Working Woman

I woke up before my alarm on Monday morning, full of nerves about starting my new job. It wasn't so much the starting in a new office and meeting new people that was scaring me, more that fact that this was all going to be in Spanish, and my language skills were definitely far from ready for this. I had breakfast with the boys and then rode to work with Bea, my new colleague who had saved me from impending homelessness, on the back of her moped (how Spanish!).

Once at work, Bea did the rounds introducing me to everyone on my new floor, including one of my new bosses, (which actually is only about 10 people as all of the desks are so spread out), and we then went up to the third floor to do the same and meet my second boss. Once back on the 2nd floor, she handed me over to my new boss and left us to it. I had been placed in the International Receiving Office, and I will try and explain concisely what it is that they do. Zurich is an international company, a big advantage of this being that it can provide the insurance coverage for other international companies. Zurich will issue the insurance for Company X (covering the company in every country in which it is based), from wherever in the world Company X's headquarters are based. Often, however, the Company X will need separate policies for each of its subsidiaries around the world. This is when my department receives a request from whichever Zurich office are wanting to offer a global coverage to Company X, and we then issue the insurance policy, in the local language and in compliance with the local laws and regulations here in Spain. For example, although L'Oreal is an international company, it's headquarters are based in France. L'Oreal France would get in touch with Zurich France asking for all of L'Oreal worldwide to be covered. Zurich France would then get in touch with Zurich Spain (International Office), asking for a policy to be issued to cover the part of L'Oreal Spain. I hope that makes sense!!

My boss spent most of the morning explaining the ins and outs of the department to me, the project they had lined up for me, and a little bit about what everyone in the department did. After the big introduction, he handed me over to another colleague so that she could start showing me the different programmes that the department used. Between 10:30 and 11am it is usual for people working in Spain to leave the office for half an hour or so to have breakfast. I went along and had a mini baguette with Iberian ham (DELICIOUS) and an orange juice for €2.50. Compared to Paris (and even Salzburg) prices, this was a steal, especially as it was so yummy!! I spent the rest of the morning being shown around the different systems and was given a few small admin tasks to do as well. My boss invited me to lunch, so we went just him and I. Although my Spanish was still a little stuttery, he was very easy to talk to and the lunch hour passed very quickly, and it was nice of him to make the effort to get to know me as I am just an intern at the end of the day!

In the afternoon my 'eLearning' session had been set-up, which is the official company training, and has different lessons for all of the different programmes every department uses. I was subscribed to 2 or 3 of these programmes, which meant lots of reading and listening, and passing the tests to get to the next level. I did this until 5:30pm, when my boss said I could go home half an hour early as it was my first day. I walked home, which took about 40 minutes, but it was nice to stretch my legs as I wasn't used to so little movement for the whole day. That evening after a long working day and so much Spanish I was absolutely shattered, so had a nice long bath, watched some TV, ate dinner with the family, and had an extremely early night.

Tuesday and Wednesday followed much the same pattern, as I was still working my way through the eLearning lessons before being able to get started and use the programmes, and so so shattered in the evenings that it was all about I could manage to have a bath and some food before collapsing into bed. On Tuesday, however, I did get extremely lost on my way back. I tried to walk it, got lost, tried to take the bus, got lost, tried to take a taxi, but he didn't know where I wanted to go (the flat is right on the outskirts on the city on a very small road so not all taxi drivers know of it), and finally got a taxi driver that knew where I was trying to explain and managed to take me there, although I was very frazzled by this point and finally arrived home 2 hours after leaving work.

Apart from that incident, it all went smoothly and on Thursday and Friday I was given a few more tasks from the rest of my department to help with. Unfortunately my e-mail address wasn't working yet so I couldn't start on my main project, but these tasks were a good introduction into finding my way around the different systems before having to use them on my own properly. Although the people in my department did speak a lot of Catalan (luck of the draw I think, as there are many other departments that are purely Castellano speaking), they were good at remembering to switch when talking to me, and made me feel welcome by always inviting me to lunch etc. So all in all, the week was a lot more painless than I was expecting it to be. Especially from a language point of view I really surprised myself, by being able to communicate almost everything I wanted to, even if at times I was resorting to some elaborate hand gestures and quick wordreference searches.

As this has been a very text heavy post (I didn't take many pictures this week), I will end with a picture that I personally find hilarious. It had been raining all week, and when Benny, the family's French bulldog, goes out for a walk in the rain they all complain that he really smells. Therefore, every time before going out for his walks they fashioned a cape for him out of a plastic bag, and quite frankly he looked ridiculous. What's more, in addition to the usual noises that he makes just existing, when he moved wearing the plastic bag there was an almighty rustling/crackling sound. You could hear him coming from miles away!

Benny in his caped glory