I got up at 545 this morning to get cracking on some work stuff before my training begins. Breakfast (read coffee) wasn’t available until 7am so I should probably go back and check my work stuff later to make sure I was really doing it right. Of course now, I am having the post espresso sleepies. I learned last year that for the first 20 minutes after you drink a cup of coffee, your body is ready to sleep or be still so it is a good time to meditate. After the 20 minute window, presumably the caffeine kicks in and you are ready to take on the world!

Lisbon is an hour behind Amsterdam which means that I have an hour to go before leaving for the office. None of the sites and tools that I need to use to do my work this morning are cooperating, so hence time to write 🙂

It is wonderful weather here. Much to the shock of the Lisboans, I wore my summer sandals yesterday and I will again today. They are all bundled up against the “cold” and I can’t be bothered to wear anything other than short sleeves. I think the Portguese people are incredible. They are very kind and very warm. They are huggable. Not that I am randomly walking around and doing that – except with my two colleagues that I am training here with. Our poor hostess, she has me and my Danish colleague until tomorrow evening. If I thought the Dutch were direct, the Danes are even more so 😉 Must be all that Northern European weather and influence.

I am having a great time, learning alot and gaining confidence in the areas that I am not so good at. It is also a relief to learn that it is possible to learn it, I don’t need some special sort of talent. Sometimes, when you are always doing things wrong, you start to wonder if you can do anything right 😉 Well, in my case anyway. I will go back to the Netherlands with a little more conviction and confidence in what I am doing.

Being sensible ( I know…) I was all set to go to bed last night at 2145 knowing that my brains had reached their grilled cheese point. Then there’s a certain designated alert tone that my phone makes and I was pleasantly distracted for the next 90 minutes. I am always surprised by how quickly time goes. It reminds me of being a kid and being told to turn out the lights and saying to my mom “just five more minutes, I am almost at the end of the chapter” and Mom was not waivering. So, I learned to use a flashlight instead. Until she figured that out.

If I time this right, I can catch a powernap before walking down to the office 😉