I can’t believe my first week has already come and gone! I have so much to update you guys on.
So on my first day of work Rafael was picking me up at ten ‘til 8 so I got up at 6:00 to shower and get ready and everything. When my alarm went off I couldn’t believe how dark it was outside. I thought my phone may have the wrong time but nope it was right so I dragged my butt out of bed. Something I may not have mentioned not only am I working in Spain where I don’t speak the language and don’t know the culture but I’ve never had an internship in the states before. I’ve never worked for a company period. I did research one summer at Notre Dame, which is listed on my resume as an internship but it’s not the same thing as working for a company so I really didn’t know what to expect my first day.
I meet Rafael down at Plaza Neptuno and we drive to work. There’s less traffic than he’s inspecting and we get there a good bit before 8:30, which was our intended time of arrival. When we arrive at the HR department everyone is dressed in suits and I felt like I made wise clothing choices in my dress pants and jacket. He introduces me to his boss Juan Manuel, whom I had been corresponding with as well to set up the internship. I quickly realize they had put way more effort into bringing me here than I had thought. Apparently in Spain students don’t typically do internships. According to Spanish law the company has to make a contract not with the student but with the university. It’s very unusual for Spanish students to do internships at all, which is just so the opposite of my Tech experience. Even outside of Tech if you don’t have any internship experience it is much harder to get a job after graduation. Well apparently they had an intern three year ago from a university in… Mississippi? So I felt very lucky that they had set this up with me. Juan Manuel takes me around to everyone in the HR office and introduces me and I get my besos from everyone – older men, young women – everyone greets me with the kisses on each cheek. He even takes me out to meet my boss’ boss’ boss, unfortunately I can’t remember his name (there were SO many names that first day and they each have like 4). A quick note on names. In Spain everyone has two last names, one for their mother and one for their father and they get to choose what order they put them in. And when women get married they don’t take their husbands name. Rafael told me about this. He says while he legally has two he know about eight or so. What a cool way to know all of your heritage. Anyways…. Back to my first day.
I fill out a lot of forms, like confidentiality agreements and giving them the rights to all of my information, etc. etc. They had to go dig up copies in English for me. Juan Manuel tells me how mad he was when he found out about my scam. He said his wife works in the financial something or other for international house or something like that. International House is the company I will be taking my language classes from starting the 4th of October (I can’t wait!). Apparently they can find housing and he says that after work he and I will meet up and we’ll take the bus back to the city together (so he can show me where the stops are too), have some lunch, and then go over to international house to talk to them about it. He then starts talking about renting a room with a family and shared apartments and yadda yadda yadda… This is not what I had originally intended. I wanted to get a little studio apartment so at night I could come back turn my brain off from work and trying to speak Spanish and everything. A shared apartment wouldn’t be so bad because it would be with other international house students learning Spanish so they make speak English or evengerman and living with people my age could be fun. But a host family is NOT what I wanted. Oh just wait until you see how this unfolds. Can you guess? But at the moment I just tell him a shared apartment is more what I would want and we move on.
