Missing Sarmale

Part 2 - What the stage is made of

Hoping that the previous post introduced you a bit in the atmosphere, I will go on with some details that I find worth mentioning. I will take it a bit chronologically, starting from October last year on.

The Administrative Welcome - October 3-4

Actually, it is called in this very unsexy way. They make sure they welcome you with all the admin stuff, so that you know from the beginning where you are. Basically, you are invited per country(ies) to bring in all the documents they asked for in order to be able to start your stage. First contact with other stagiaires, totally confused and waiting to be shown the way. Big welcome pack with information and stage programme to keep you busy for the next month, day and night. Queue to have your picture taken for the service badge.

The Welcome Conference - October 5-6

The grand gathering of the 600ish stagiaires. First and only time they are (almost) all in the same place at the same time. The saga begins: "What's your name?", "Where do you come from?", "What DG do you work in?". Speeches over speeches, congratulations, warnings. The phrase crème de la crème is used regarding the stagiaires, and by the look on some people's faces, they are thinking of desert. Of course, you hear about 10 times that the stage is what you make of it. More confused faces. Then they announce that there will be elections the next day for the Stage Committee. And I get an idea of how to make the confused faces work in my advantage.

The sencond day, I go up on the stage, firmly hold my microphone and do my electoral promises. I get elected along with the other 4 people in the picture from yesterday's post. Surprisingly, I become Public Relations and Social Activities Coordinator. I wonder if they would vote for me again, now that they are less confused.

DG Welcome - October 7

Everybody seems to welcome you here. This time, our DGs are happy to see us. DG Interpretation is happy to meet me, the Communciation and Information Unit. Had they known... Anyway. I get to my office. Nice view over a tall brick appartment building. Wait. I've never been bored enough to count the stories... 12-story building. No wonder my gsm network suffers. Moving on. First contact with the helpdesk. I had two papers saying the same things but with two different network passwords. The usual. Eventually one of them worked.

Talking about my office, this photo was taken a bit later than the first day and put in our internal newsletter (picture taken by my favourite photographer Jean-Luc):

And these are all the stagiaires in my DG, at some point in our cafetaria:

Welcome Party - October 7

You didn't really imagine there was no proper welcome. We had a nice wine & cheese party the first Friday evening, to anticipate all the future Friday evenings I'd be away from home. I did amuse myself in helping with the organisaiton (I'm more a party organiser than a party animal), with putting ugly stamps on people's hands and arms, and de-stressing myself by ripping tickets.

To be continued, of course.

posted by Dana @ 3:12 pm