What a day!

I had the most multicultural experience today, and I loved every minute of it. In fact, this week has all been very crazy and multicultural. Training is a whirlwind ride. This is mainly due to the fact that we are in Chicago, Illinois with 79% Europeans. That feels a little weird, but it is a good thing. Consider how my day went:

-I walked to training this morning with a woman from Spain.
-I work on a team every day that has 1 Canadian, 1 Italian, 1 German, 1 Russian, and 1 from Switzerland.
-I had a chat during a break with an Englishman.
-I have spent several meals and other time the last couple of days with a woman from Finland.
-I had lunch with a Swede.
-I walked back to the rooms after training with an Italian.
-I had dinner with an Italian, a Brazilian, and a woman from Poland. They didn't really know English either. That was interesting. But it actually made it better because everything that was said sounded really funny for everyone.
-I spent a lot of time talking to a Frenchman at our networking event tonight.
-I met and talked to several Germans later in the networking event.
-I went to the pub tonight with all Germans, and talked to one of them for quite some time.

Sure, I talked to several Americans throughout the day, but you can probably tell from above that I spent most of my time today talking to foreigners. All of my experiences were really fun. What a great day.

My English is getting worse by the day. I hear a lot of broken English, and I have to explain things in broken English as well. So I have begun to think and talk in broken English. Plus, I have started drawing out my "yeah" so now it sounds a lot more like "yaaaaaa". I'm turning European. Okay, that's a stretch, but you get the point.

P.S. Andy made fun of me for making a "Friends" reference in a recent blog post, but I have no shame about it. In fact, Friends has been very useful this trip. I actually purposefully inserted a Friends reference into conversation with a friend on the flight to Chicago in order to get conversation going with this attractive girl who was sitting next to me on the flight. Lame? Perhaps. But the move worked like a charm. She overheard the reference and made a comment about it. She said, "I think we could get along well since you like Friends." We ended up chatting for much of the flight. So there, Andy. Knowing far too much about Friends CAN pay dividends. Ha.