Day 277: Letter from Manuel

I’ve received a letter from Manuel, who’s been in Spain for just over a month now. It’s a letter he sent to all of us who are still here, a letter that starts to prepare us for post-Erasmus life — the life we all long for and, at the same time, fear. There’s not much to comment on, because the letter says it all. Here it is:

Hey guyyyyyys!!!!

So, do you still remember me? I’m well aware that leaving Dresden was like disappearing from the face of the earth, but you can’t even imagine how my life has changed (socially, for the worse) since I started working… this is not a life! There’s no time for Messenger, emails, or anything… so I’m taking advantage of this typical Sunday morning apathy to find out how you’re doing and to tell you a bit about me (just to keep in minimal contact :-)) So, about me… this working thing is crap on a stick :-). I have to get up early every day and I’m terrible at that. Other than that, it’s not so bad — I get to the industrial estate around 8:30, I have two hours for lunch from 1 to 3, and I leave around 6:30 pm. Since I’ve just started at this company and I’m in the “training” period, for now my job is to just “watch” what people do, so sometimes I’m not doing anything, but hey, it’s more relaxed. As something funny, on Tuesday I’m going to GM to have a videoconference with the Germans (in English, huh? :-)). Speaking of which, you can’t imagine how much German you lose when you don’t practice. Especially writing — if you listen, you can sort of keep up, but I thought I’d send emails in German from time to time (which of course I don’t do) and you can’t imagine the disaster they turn out to be! The project is right here next to me!!!! It actually looks pretty nice… in the end, 137 single-sided pages… But just 4 days before I had to take it to the print shop, the professor tells me what a piece of crap my project is, that it’s really bad and I have to change everything… 137 pages! So you can imagine, I spent the first weekend of my worker “vacation” stuck in front of the computer for about 10 hours each day to give the project a complete makeover :-( Other than that, nothing new, I’m still working, but since I haven’t even been here a full month, I haven’t been paid yet… it’s horrible… I’m currently the poorest guy in the office :-) Well guys, that’s my life, now it’s your turn — I want to know about you too: How many of you are still there? When are you leaving? Has any gossip/couple popped up that I should know about? etc… By the way, I saw some of you in the Leipzig photos, looking very cute… too bad you didn’t have tickets and missed the 4–0… :-( sniff sniff… (Fernando, Fran, Sandra, Marina: You looked great in the World Cup photos, too bad I only saw you — I missed seeing Koki dressed as a bullfighter) It looked great on TV.

Well guys!!! Greetings to you all, remember me, and send me an emaiiil!!! Kisses and hugs!!!

P.S. Beers taste the same to me here.

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