Blog Number 135

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday, I will try my best to catch everyone up. Monday morning my coworker and I ventured down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. They simply ask you for your room number and you are seated. There is fresh fruit (honeydew, kiwi, oranges, pears, etc.), breads, croissants, sweet breads, scrambled eggs (though they were a little runny looking for my taste), small pancakes, some cold cereal and many types of yogurt. There is also a few kinds of juice including orange juice and of course coffee (the whole point of breakfast!).

We got to work around 8:45 and I spent part of the morning training the class and all of the afternoon (probably about 6 hours total). My class is very inquisitive so I am fielding many questions. The types of questions that they ask though are proof that they are paying attention and understanding what is being taught. Lunch was some sort of thin, breaded piece of meat and smashed potatoes with a side dish that I could not quite make out. Our coworkers here do not speak food that well so many times they cannot explain to us what we are eating. No matter, I have yet to find anything that I do not like (except maybe the pate last week). We left work around 6:30 and arrived at the hotel and agreed to meet in the lobby at 8:15 to decide what to do for dinner.

A coworker that lives nearby had recommended and Italian restaurant (I think it was called Oh Mamma!) so we asked for a “remis” (a kind of taxi) and headed out. We ordered some more Argentinean wine and made quick work of the blue cheese spread and the bread provided. I decided on some sort of ravioli that had ham, cheese and peanuts in it. This was very good (of course). I don’t know what I had for desert but it was served in a tall thin glass and had vanilla ice cream in it and the top 2/3 of it was filled with a frothy / creamy very sweet sauce. The sauce was like a over sweetened frothy custard, that is the best explanation that I can give you. My part of the bill came to about $12.50 US. The food here is so incredible and so inexpensive! We then headed back to the hotel and arrived around 11:00.

Tuesday started with the same breakfast at the hotel and once we arrived at work we jumped right into training. My American coworker had written a small quiz and the class did very well. They were excited to stop being lectured to and to start using the toolsets that we were training them on. Lunch was, well I do not know exactly what I ate for lunch. There was a 2x2x1 stack of very thin boiled potatoes with some egg like mixture holding everything together. Also, there was some sort of small crusted vegetable dish that I had 2 of. My policy for lunch is to point to the plate of the person in front of me and same “same.” This has worked well thus far. The afternoon was more training and again we arrived at the hotel agreeing to meet back in the lobby for dinner at 8:15.

My wife calls each evening around 7:40 or so (5:40 eastern time in Indiana where she is staying) so once I hung up I headed downstairs. We had asked the cab driver on the way home for a nice pizza place and he recommended one called “Italio” so we headed out in search of this restaurant. This was more informal and had almost 50 types of pizzas to choose from. They brought us a small plat with pizza bread on it, some cured ham and olives. There was also some warn, spicy mushrooms and everything was very good (even though I did not try the olives as I am not a big fan). We decided to order a pizza that had this same ham and mushrooms on it. When the pizza arrived it was covered with mushrooms. This would be enough mushrooms for 10 pizzas in the US. The 3 slices of pizzas that I ate accounted for more mushrooms than I have eaten in my entire life (and I am not exaggerating). This was incredible and I even ate some of the whole olives (that still had the pits in them). I think I am getting very brave in my eating habits while I am hear. Desert was some vanilla-like ice cream that was covered with hard chocolate (this was like an Eskimo pie maybe back in the US) and of course there was some caramel sauce on the side. My part of the bill with tip came to about $7 US. Once I got back to the hotel I had about an hour’s worth of work to do so it was a late night.

Today is more training so we will see how it goes. My coworker is leaving me on Saturday to head home so I will be alone for a few days until another coworker arrives. Also, I am moving hotels to the Holiday Inn since it is closer to the EDS building and has high speed internet in the room (this will be great). Until next time…

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon