The Hustle and Bustle of Brussels

This is where I am a slave work.

No one said it was going to be easy, but in the words of my boy Asher Roth "You gotta grind to shine."

Today officially marks my officially official 4th day on the job at my internship and first full week here in Brussels. I say official, because I actually walked in the day before June 1 to just to say hey and ask what was appropriate attire... an expected 15 minute visit turned into 5 hours of training and slave labor work. It started off with a bang: "Hello how are you? Nice to meet you... Ok so here is what you will be doing..." After about a 2 hour training session, I was let loose on several projects my boss had assigned to me. Everyone is really nice and the atmosphere is not too formal. If you would like to know more about my crazy first few days on the job, just read on.

DISCLAIMER: Asher Roth is not my boy and don't even know the dude. I only listen to his music sometimes.

My first meeting with our managing director was actually pretty fun. We jumped right into a discussion of the U.S. market and how he would like to expand into it. I recommended creating brochures geared towards different age groups that could be distributed to different schools and universities. He seemed to liked the idea. In fact he assigned the idea to me as my first project. Here's where that first part that sounded easy immediately doesn't, my company has never produced or printed an English brochure. Sure the website has been fully translated into English, but most pages offer stale direct translations of the French text. So in just one project I have already been given two "hats"- market researcher and marketer. 

This is a very appropriate photo of a hat. (Credit: Aschaf)

This brochure project currently rests as my major project for first part of the internship, but my other duties so far have included: updating the stale English text on the website, contacting our partners for various reasons, and researching what legal steps need to be taken to establish our legal/physical presence in the United States/Land of the Free and home of Brave.

Beyond the internship, adapting to life in such a huge city has been a challenge. Not exaggerating here, a ham & cheese sandwich here can cost a little under 100.00 USD (99.99 USD to be more precise). No lie though, food here is extremely expensive. Gone are my days of going out and grabbing a kebab (no not that meat on a stick shit), now every one of my meals has to be cooked by yours truly everyday for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner... good thing I like to cook. Even just in this first week I feel that I am growing and developing even more as a person and I look forward to the next 3 months here. 

The first person to leave a comment below will receive some world famous Belgian  chocolate in the mail.

DISCLAIMER: I do not actually feel like a slave. Also I am poor so I'm not going to send you shit. 

Cheers.