Training for the foreign circus is a surreal experience. One week you are "learning" how to send emails, the next finds you running through a forest. Seriously...running through a forest, ask me about it sometime! You spend several days in a windowless basement room completing Microsoft trainings. Another day you are giving a presentation on immigration, in French. You want to talk about ANYTHING but work, yet it's the only thing you are capable of talking about.
The result is that your conversation is either fascinating (briefly to those who know nothing about your job or where you are going and your colleagues who are equally interested in talking about work) or you have become a total bore. I am capable of talking for hours about the cafeteria at the training center, the logistics of packing and shipment overseas, household issues in foreign countries, if I do or do not plan to hire a cook, gardener, house cleaner, etc. But the number of people capable, let alone interested in listening to such a discourse is limited.
Thankfully, when you join the foreign circus you suddenly find yourself in a weird carny-esque tribe. Every last one of your colleagues has also signed up for this crazy deal. So despite the fact you almost never receive a direct answer to a question and everyone has disparate experiences following processes that are supposedly the same, it does feel like home. In a strange, you can't wait to get out of here, but are glad to have met everyone sort of way.
The training center is a much nicer place without snow!
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