I’m totally behind in my blogging since Time Warner Cable and my housing association both blame eachother for my cable’s not working and I don’t have internet access. But due to my work computer’s slowness and my having to wait for photoshop to react I can blog a bit now. It’s like I do one click, it freezes, it unfreezes, I do another click, it freezes again and so on and so on.
Anyway, I am finally healthy again after that bronchitis and then a lovely bladder infection that sent me looking for an urgent care center (kind of hard without internet). The antibiotics cleaned me up quite well and they were only 25$. I was shocked! Still have to hand that in to my insurance but yeah. Not bad!
Other than that, life has been nice. Last week was super warm and we ate lunch outside most of the days. It really does feel like a break when you get to sit on a patio and feel like you’re getting toasted. It’s super cold today though!
Hmmm, what else did I do?! Hung out with the boys at the pub next door, had sushi at my favorite sushi restaurant with a friend of a friend, went shopping (me wants macbook), saw a huge organic supermarket, received my first Christmas mail, went out clubbing on Thursday (but that wasn’t too bad and I didn’t drink), helped Giorgio move (I think I was carrying much more than the lazy boys but oh well), went out to dinner afterwards and got really weird vibes from M’s girlfriend, slept horribly because of someone’s snoring and too much noise from upstairs, had sushi buffet on Saturday and then we all hung out at Giorgio’s new place and watched TV before going out for dinner, did laundry on Sunday, read a good book, watched Christmas movies and baked cookies with Chadi and Giorgio.
Busy life here…. I love my boys but I really miss my girlfriends and I haven’t properly talked to my family since I got here!!! Stupid internet provider 🙁
First Week Recap
So my first week here is over and I feel like I’ve been here much longer considering how much I’ve done so far. Ok so Sunday I got coffee with Chadi and then we went to Giorgio’s until he threw us all out because some girl was gonna come over. Cooked some food and read Cosmo with Chadi later on and then all of a sudden it was Monday morning. Work has been going well so far. There’s a lot going on right now with the new year approaching and some trade shows coming up. Not really much time to learn how to do all that but I’m taking more of a “just do it” approach. But my co-workers are all nice and I really enjoy what I do.
I think Monday night I hung out with my neighbors and we watched some telly and chatted. It was good to see them again after these months. I also went to CVS and bought a cell phone but you had to activate it online and well, my connection here is almost non-existant so I couldn’t activate it. Tuesday I then went over to Chadi’s to take care of that and we watched The Rock – about which I had totally forgotten how nasty it can be. I also got so lucky and got some yummy pizza and super sweet cake from Chadi. Yum!
Wednesday night we hung out at my place for a bit and my neighbors Karl and Ash visited, too. We had to go to Coyote Joe’s then, which is a huge country club (not as in country club but as in music club). Loads of fun chuckeling over the line dancers and then after a few beers we headed uptown to Connoloy’s where we met Manuel and some of his co-workers. A Guiness there and then we finally did what we had intended to do, we saw our co-worker play the drums in his surf band. Fun times but I think I had another beer there so after a quick stop at Forum, which included dancing, we headed to Fuel and the boys made me eat pizza and drink loads of water. I think I actually spilled that one cup. Embarrasing! Finally around 2am we were home but ugh, I was drunk…
Thursday morning proved to be not so nice but not horrible. I went to the bathroom and had to lay down there because I got pretty dizy but after the more or less cold shower I was half way ok. The pizza party at work was the third day in a row for pizza but it was nonetheless YUMMY! Don’t think I did much on Thursday night but yesterday Giorgio and I went uptown and met with Massimo and a bunch of other Italians. I was good and only drank Coke and Sprite because I have this evil cough and my throat is kind of sore….
