4th of April in 2018:
Today my day started a little bit earlier than the others. Even Colin (an employee from InternEurope) told me to begin work at 10 a.m.; I remembered that Kelli (She is my supervisor at ‚volunteer now‘.) asked me to start work at 8:30 a.m. Not a problem for me. It supposed to say ‚The early bird catches the worm.‘
I left early, but the traffic lights on my way are quite annoying. You have to wait very long to get a green light. (1:58 minutes! I measured the time today) And if you get one, the green sign of the other direction changed to green as well.
I found something else, which is different from Germany. Some transitions of the streets have a small traffic light. They only have a small monitor with a button to press it (you can see it in the right picture)
When I passed by some streets, I saw these lovely wall paintings or the correct word ‚mural‘. I hope I will see more murals because they look well painted. I want to make a mural too *smirk*.
My sense of direction is terrible. Even with Google Maps, I didn’t find the building at first. I passed by or went to the other side of the street. (It reminds me of my language study travel. The first free time we had in Stratford-upon-Aven we got a map. I had the plan and, I navigated the others in the entirely wrong direction. However, I realised it fast and saw the opening period… I was too early and couldn’t enter the building. Luckily a college went into the building, and I followed her.
A little bit later, Kelli came downstairs to pick me up. She showed me the building. We have three floors, a lot of stairs, many Firehole doors (see the picture below) and a small canteen. I think I will get lost tomorrow. This building is kind of confusing. She introduced me to my future colleagues, made a short trip through the environment near the building and showed me Tesco, a pharmacy, a bakery and local store. At 9 a.m. I received my current working desk, my account and some other information.
Unfortunately, the test server, which I will work on, isn’t ready yet. That’s why she gave me some documentation about the company to get familiar. At 10 a.m. everyone usually has tea time/breakfast time, where I can have a small chat with my colleagues or have my breakfast or just a cup of tea.
I thought I don’t have much to do, though I got an e-mail from an IT responsible, for gathering information about the printers in the building. But for the last printer, I didn’t have access to print out the network settings. Next, I did some research about the company and wrote my blog entry for today. I finished work at 2:30 p.m. because I didn´t have much to do today. Tomorrow will be another day.
In the afternoon I decided to walk into the city to discover the neighbourhood.
Later on, I had dinner with Tim and Son. We exchanged our experiences from the first day at the workplace.
From today on I will be an IT Officer at volunteer now. Let’s see what else I have to do…