ask the Legal Department for permission to wipe my behind. That sort of thing.

Next I met the Team (minus my boss boss because she was in Egypt). The team consists of me and three others (two guys and a girl) (oh and my plus my boss boss). Two of them are under the age of 30. Good. The girl is from Missouri and she's 25. Even better. I worked until roughly 6 p.m. helping put media kits together for an event next week and I worked on other stuff no one else had time to do. Not terribly mind blowing. Although I noticed when I was typing that the keyboards at the office are funky (I found that in Argentina too). The Y and Z are switched plus some other irregularities but it's really annoying. You'll never know how much you use the 'y' key until it's missing. I bet if you counted all they y's in this blog post that it would be over 100. That means 100 corrections to make at the office. By the time I get used to the y, I'll be back in the States and have to re-learn the positions of y and z. Suck.

I also was told this is the busiest time of the year so be prepared to work late some days. I sure am glad I'm getting paid adequately. Wrong.

Anywho. I took the 6:18 train back to the main train station and was home by 7 (without any hiccups I might add.)

Then I fell asleep.

I'm not sure what the weekend has in store. I was thinking Interlaken. But I'm also thinking that I should explore Geneva more. Hmmm.....

Au revoir.