October 7th

Hello everyone!

Today is Sunday the 7th of October and boy what a wonderful October it has been so far... with temperatures around 80 degrees (about 26 Celsius) during the day and down to around 65 at night (about 18 Celsius). We can finally enjoy sitting out on our balcony and open up the windows in the morning to air out the apartment. So you're probably wondering what I've been up to during the last couple of weeks. To be honest, I barely remember myself but I'll try to give you an update...

As for work, I finally received my degree evaluation and luckily my degree is recognized here in the US and I can therefore sit for the CPA exams. My plan is to start after busy season in April. I also experienced my first performance evaluation at work and I'm proud to say that I only received positive and encouraging comments from my manager. I think that a total of seven new people have started with Rödl & Partner in the past 2 weeks, so it's definitely going well for us.

As for fun, I went to a house-warming party last weekend at a Swedish friend's place and during the same weekend went to a Swedish mingle party organized by SWEA, while Charles was enjoying a weekend in Kansas City at a NASCAR race. The weekend before then we joined a college of mine and her boyfriend to go to a haunted house that had just opened for the Halloween season. All I can say is that it was very scary and I was totally sweaty after walking through. We also went with some other friends to a preseason Thrasher's game (NHL). Both Charles and I were very proud of the fact that there are three Swedes in the team... Charles even wore his Swedish National Hockey Team jersey. :) On Tuesday I threw a little surprise birthday party for Charles. I was super stressed about the whole thing, but it turned out great! Last night we joined a bunch of my German colleges at an Oktoberfest organized by the German Goethe Institut.

Today we've been enjoying our Sunday, with freshly baked croissants for breakfast, a tour to the Farmer's Market to get the freshest fruit and best French cheese in town. In a little bit we're going to prepare tacos for dinner and watch a movie, Zodiac, while eating from our big bowl of Swedish candy that my parent's sent for Charles' birthday... yummie! Speaking about my parents, they are coming to visit us in November!!! I'm so happy and especially that we get to celebrate Thanksgiving together! They are coming for about two weeks, but are planning on flying to Wichita to visit for part of the time.

Hope you all have a nice Sunday evening! Take care!

Kram!