When you spend a longer period of time in another country, far away from friends and family, it might happen that anniversaries falls during this time. Today is such a day, more specific my 26^th birthday. Happy birthday to me! It might not be the same thing to celebrate 26 years as 6 years, but a couple of “Happy Birthday” in my Facebook feed is nice anyway. As a small celebration, I took the opportunity to spread the tradition of “Fika” here at GANE. I know that former Swedish employees and graduates here have tried before, but it seems to be forgotten now. A chocolate cake might revive the tradition?

Unfortunately, I cannot spend my whole day eating cake, I have to do some work as well. My quality project with my supervisor Ryan is taking two steps forward and one back. Since no one here has worked in the software system before, we come across obstacles every now and then that we need to pass. It is kind of frustrating, but at the same time interesting to be involved in this kind of project. It demands for flexibility, new thinking and a large portion of stubbornness!

Last Friday, I and Anders got the chance to vary our work with a trip to the GKN site North Charlestown, situated two hours by car north of Newington in the state of New Hampshire. We were greatly welcomed by Steve who showed us the quite small and noisy workshop and thereafter had lunch with us. It was an exciting visit that differs a lot from what me and Anders are used to in Trollhättan.

 

Saturday, we go for our next trip, this time outside of work. Since Monday is Memorial Day we will take the opportunity to go to Cape Cod and Marthaäs Vineyard over the weekend. We have, among other things, heard that president Obama himself has a summer house there… Last weekend we spent in New Haven and the Yale University. We happen to pick the graduation weekend for our visit, so there were a lot of students in graduation clothes and well dressed proud parents! We felt a bit underdressed in our shorts and t-shirts, but still got a sentimental trip down memory lane, remembering our own time as students and graduations. We had lunch at a student café that had a clear vibe of raw food and healthy beverages. I think Anders summarized our experience of American food culture when he stated that his avocado sandwich probably was the most healthy he had eaten during the whole time in the US!

With some pictures from the day at Yale, I end this blog post. See you soon!