Mary is now a productive member of French society! She's finished 3 days in the office, and thankfully a lot of her French has come back to her. If the conversation gets too in depth or if it's about a topic that she's not very familiar with, she begins to get lost, but she's thankful for what she does understand! Her coworkers are very nice though, and ALL of them speak better English than she does French!!
The office is similar in most ways to her office in the US, but she's noticed a few differences so far:
1. There's much more of an open floor plan - no cubicles - the desks are laid out more just as flat desks with no dividers. Mary's in a smaller room with only 3 other people, but everyone seems very nice!
2. Free coffee, tea, AND hot chocolate!! I guess they only took this away in the US!
3. It seems the employees here are in the office longer, but they also take a lot more breaks! Coffee and a smoke in the morning, lunch, coffee and a smoke or two in the afternoon... I guess if you're regularly going to be in the office for more than 10 hours, you need little breaks to keep you going! Mary`ll need to discover this lifestyle... one of her coworkers commented today on how he's amazed the English expats can focus for so long without a break!
4. Mary's biggest frustration so far... the French keyboard is different from the English keyboard (basically q w a z x and m plus several of the punctuation keys are in different spots!). She switched the setting to an English keyboard for part of the day today, but decided that was too confusing! Amazingly, her mind has started to relearn the keyboard... but we'll see what switching between an English laptop at home and a French keyboard at work does to her mind and fingers!! The good news- the !! is in a very convenient location on the French keyboard, and anyone who knows Mary well at all, knows she does use it a LOT!! ;)
Though the days are long, they seem to fly by!
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and family! Eat an extra helping of pumpkin pie for us!! :)
well sounds like mary will have plenty of "brain games" to keep her mind sharp! i didn't realize that about the keyboard but i guess it makes sense. mary has always been one to rise to the challenge anyway :) feel like a bad friend or maybe just spacey for not noticing her use of the exclamation mark - so glad that you pointed that one out Dave! lol. miss you both lots and hope that those long days are filled with blessings too. bet france is an interesting place - my goal to be supportive by learning more about it so i'll know what you two are experiencing - feel free to recommend any good reads,etc.!!! you forgot to mention how dave is adjusting :)Thankful for your wedding this year - what a blessing to be a part of!!!
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