Cultures Combined

Today I trained so much I thought I was going to loose my voice and my mind.  I do not think that my mind has ever been so thoroughly picked.  Now granted, this is the whole reason I am here, but I must admit it is not at all exactly what I was thinking.  This is NOT  a bad thing.  In fact, I had this immense fear that I was going to be sitting alone a bored senseless during the times that I was not training as I am not a programmer.  I am not one of those people who fix and/or create the applications, rather just teach the folks how to use them.  However, my miss conceptions have been greatly disproved.  I love this!  I have had the opportunity to help brainstorm new concepts with the developers, I have had the opportunity to test out and new features and also help people get to a place where they can actually begin to own and manage their processes because the systems they are receiving will afford them the ability to.  Now work has consumed at least 12 hours per day and we will be working at least Friday (Saturday to me).  This is something I was prepared for, but I have been all but promised a day in Jerusalem on Saturday (Sunday for me).  The down side to this is the fact that Saturday is the day places are closed.  We will see how this all turns out, because I am thinking that a day in Jerusalem, regardless will be fantastic.  In fact, as I was training the Maintenance Manager today on his applications and part generation, he was explaining to me how he felt the last time he went there.  Being a native Israeli, he had not been there in 20 years, but recently went 6 months ago.  He told me how just being in the city made him feel "different." I can only imagine.  He said that it is a special place and that I will really love the place.  I don't doubt his judgement in this regard one bit.

After work, I got to meet some additional members of the launch team.  In all there are 8 of now and 4 more will be joining us.  These are people from all over the world, both born and now currently located due to their jobs.  I cannot begin to describe how mazing each person is.  I laughed so hard to night I thought I was going to cry!  It also made me realize how much I don't know.  In truth, it is rather pathetic that people from other countries know more about the politics in my country than I do; then don't even get me started on world politics.  I have also never been so amazed at how much others can speak on the entertainment (movies and music)of America, where I must really confess I hadn't even heard of half of the movie titles.  In a way I felt like an outside looking in, but know that there are things that I know that perhaps they do not. Just because I could not contribute to the conversation as much as some others of the team (note, this was not the first launch these members have been on, therefore there relationships have grown over the years) I was able to give some feedback, not much but some.  After all, we can't all be the center or life of the conversation. :)

I am excited to say the least to see where the balance of this pre-launch week then next week's launch goes.  I hope that through it all, I continue to make proud the one who has given me my strengths and abilities.  After all, I am to be in this world, but not of it.

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