This morning, TimeWarnerCable was supposed to hook up my internet and TV. They said they were gonna come between 8 and 12 and they’d call half an hour before. So I didn’t set my alarm, seeing that they’d call me early enough. Well at 9 the guy calls and says he’d be there in 10 minutes. Oh-Kay. So that was a quick getting out of bed jump. He tried to set up everything but couldn’t really do it. So at 11:30 he calls his supervisor who then comes out around 12. This guy does all the same things and woopdido, nothing happens. Ahhhh! They said I’d have to talk to my housing society but I don’t even know what to ask them. Nice… So frustrating! And then the guys used my guest bathroom and you know what, the dude not only left the seat up but also left the lights on! Tzzz! Unbelievable! 😉
So the pointlessness of the day goes on. We’ve got a lot going on at work right now and so I was asked to come in today and help them out for let’s say 4 hours or so. Well, I was done after 2 hours, which seems pretty pointless to me considering the half hour drive each way. Oh well. So then to improve the day I got sushi from Harris Teeter – yum! Forgot to pick up bread and tea but OH WELL! In a couple of minutes I’ll grab a coffee with the boys and hopefully I’ll get to see Yung as well. So yeah, I’m keeping busy. 😀 I miss boredom 😉
Tired
I said I was gonna go shopping and so I did. Thankfully my company gave me a car that I can use until I find my own so I drove to SuperTarget and spent around 200$. Yikes! Well, you know how hard it is in the beginning to stock up on basic groceries and then I needed a few things like a water filter, a kettle, a small pot (because there were only 2 huge pots left in the house – not sure where the others went….), two fleece blankets, a large trash can, soap and all that stuff, candles……. yeah. Afterwards I was exhausted. Too much walking around trying to find everything.
I almost fell asleep on the sofa watching college football – ’cause that’s really the only TV channel that I get not too fuzzy right now but thankfully Giorgio and Chadi then showed up and we went uptown to eat pizza and coffee. Funny story, the owner of the coffee place actually remembered me from two years ago when I was at his other restaurant with some friends. Talk about good memory (though I keep thinking about whether or not I left such an embarrasing impression that I burned into his memory….).
Went to a party in south Charlotte then. It was supposed to be a World Party but it was more like a Latin music party with a belly dancer. They had Caipi though so that was great. Got home around 2am and went straight to bed. Aparently my body has arrived here but my inner clock is still back in Europe. You’d think after not much sleep on the day I flew in and then 6 hours the night after, I’d sleep in but noooo. I woke up at 5am. 3 hours of sleep – great. Yeah I didn’t think I’d be any good at work tomorrow so after tossing and turning for half an hour or so I took some melantonin. It took forever to work but I finally fell back asleep (yay drugs!) and stayed like that until 11. Oh bliss!
Organized my bathroom and walk-in closet today (yay), got some more groceries and sushi from Harris Teeter, looked at pre-paid cell phone deals (complicated is an understatement…) and later on it’s prolly a movie with the gang or I don’t know. Keeping busy anyway. 🙂
Back in The Queen City
So after 3 months of annoyances and worrying I finally made it back to Charlotte. I’m super happy that that worked out – though I can’t quite say I’m excited. You know it’s not like the first time I went to London and was ohhing and ahhhing over Big Ben and such but it sure feels good to be back.
The day started super early at 3:30am. Yikes! Made it to the airport in Hanover at 5, which was good because the check-in lady made me repack my suitcases. So they went from 21 and 27,5kg to 23 and 25,5kg and she let them pass. Thankfully she didn’t made me weigh my carry-on; that was another 17kg (but down from 20kg the night before!!). A quick flight to Frankfurt including a 30 minute delay once we boarded and then a loooong one to Charlotte. I had the weirdest seat neighbor. Some young, blonde Swede with a huge tattoo of a half naked woman on his arm that was chewing tobacco and then… watching THE BEAUTY & THE BEAST!! Hillarious. We didn’t really talk but the movies kept me busy and eventually we landed.
I was of course again super nervous about immigrations after that last ordeal but the officer asked me one question. That’s right, one! “So is this the first time you are travelling with this visa?” He held the stamp over my passport but then hesitated for what seemed like forever while reading some more in his computer. Nervewracking! But he hit it, my passport got the stamp and “You’re all set”. Haha! Yay! I almost had a feeling this would happen after all that crap beforehand.
All my bags made it – yay! Massimo, Giorgio, and Chadi picked me up in a tiny Golf that was filled with garbage from the old intern but somehow we all squeezed in and got some food and drinks before I could convince them that I was wayyy too tired to do anything and they dropped me off at my new place. I even managed to unpack the majority of my luggage before falling into bed.
Well today I’m gonna have to go shopping. For some reason there are only 2 huge pots left – not sure what happened to the small ones and I had to throw away some dish towels because they were left in the laundry machine and were quite disgusting when I discovered them. Yuk! Whatever, SuperTarget here I come! 😀