I survived my first week of work

Monday morning my phone had mysteriously decided to die instead of wake me up at 6.30 as it had promised me way too late Sunday night, but Sara's mum got us up, me jumping in the shower in the good believe that it was around 6.30 and I, in my sleepiness, just had turned off my alarm on the phone. It wasn't before I was sitting enjoying the nice breakfast Sara had prepared for me, that I realized that I was in fact suppose to be present in my new office only 15 minutes later.

After a to fast and furious run to the bus(We currently live 15 min walk from it), and a 20 min fish-in-a-can sensation (in the metro), I was waiting in the center for my next bus. It came pretty fast, and drove me another place than it should (they had changed the route). Finally after half a kilometer of running I was in front of gate to my new workplace, ringing the door phone. Nobody answered, I tried ringing a little bit more, while wondering if the ringing-the-door-bell time of being rude was the same as in Denmark. Anyway finally somebody said "Pronto!" and I was let in.

The first day went primarily with setting up my new computer, installing stuff. And speaking a little bit with the technical staff in Italian. The company is ISO 9000 certified and have a pretty advanced and also in Italian. And they bought my excuse of wanting to be sure everybody was present, before I arrived excuse for being there 9.26 (I should be noted that they had just said after nine)

My first assignment was to help one of my new colleagues solve a problem with performance, which I had no idea how to do, luckily they didn't expect me to either, and they didn't know much about it either, so they figured that I could bring some fresh ideas to the problem. And I did (mostly by chance), and it got faster, its still not perfect but better.

I try my Italian daily, and I am improving a lot, even though I have the feeling that they are very kind to me, because in retrospection I know it must be very hard to understand my homemade language constructions. But I am getting better. Also my colleagues are starting to talk a little bit more to me. English is not something you take for granted as in Denmark, and there are in fact not many who speaks better English than my Italian, (or they are just as embarrassed to speak as I am). So I haven't talked to much with everybody yet.

All in all the first week was good, I am happy to be here, and I think that I will get some good assignments. I miss the tall tables in TE, and lunch buffet. But the pasta we can get next door, or the pizza from the corner isn't bad either :-).