Aug 10 2009

Christmas in Soell and Winter Party

Okay, so I am 6 months late on this entry. With finally graduating from my MBA, I now have a life again. So I am doing my blog catch up. So over the winter holiday’s we had our annual Munich Holiday Party- this year we had about 45 packed into our tiny 3 room apartment. We went through about 20 bottles of win and a case or two of beer. Our crazy friends stayed till about 2:30AM and then headed out dancing till 6AM, crazy people! The funniest was watching a bunch of expats (Spanish, British, Russian, Austrian, Croatian, Irish and Auzzies) and Germans trying to play Scene-IT with American Movies.

After our party, Greg and I headed to Austria for Skiing and Snowboarding for the Christmas holiday. Well, Greg’s great idea in saving money got us a pension that had lovely pictures on the bathroom showing us how to clean the toliet and shower. (I Know..) Also, the conditions were so great that it rained almost all of the trip and the most fun was sledding down the 3.5KM sledding trail (which was a lot of fun!). The town was cute and we spent most evenings at a pub listening to a dutch band seeing covers. We became friends with a dutch family for some reason folks from Netherlands love Soell. Here are a few pictures of the fun event… I give Greg points for trying to schedule a great skiing holiday but the location and hotel were a little lack luster.

In December we also headed out with the Munich International Ski Club on several trips. Our favorite trip to Solden occurred first weekend in December and was brilliant. Great snow, gondola walking distance from our pension. Our pension with sauna and great breakfast. We also headed to Austria for several day trips that were fantastic. The Alps are great over the winter!

May 17 2009

Turkey with Mom and Dad

Well, I am very behind in my blog so in November Greg’s Mom and Dad came to visit us for 3 weeks. We went to Istanbul and Alanya in Turkey for a week and then we ventured to Salzburg, Nurneburg, Ragensburg, to visit all the Christmas Markets in Germany and Austria. We had many adventures in Turkey as we went with a German Tour Company so to the dismay of Pam, Gordon and I everything was in German. Greg got to be the translator and I think we got about 20% of the story. We visited all the attractions- many mosques, cistern, markets, leather shops, rug factories and were good little tourists and bought a lot of stuff we didn’t need. We saw many ruins and the vast amounts of history was the most amazing part of the trip. Turkey was a great visit and glad we went but that was enough bartering for me for a few years- I felt like I was in Mexico. A couple pictures of the trip there are more on my facebook page. We enjoyed visiting all the Christmas markets with the family and Germany during the holidays is a very magical time. I think I will miss the Christmas markets the most when we head back to the states.

Nov 17 2008

Hi-Po Training in London

So I feel very lucky to have spent the last three days with some brilliant folks across Europe in Microsoft’s High Potential Program. It is an interesting program where Microsoft selects a certain number of individuals across the company world-wide that they think are the future leaders of the company. Then these folks go through some leadership training, peer coaching, networking and on the job experiential leadership training. All in all it has been one of the best trainings I have attended. As part of the training we did 360 reviews where your manager, co-workers and direct reports rate you in five major leadership areas: Modeling the way, Inspring a Vision, Challenging the Process, Enabling Others and Encouraging the Heart. It is always humbling to read how other perceive you and to understand the areas in which you need to develop more. One of the best areas of this training is the learning circle we created in which 6 other future leaders help coach you through challenges you are currently facing. It was a very intense three days, jammed packing and in the end quite draining but invigorating.

We did get to have some fun in the evenings (of-course we were in London with Brits!) and enjoy some British pubs and a few good laughs. I do love that British dry humor. I look forward to my future meetings with my new British, Irish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch and Middle Eastern/African friends. A few photos below and in the album to the right.