It has been four weeks now since I arrived in Manchester, and these past two weeks have certainly been much better than the first two. I have finally learned to cope with the cold Manchester weather, although it would still be nice to get to get a sunny day every once in a while, but if it's ever sunny here, it is only for a few hours and then it does not take long for the clouds to completely cover the sky again. I do miss being able to go out wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of winter and still be hot. You could say I'm spoiled in that sense, but as I already mentioned, I am finally coping with the change in weather and it is not too bad.
At the academy, these last two weeks have certainly been more enjoyable and less stressful than the first two. The first two weeks we spent them learning Enterprise Architecture, and I am always up for learning new things, specially when I know that they are going to help me in the workplace, but I would be lying if I didn't say that it got quite stressful at times. Most of the time when we were given a task, my team and I would do it to the best of our knowledge and abilities; we would work as a team to complete the task, but most of the time we would do it wrong. But as we learned more about enterprise architecture, we got the hang of it a bit more although I can't say that in the end we were good at it; we got better, but we still missed some of the important things.
The next two weeks were certainly better. The third week we started learning Java, and as soon as I knew we were getting into Java, I got really excited; I knew this was my time to shine. After a few hours of going over a quick overview of Java, we were given a project to work on. Java is my strongest programming language so I felt pretty comfortable with it and I enjoyed helping a couple of my fellow trainees whenever they got stuck with something. Unfortunately, we only spent a week working with Java, when I thought we would be spending two weeks, but they still expected us to work on our project for two weeks while we were busy working on other things. I certainly would have liked to have a little more time to work on my project. I would have been able to turn in a complete and much more polished project. My project was pretty much only missing the GUI, other than that it was complete for the most part.
I have been having a great time so far. I have been getting better at pool which means that the chances of me getting 7-balled get lower every time. The only time I would probably get 7-balled is if my opponent is having a great game and does not let me take any shots, or just one or two, which again is very unlikely.
Friday's mandatory fun time is always fun, everybody gets along and we always have a good time playing all sorts of different games, most of them new to me. Time is flying by rather quickly; I have already been here for almost a month, and when I least expect it it will be time to go back to America, which is likely to be a sad day, but I will try and make the most of the time I still have left here in Manchester.
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