Working in Ireland {My Job}

I've been working in Ireland for exactly 4 months on Thursday.  These 4 months have flown by and I'm soaking up every minute I can.

Working here has been an incredible experience, and I'm so lucky to enjoy my company, co-workers and job.

Here is a glimpse of what my days are like.

We change seats about once a month, so I now sit by 5 different colleagues 

The photo above is where I (used to) sit.  My seat was the open one in the middle.  To my left was Antoine, from France.  Across from him, Mohamed, from Egypt.  Then Letizia from Italy, Saoirse from Ireland and Caroline from Sweden.  It's incredible.  My boss is Dutch and his boss Canadian.

My colleagues are from all over Europe and even beyond.  I'm constantly impressed with the number of languages some of them speak and am insanely jealous that probably half of my team speaks at least 2 languages well enough to do business in them. Speaking only English is easily the most embarrassing thing about living abroad.  It's still on my bucket list to learn Spanish, perhaps a few trips to Spain next year can help with that....but, I digress.

This is right across from our office on a beautiful evening last weekend

We have a lot of other perks in the office that I've never had before, namely, free breakfast and lunch, but working with people from all over the world is what I love most.

In my job, I am working with the UK, Irish, and Nordic markets.  Nordic including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.  I love this.  I have learned so much about these countries, the different approaches for each market, and the benefits of both.  For example, in the Nordics, it's no problem getting a CEO's mobile number, while in the UK that's nearly impossible.  On the other hand, in the UK, conversations are very straight forward and you know a clear next step at the end of the call, while in the Nordics, that can be tough.

This was me, waiting for my interview

It's also an experience to have an "American" accent over here.  I don't believe that it's cool in the way we (American's) think British, Irish, Australian, etc, accents are cool, but it's definitely a conversation starter, particularly in the UK.  I'm on the phone a lot for my job and I've only spoken to 2 American's.  Both a surprise when they picked up.  One call was in the UK and the other in Iceland.  The girl in Iceland married an Icelandic man and moved from LA to Iceland, saying she'd give it a try.  So far, so good for her.

And so far, so good for me.  The hardest part of moving to Ireland for me to leave a job, co-workers and industry I loved in the Bay Area without anything lined up over here and no idea how long it would take to find something.  I feel so fortunate to have found this opportunity in a new and exciting company in a new industry, and a new career path.  I can't wait to see where it takes me.