Hallo!

This week has been my favorite week because my parents came to visit me.  They arrived on Tuesday and are staying for a week.  They have never been to Germany before so I was trying to help them out with where they should go and things to see.  After my internship, I would go have dinner with them and stay with them in their hotel.  It was very hot in Berlin this week and they had AC in their hotel which was so nice.  I had the afternoon off on Friday, so we got tickets to see Swan Lake in an outdoor venue.  It was in the Garten der Welt, and it was so pretty.  There was a live orchestra and a very nice evening.  It was something different because normally the only outdoor thing you go to in the US is a concert, so this was a special experience.  We were allowed into the gardens with our ballet tickets and before the show we walked some gardens.  The ballet company also had whimsical characters on stilts interacting with guests before the show.  It was a very lovely experience.  On Saturday, we were supposed to go to Poland, but all tickets were sold out for the foreseeable future, which was sad, but we went on a river tour in Berlin and walked around Alexander Platz.  We also of course watched Germany play against Denmark in the UEFA.  On Sunday, I wanted to take my parents to Potsdam because I thought that was a must-see destination.  I would say it is my favorite place on Earth.  The got the full experience of Germany’s sunny to pour-down rain weather. 

This week my internship was very crazy.  There were so many things to do in a very short time frame.  I enjoy having work like this sometimes because it keeps me on my toes.  I mostly had things to do for the machinery company because that project is starting to develop very quickly.  I had to come up with massing design ideas for the new building the company wants.  This was difficult because a lot of information kept changing and so some ideas were not to scale of what it needed to be.  I also got to share these ideas and thoughts with my boss as well as my coworkers and talked through what my thought process was.  My boss, coworkers, and I had a meeting after this too to discuss some things about what needs to be solved.  The main issue is that the company wants to move things into the new building and reorganize the existing building.  This is an issue because they want too many square meters moved into the new building.  There is only a certain number of square meters that is allowed to be built in new buildings.  The laws and regulations are very strict on how much land can be built on, how far can the building be built from other buildings, and how far the new building can be built from the site limits.  There is also a height restriction depending on the area in Berlin.  After we discussed this, we set up what we needed to get done by next week for the presentation.  My coworker and I are doing the tasks together and we must create diagrams and proposals for the new and existing building.  The existing building will have unused space because of the items that will be occupied by the things going into the new building.  We also had to show a flow diagram between the new and the existing buildings because the concept the company wanted was this touch and bridge concept.  This thought process was because of the heavier machines not needing to leave the ground floor.  However, they still want other machines to leave the ground floor and move to the second floor.  This was confusing and they had such a weird circulation of the existing building that it was hard for both my coworker and I to figure out some ideas. 

I think the projects for the machinery company have tested my leadership skills because I am always doing things with my coworker and boss.  I think that it was a learning process to speak up and say what was on my mind or ask questions.  I was shy to give input on things just because I thought “oh I am just the intern” but they really do take in what I am saying seriously and they like having a different perspective.  That has given me the confidence to take on some more leadership skills because I am not so afraid to give my input just because I am an intern. 

Anyways, I cannot believe that I only have three more weeks left, but this experience has been one of the greatest so far.