Christmas Lunchtime

The more I was looking forward to Christmas, the more boring work became. It was horrific! At the end of November everybody had told us that December would be the most stressful month, as we would only work until the 23rd. So we had already done a lot of work before the month had even started which was a mistake. Because at the end of the first week we had finished all the important tasks and there was hardly anything left to do for us. On the one side that is something good - no stress and time to do some other things (I often used the computer at work for my private things because I didn't have internet in my apartment), but on the other side it was so annoying! Without tasks, work and stress it was boring and time seemed to stand still.

The other intern and I were drinking coffee and tea the whole day, cutting fruits, chatting, drawing pictures and looking for cute animals on the Internet. For some time a day it was quite okay to do that, we were having a lot of fun and talking about a lot of things. But we couldn't laugh and talk all the time because it was distracting the others - that were really trying to finish all their tasks, and our boss shouldn't find out that we didn't have anything to do. We got some other tasks to do sometimes but mainly we were watching movies or doing other not work-related things and I started to see work as waste of time. I wasn't learning anything new, had to read things by my own and the others seemed to have more than enough work for two people. But we didn't know much about the new projects they had and some of them were in other languages, so we didn't ask if we could help them and were just waiting for the days to end. I also had decided to study a bit more for the AdWords Certification in order to pass the two tests and have a Certificate after the internship. I didn't know if that would help me a lot because it expires after one year, but it wouldn't harm I thought.

After a lot of cute animal pictures and videos, talks about boyfriends and ex-boyfriends, several drawings and my growing lack of ideas what to prepare for lunch it was finally only one week before Christmas holidays. The Friday of that week our boss invited us to have a Christmas lunch in a nice small restaurant in the city centre. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to eat with all of them (with some I was doing it every lunchtime, but with my boss?), but I was happy that it would be a lunch and no dinner and that work on that Friday would end at 1pm. Of course, that lead to the fact that the Friday morning was passing by even slower, but finally it was time to get to the restaurant. We had already received the menu via email and it didn't look so bad. Furthermore, we were so hungry and didn't have anything to do, so we were more than happy when we finally left the office and got into a colleague's car to drive down.

It was more than great weather, sunshine and about 30 degrees, and that made it even more difficult to believe that we were walking to our Christmas lunch. After a while walking through the small streets of the older part of Puerto de la Cruz we finally arrived at a small, family-administrated restaurant: Casa Mila. There were some small tables outside where one could sit, and when we had found our table inside the building, I guessed that the restaurant was full now. There was only one room to sit inside and it was very small, and the room next to us was supposed to be a Shisha Lounge (nobody was using). We ordered something to drink and were talking about different things - fortunately not about work. It was quite nice to find out some more facts about all my colleagues to who I usually didn't have so much contact at work, for example I found out the age of my supervisor and some funny stories about my boss. Unfortunately, his wife who was also working in the company, couldn't come because of one of the children. She was always so shy that I would have loved to find out some more things about her. After a while they started to serve our menu. It consisted of four plates - a salad with pomegranate as starter, a fish or vegetable soup, lamb meat with potatoes or spaghetti with seafood as main dish and finally ice cream as dessert. Even if the restaurant didn't seem so special from outside and even less from inside, the food was delicious! The seafood spaghetti were covered by two large king prawns and the sauce was amazing. I would have never expected to have a Christmas lunch like that.

After the dessert, some started to leave the restaurant and go home because they had other things to do, and so the other intern and I left as one of the first. It was nice to eat with colleagues, but it was even nicer to have weekend right now and to be away from work and everything that had to do with it (which were also the colleagues, of course). We left the restaurant and walked together through the city. It was incredibly warm outside and we enjoyed that weather in mid December. After having been to the supermarket together we both went home to our apartments and agreed on meeting to go to the beach the next day. Back home I just did some sports exercises and watched TV. I loved Friday - no cooking for the next day, no stress in the evening, just lying in bed and relaxing. The next day I could sleep in and have a chilled breakfast in my bed. Then, at about lunchtime I met the other intern and we went to the beach together which was a way of about 25 minutes. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't as great as the day before, but it was still okay.

When we arrived at the beach we were just enjoying the atmosphere there, everyone reading his book, talking a bit, eating cookies and watching the waves and the sea. In the later afternoon it became quite cold and we decided to walk back to the city centre and have something small to eat. We had a burger at Plaza de Charco and some ice cream before we continued our way back to the apartments. In the evening we would have to be fit again - another girl's birthday was on Sunday and she had planned 1000 things to celebrate that. We were both annoyed by that, but of course we had to come, too. So we returned home to get ready for the birthday party.

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