Since I live on the Rocky Mountain Front, it is impossible to get to DC before about 2:30 in the afternoon. Thus I needed to be out in DC a day early to ensure that I made it to the orientation session. The session was at 3:30 today, so it's not good to risk coming the same day.
The orientation session was informative. The line I liked the best all day was that we will be taken out of every comfort zone we know. I have no doubt that is true and I'm really looking forward to being taken out of my comfort zones. It makes for a great experience. I will do things I've never done. I will learn things I would never learn otherwise. I may regret saying this later, but it really put a smile on my face to think about being jolted out of every comfort zone I have.
One I'm most worried about is food. I like my American cuisine, so hopefully I can have an open mind as I dig into some European dishes I don't know much about.
I also get the feeling that the baseball game yesterday will be my list bit of Americana for about a month. Oh well, it will make the firworks on the 4th all that much better.
We have a dinner tonight with a speaker. Then a meeting in the morning, lunch and then we head for Europe. We leave DC at 5:30. It's a seven hour flight. When we land in Brussels it will be 7:30 AM. Or in Billings time, about 10 PM, usually my bed time. I'm going to take a wild stab and say I will have some jet lag. A nice little jolt out of my comfort zone to start the trip. Don't know when I'll get a chance to post again, but probably some time on Saturday.
It still hasn't set in that I'm going on this trip. I've been to DC a few times, so that doesn't seem like a new experience. I've been in meetings way to many times to make for a new experience. I've told the "Shoots" story to a group many times. I've had dinner with a group many times. I have a feeling I won't feel like I've really started my trip until I walk into the airport in Brussles. Or may be the Dulles International Flight. I'm waiting for the moment when it really sinks in that I'm going to Europe and I'm going for quite a while.
Well, I'm off to dinner.
About Me
- Shoots
- Billings, Montana, United States
- Chris “Shoots” Veis was elected to the Billings, MT City Council in November of 2005. He was previously appointed to fill a one year vacancy in Ward III. On the council, Shoots takes an active role in budgeting and infrastructure projects. His full time job is as an engineer with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, working on subdivision review. He was named the Outstanding Young Engineer by the Midland Chapter of the Montana Society of Engineers in 2008. In 2007 he was named an American Marshall Fellow by the German Marshall Fund and was appointed to serve on the Montana Legislature’s Interim Committee on Special Districts.
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