I spend most of the day in the HR office, but finally Rafael walks me over to the other building – Ancora (Tecnatom actually has several buildings. Many are shop buildings and the HR office is in the main building, which is gorgeous and has a doctor’s office if I ever need it. Good to know. But the building I’m in Tecnatom is actually only renting an office out in for the next two years or so while they build a new building. They need all the new space because in the past three years they have gone from a company of 500 employees to 800! During the recession and everything!). Here I meet my boss/mentor Jose Antonio and his boss Pablo Rey. We go into a conference room and they explain everything they have planned for me. The first week I’ll just be getting an overview to the company and what the simulation department (the department I’m working in) does. The next two week I’ll be learning a program called Team Logic; the first week from a user standpoint, using the program like a black box, then the second week learning how the program actually works. The fourth week I’ll be learning a program called Ovation. Then weeks five through eight I’ll be working on my project. Now I don’t really know how to describe this without drawing a diagram but I hope you understand this. In a simulator there is a group of computers that run some really fancy code that simulates everything (duh) but if one of these computers crashes the simulation is thrown over to a totally separate computer that has a virtual simulation in fortran (bleck) on it that is much more simplistic. This way the operator can still continue to do some training, while they try to get the other computer back on line. What they would like to do is create a translator that can translate the super fancy code into fortran without having an individual have to go through and do it line by line (it would probably take a team like a year). What they want me to do is not write this translator (thank G-d) but figure out what needs to happen for the translator to be written. The reason I’m learning to the Team Logic program so in depth is because it kind of already does this for something else (I don’t really know yet). And then my last two weeks will be spent writing up a report and then creating a presentation, which I will do for both my of them plus maybe some other people. Knowing what is expected of me and what my goal is feels fantastic! When I worked at Notre Dame two summers ago the most frustrating part was that my project wasn’t really defined to me until I was already half way through my time there and then after that they changed it up some. It was the most frustrating experience.
After that they showed me my desk and my laptop and everything. Then Pablo Rey and one of the guys from the administration department (no idea what his name is either) went with me to the bank to set me up a Spanish bank account (cool huh?). According to Spanish law a company must pay everyone to a Spanish bank account but for foreigners sometimes it is sometimes difficult to get one so they went with me. Then they gave me the Tecnatom 2009 ¨Report on Activities¨ so I could familiarize myself with the company overall then at 2:25 I went to go meet Juan Manuel at the bus. At this point I’m exhausted because I’m so screwed up from the time change, starving because the day before the only thing I managed to eat was a banana and then had missed breakfast today and it was already 2:30, and was starting to really feel congested. I just wanted to eat and nap. Oh! I forgot to mention the work hours. This is so cool. In Spain most companies during the summer go down to a six and a half hour work day and this doesn’t end until the end of September, so my hours right now are from 8:00 AM to 2:30 PM. Then after October 3rd we’ll work in the morning have an hour and a half two hour lunch break (siesta!) and then work in the afternoons.
So we get on the bus and ride back to the city and grab lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant near international house. In Spain the big meal of the day is lunch (at around 3 or so) and then a very light dinner at around 9 or 10. Most restaurant offer a Menu del Dia each day for lunch, which is two courses, a drink, bread, and a dessert for about nine or ten euros. You get a list of choices for the first and second course and dessert. It’s incredible.
When we go over to IH the guy tells me how currently they don’t have any shared apartments available and my Spanish will get better a lot quicker living with a host family and etc. They keep pushing it and keep pushing it. Then a woman there says I could do the host family for a little bit then switch to the shared apartments so I say fine. I’m not feeling well and I’m so tired that it’s just not worth it to argue. So on Wednesday I move in with Monica (and he says she’s fantastic and I’ll love her and if I change my mind and want to stay there just let him know… we get it.) and I’m there for two weeks and then I move into a shared apartment. For two weeks I can survive anything. Oh and every night she’ll cook me dinner so…
I go home take a nap then convince myself to get dressed and go find dinner. Did I mention that this isn’t my first time to Spain? I was here for a week last January with my family and then this summer after my program was over I visited a friend studying in Valencia for a week. So there is one area where I actually know a fair amount of Spanish… food. I end up going down to this little cerveceria down the street and get one of my favorite Spanish foods… it’s a grilled sandwich with ham, cheese, and a fried egg. There’s a whole cut out in the top piece of bread for the yolk. I also get acerveca con limon. I don’t exactly know how to explain this but if you’ve ever been to Germany it’s the same thing as a radler. The guy who’s working is great. He gives me a little tapas of potatoes, tuna, and egg that was actually really good. Not ingredients I would have ever quite put together like that.
Whew! And that was my first day. I think that’s enough for now I’ll update you on the rest of the week tomorrow.
Sonia en España 