Bon Soir (au Bonjour pour vous en Utah) mon Amies!

I am finaly getting settled into my job here at Novell France. And a job it is! I am to work on Novell´s largest non-educational/governmental account PSA (PSA Peugeot Citroën), one of the largest Car manufacturing companies in Europe and the world. I am helping reorganize the bug reporting system for the pilot programs taking place in their company as they prepare to deploy over 25,000 Novell SuSe linux systems throughout their company. It is quite a mess.

I am working in Tour Franklin in La Défense, as pictured here! (click on it for a bigger version)

It is quite an exciting place to work! It has some of the largest and most important companies in Frace with offices here. I will post pictures of my office and view etc soon.

Meanwhile, last night was something worthy to report I suppose. Sitting on a conference call with the Developement team from Germany and Provo and other main players on the account, left me late for Pirates de la Caribe, which I was supposed to go to with some members of my host family. Upon my arrival at the house, I found that I could not open the door because someone left another set of keys in the door on the other side. After sitting for a moment, I looked into the front window and noticed that the back door was open. So I decided to climb up the side of the house, over the garden fence, into the backyard and finaly through the back window. I was quite terrified that I would here the familiar wining of the police sirens, as all the houses are in very close proximity and I am confident that none of the neighbors know who I am yet.

Then, the next part of the somewhat adventurous day came when dinner was served later that night. It consisted of waterboiled french hotdogs (worse than the cheapest ones you can buy in the States), and very strange crackers that had a most lovely salmon paste on it, among a few other things. It was very hard to get down, and I took it as a nice preparation for the mission.

As for today, my boss, Hugh, was out of town in Dusseldorf, and my very loving coworkers siezed upon the chance to begin teaching me all the crude, rude, and otherwise unmentionable words of french and how to figure them out for myself. Also, the IT lawyer for our dept took it upon himself to show me the Canal Street of computer electronics here in Paris, where all the Chinese vendors set up shop until the gendarme´s come to bust them.

Otherwise, life is fairly normal here in Paris. Get up at 6.30, shower, dress, eat. Catch the bus to the train station, take the train right into La Défense, and then begin the workday, leave at around 5-6.00, wander a new part of Paris for the day, then head home. My day in a nutshell.

I dont know if I told everyone yet, but I am going to the Saint Marie ward this sunday which is the Church HQ in France ward, in downtown Paris, then going to a fireside with the BYU ballroom team that night, and then going to their preformance the following tuesday. Should be fun!

Bonne Jourée,

Nickolas Clarke