Snow!!!

As my Dad so lovingly reminded me this morning, my blog was looking a bit stale. :-)

Today started out beautiful and sunny. I was planning to go to the Berlin Zoo with some friends today, one of whom has a 1 1/2 year old son, Deyden. Rumor has it that there is a baby elephant there, so how could I miss it! There is also a polar bear named Knut who is a year old and a panda bear on loan from China (as Bo Yu informed us during his country presentation). However, just as I was bundling up, the clouds rolled in, the wind picked up, and it started snowing. Hard! So we scratched the zoo. But since Deyden still needed an outing to occupy him, we took the subway to Kurfurstendamm, a major shopping boulevard. We walked along in the snow, stopping in at several shops, and then ending in a cafe for coffee to warm us back up. I've posted a few pictures from this week, including the snowfall.

Since I haven't taken any exciting sightseeing trips this week, I thought I'd post a photographic tour of my apartment. On the 15th floor, I'm close to the top of the 16-floor building. For some reason, I actually need a key to get to my floor. Which means my friends tease me about living in the 'penthouse' pretty much every time we ride the elevator. We've compared apartments, and I don't think mine is actually much different from anyone else's. However, the view is incredible!

Thursday night was the 2nd evening of country presentations. Everyone in the group had to give a 10 minute introduction to their country. The USA group went last week, so this time I could sit back and enjoy each of them. Everybody had such creative ways of highlighting unique aspects of their country. The guys from India ordered in a complete Indian dinner for the group (yum!). Brenda (Canada) had everybody in the group "Screeched In," which is apparently a Newfoundland tradition that includes kissing a codfish and taking a shot of "screech" (similar to rum, coke was provided as an alternative). I felt like I could still smell the fish the next day! Liliana (Mexico) actually hired a Mariachi band to come and serenade us! The Swiss presentation may have been my favorite because Nic brought chocolate for everyone. :-)

Has anyone had any experience with the Second Life website? For those who haven't heard of it, it's essentially a virtual world where you create an alter ego and can explore, interact with others, and create and sell items. It has its own currency and exchange rates with real currencies. For the particularly tech-savvy, you can create things and sell them and make real money. This week we're going to have an introduction session to it from someone at PwC. It's possible one of our strategic projects will be to explore how PwC can make a presence for itself in Second Life. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has used it what their impressions were.