M-I-C-K-E-Y...M-O-U-S-EEEEEEE

I'd be lying if I said my first day of work was uneventful. Firstly, our arranged car never showed up. So here we are in the lobby of our fancy hotel pacing and attempting to make phone calls from one of my colleague's Black Berry, which we haven't quite mastered yet (since it's an American phone number, do we call Indian phone numbers like we're in the US? do we direct dial? etc) with our entire stash of American chocolate, laptops and whatever else we were given to deliver. We had officially taken over the lobby! The staff was happy to assist us with making the necessary calls and ever so politely asked us to sit down in an area behind their beautiful lobby. We arranged for a hotel car to take us to work - we were only late by an hour or so. Traffic was a bear - I'm not sure how we arrived without killing anyone.

We were met in our company's lobby by someone we've been working with virtually. She took us to the call center floor. Now, I'm not great with names - I assure you being in a foreign country with different types of names doesn't really help. I'm thankful that everyone has badges. I'm shuttled off to my training class to begin training. Now, keep in mind I'm running this training in tandem with folks in the US. Me running late impacts many. Thankfully, our agenda was such that we ended up not behind at all. Until..... we attempted to begin a virtual meeting and call into our conference calling number. How could this happen? Typically it's not a nightmare and all is well. Suddenly we're having system issues and can't figure out the polycom. We get started, about an hour or so later.

All was well... until the rumored "Delhi Belly" (DB) appeared. Now... without going into much detail, just understand that Delhi Belly is really not something you want to deal with say in a long car ride or in the middle of training while you're the one man show. All you're concerned with is that there's a bathroom nearby. Lovely. This could only happen to me.

I finally hit my grove when all of a sudden one of my students jumps up, screams and runs out of the classroom! Everyone else was laughing. I think I hear them say "there's a rat!" Certainly they mean a small little mouse, maybe - better yet perhaps they just imagined it. Trying to keep my cool I begin to inspect the back area when all of a sudden a rat runs across the computer desks lining the room. For everyone that knows me, there was some squealing and jumping around and now panic. At home I'd quickly call security and have them take care of it. Here, I have no idea what to do, other than hit the bathroom because I have another DB attack. I secure my belongings by zipping up my bags (that's all I need is that rat to run into my bag and move into my fancy hotel room). I think "It's almost 3, it's almost 3" - yes, that's 3am, my quitting time.

I was delighted to see our driver from yesterday waiting to pick us up from work! That's the last thing I needed was to wait an hour without a bathroom. Traffic back to the hotel was minimal.

So, I'm off to my 2nd day of training - let's hope Mickey doesn't decide to show up.