2 Month Update

Tuesday marks 2 months since I have left the USA and I'm happy to announce that I have adapted reasonably well.  I am mobile without a car, I have favorite beers (as evidenced by my previous post), and I have started work.  I have gotten into a rhythm of going to work, coming home, sometimes going out to eat.  Ordering dinner is still a bit awkward as it's difficult to fool anyone into thinking I speak Czech anywhere near competently.

On the weekends I typically explore Brno and last weekend I  made a day trip to Kutna Hora, about 2 hours away near Prague, with my neighbor in the Uni Hotel, Anni.  The entire town was in walking distance and we managed to visit the Church of St. Barbara, the Kostince Ossuary (or as the locals call it, "the bone church"), and the Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady.  

Obviously, the ossuary was the more memorable of the sites.  It houses the remains of 30,000 people and was assembled by a half blind monk.  Definitely a different feel from the Brno Ossuary - very bright and dry, as opposed to dark and damp in Brno.  Bright, almost sunny lighting yet lots and lots of dead people.....provides a bit of cognitive dissonance, and is rather ironic or satirical.  It was very nice to speak with another expat, albeit from Estonia, and share a beautiful day in a very interesting place.

Work has been busy.  I am part of a team designing software for electronic flight bags (EFB's).  It started out with performing heuristic reviews, then moved on to eliciting user requirements from as many users we could scrounge, and more recently I have been working on prototyping and analyzing results from a site wide work space ergonomics survey.  The later has kept me at work late every night this week.  I think I have integrated well with the team.

That's all for now, Indycar race on tonight from St. Petersburg Florida.