It's been a week now at my new job. And what a week it's been. On thursday we loaded a truck with supplies to go to Ukraine, I think. It was a 10m truck and a 10m trailer behind. Not bad if everything is on palletes, but, of course, it wasn't. The european equivalent of our apple box is a banana box which is about the same size except only half as high. The entire truck and trailer were loaded with these along with school bags, garbage bags full of clothes, tables, windows, a bath tub, school desks, and miscelaneous other items that we found in the warehouse. It took almost all day to pack that many small objects into that much space but finally, it was finished. Which is good, because I was finished. Contrasting that, today I spent most of my time sitting at a computer copying names and addresses from a web page to an excell table. It's incredibally mind-numbing work and I'm not sure I was awake the whole day but sleep didn't seem to impede progress so no one complained.

Tonight we're having a party for Tanja, one of my house-mates. She's from Russia and is going home this weekend. Today was her last day and so everyone was talking about how she was going to be missed, and, indeed, she will. She enjoys washing dishes and cleaning so now Uli, my other house-mate, and I will have to start doing more of that ourselves. I'm not sure what it will be like in the long term, but right now our house population seems to be fairly fluid. Tanja is leaving and in a few weeks Uli will be as well. Sometime in there Wande is moving in. I hope that eventually that will slow down so I can get to know some people better but I guess this way I get to meet more people and, maybe, Wande won't speak as good of English as Tanja and Uli do which will force me to learn German faster and better. Who knows?

This posting is a milestone in my time here, though. Ever since I've been in Germany I have been searching for the question mark on the keyboard. Tonight I have found it and celebration is in order.

David