It's been a while since I've posted so I'll try to catch you all up on what's been happening lately.
My job has been going well. It seems like it's more administrative assistant work rather than IT administration, and it's a struggle every day to speak German, but I've just got to keep on pushing through.
I celebrated Christmas here, which was actually the second time I've done so, so it wasn't entirely strange to spend the holiday away from my American family. We definitely saw enough Austrian family to make up it. We spent Christmas Eve in Vienna, just Marlene and I. We cooked ourselves a delicious dinner on our raclette grill, then we sang some English/German songs, then opened presents. I got a nice watch to replace the one that broke when it fell out of my pocket at a soccer practice during the Fall and the watch face broke. I also got Football Manager 2011 which is a super addictive soccer club managing game. I'm currently still playing the 2010 version of the game because I've got a season with Austria Wien that I can't quit yet.
On Christmas day we traveled to Neusiedl am See and had a great dinner with Marlene's immediately family. After the dinner we played board games all night. The next day we went to an Aunt's house and had dinner with all of her family who lives in Neusiedl. We again played board games afterward, mostly an extremely long game of the Settlers of Catan, which was won by Marlene's cousin Wolfgang. Then on Monday I had to work again so we came back to Vienna, and the Christmas season officially ended.
Now, we're looking forward to the New Year! We're going to spend it at a friend of a friend's place and hopefully play some more Settlers of Catan. If I don't win then it'll definitely be a bad omen going into the new year...
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
1 Week Into My New Job
Exactly one week ago I had a job interview in the morning at cSt Causa, a small tax accountancy firm, as an IT Administrator. At the end of a relatively short interview, the boss offered me a job on the spot and asked me to come back that afternoon to start following around the current IT guy. So today I'm celebrating both the one week anniversary of my successful interview and my one week anniversary on the job!
The IT administrating portion of the job is only part-time so that's all I'm working at the moment, but I'll have the opportunity to make the position full-time if I take on more responsibilities like administrative assistance, marketing, helping tutor English, and helping translate documents/their website into English. Hopefully, I'll be able to take on these additional challenges, but as of right now I'm still learning my way around and getting to know my colleagues. The office is in Vienna's inner city and the dress code is more formal than anywhere else I've worked so it's fun because both of these make me feel important somehow. It's hard to say if dressing up every day might get old after a while though. We'll see!
The IT administrating portion of the job is only part-time so that's all I'm working at the moment, but I'll have the opportunity to make the position full-time if I take on more responsibilities like administrative assistance, marketing, helping tutor English, and helping translate documents/their website into English. Hopefully, I'll be able to take on these additional challenges, but as of right now I'm still learning my way around and getting to know my colleagues. The office is in Vienna's inner city and the dress code is more formal than anywhere else I've worked so it's fun because both of these make me feel important somehow. It's hard to say if dressing up every day might get old after a while though. We'll see!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Christmas Season Begins
Thanksgiving's over and we've had snow so Christmas season has officially begun. This past weekend was actually pretty busy. I saw two movies that I'd recommend to everyone out there: The Social Network and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, on Saturday night my soccer team had a fundraiser where we sold Punsch, and Sunday was the Vienna soccer derby between FK Austria Wien and Rapid Wien but my team lost 0:1 in a snowy match.
On Monday I had an interview with the personnel company Elan IT, which specializes in finding jobs for IT companies. This seems to be the way most companies fill positions in Austria, where a company wants a new employee and instead of advertising the position themselves, they contract a personnel company, who advertises the position and interviews prospective employees. This is good in one sense in that I conducted the interview on Monday with Elan IT, and they'll submit applications for me to several positions they think I'm qualified for. I would still have to do an interview with the actual company that would hire me though, which coincidentally I'm doing tomorrow morning with the company I mentioned in my last post from Wolfsgraben, Austria.
Most fun though is the ton of snow we've received in the past few days. Here are a couple pictures, first of the inner garden of our building, and second of the street out front.
Finally, I saw another awesome concert last night from another of the artists in my Current Music list, this time it was M.I.A. who did a show at Gasometer. It's a much, much bigger venue than where Marlene and I saw The Futureheads, but still not a stadium or anything. It's bigger than First Ave in Minneapolis, I'd estimate there were almost 2000 people there? It's difficult to say. I went with Marlene's sister Vroni, since it was a school night, and we couldn't get too close to the stage but it was still quite a spectacle with 3 giant TV screens showing strange animation loops, a blinding light show (especially the extensive use of synchronized strobe lights), and the randomness of M.I.A. who at one point bodysurfed in the audience, got down and ran through the crowd to perform in the back of the room, and also brought 50+ audience members on stage to dance with her for one song.
On Monday I had an interview with the personnel company Elan IT, which specializes in finding jobs for IT companies. This seems to be the way most companies fill positions in Austria, where a company wants a new employee and instead of advertising the position themselves, they contract a personnel company, who advertises the position and interviews prospective employees. This is good in one sense in that I conducted the interview on Monday with Elan IT, and they'll submit applications for me to several positions they think I'm qualified for. I would still have to do an interview with the actual company that would hire me though, which coincidentally I'm doing tomorrow morning with the company I mentioned in my last post from Wolfsgraben, Austria.
Most fun though is the ton of snow we've received in the past few days. Here are a couple pictures, first of the inner garden of our building, and second of the street out front.
Finally, I saw another awesome concert last night from another of the artists in my Current Music list, this time it was M.I.A. who did a show at Gasometer. It's a much, much bigger venue than where Marlene and I saw The Futureheads, but still not a stadium or anything. It's bigger than First Ave in Minneapolis, I'd estimate there were almost 2000 people there? It's difficult to say. I went with Marlene's sister Vroni, since it was a school night, and we couldn't get too close to the stage but it was still quite a spectacle with 3 giant TV screens showing strange animation loops, a blinding light show (especially the extensive use of synchronized strobe lights), and the randomness of M.I.A. who at one point bodysurfed in the audience, got down and ran through the crowd to perform in the back of the room, and also brought 50+ audience members on stage to dance with her for one song.
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