Well I have been in Hamburg 4 months now and this is my first entry. Poor effort i know.
Things are going really well here, I have met some really nice people, both German and English as well as being reunited with my old exchange partner and her friends. It is also great to see my old flame again – HH.
I shall ATTEMPT to summarise everything that has happened in the past 120 days or so here so here goes:
First thing I want to say is how great everyone at euroShell (the place where I am doing my internship here) are! Here is an example of just how great they are.. Before i arrived here on July 1st I had signed to take over the apartment of the previous interns on September 1st – which consequently meant that I had nowhere to live for the first 2 months. However Jasna from the Personal department went out of her way to find somewhere for me and I had two apartments in a posh part of town for the first two months! The first apartment was literaly a penthouse suite. It was HUGE with a massive living room complete with desk, tv and sofa and then I had a master bedroom with a king sized bed and 4 wardrobes, my own kitchen completely kitted out and a bathroom with bath AND shower! The best thing about it was that Shell was paying for the rent! Which amounted to 1200 euros for the month :s The second apartment was slightly smaller and round the corner from the penthouse one – the difference being that the bedroom and living room were combined, however it was still a swish place and again I didnt have to pay for it!
For the remaining 10 months I have left here in Hamburg I am sharing a 2 bedroomed apartment with a girl called Hayley Sleigh on Flotowstraße in Barmbek-Süd. It is a really nice apartment, with balcony, nice kitchen and the bedrooms are of generous size – I would estimate 19 square metres each, as the whole apartment measures 58 square metres. We had some problems at the start – mainly with the internet connection. Story is, the internet refused to function and one friday night I was on the phone to the customer service Centre for 4 hours complaining in German and trying different things to get the connection to work all to no avail. Eventually they agreed to send us new equipment for free which arrived just 3 days later and now the internet works fiiine! 
The apartment also gets painted afresh every 3 years and luckily this year was the year for it so it looks nice and new now! Also last weekend we went to Ikea in Moorfleet so I have been able to pimp up my bedroom!
Enough about accomodation, now on to work! The internship is really good and I am definately enjoying it! My colleagues are well nice and are always willing to help and talk to me. It is also very relaxed here – I am writing this atm at work and nobody is batting an eyelid! Since I have been here I have been working on a project to create a new version of the euroShell Deutschland website which is enjoyable as well as productive and challenging. No opening letters or making tea for me thankyouverymuch!
Finally I shall mention all the fantastic people i’ve met since being here then call it a day for this entry! There is a large number of english students here at Hamburg also on their year abroad and an especially large contingent from Leeds. To be honest a few people from Leeds uni who are here I have never really spoken to that much before but now we do and they are all really nice people! Also everyone from all other different universities as well – in fact EVERYONE here are really great people and I am very glad to have met them! Final year of uni should be fun now! :p
Untill the next time – in Hamburg sagt man Tschüß!
