The Sun's Back!

When I left work on Friday, the sun was out! The past week has been rainy and gray, but now it is sunny again which is good for walkin' around. So I'm pretty happy about that. The last two days in the office I was able to find some things to do to keep me busy until I'm scheduled on a client again. Rob had me preparing some audit programs and then I was asked to help the Nordea team.

Nordea is one of the 4 major banks in Sweden: Nordea, Handelsbanken, SEB, and Swedbank. So I met with Richard (who went to Pepperdine for a year) and Peter who gave me an assignment to put together an excel file with some client data in it. I had fun designing the spreadsheets because it was a bit of a challenge for me using the grouping functions. But I got a good sheet together and then I had to enter data; not as much fun, but still better than nothing. Peter needed it done quickly, so I skipped lunch to work on it. I ended up working more on Friday than any other day this week even though Friday is supposed to be the short day. But I am really glad that I have things to do. I have another spreadsheet to make for Peter that I'll do on Monday. So yeah.... good times.

I actually remembered to take my camera with me, so after work I took some pictures of the scenery on the way home. And after a good Linner at home, I went to Sodermalm just to explore a little bit. I found some cool things and took a lot of pictures. It really is so nice to have the sun out again because walking around the city is much more pleasant.

Well.... I need to get out there and explore, so I'm gonna end this.

Spaghetti Success!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This time, my spaghetti was great! I got real pasta sauce (apparently last time I just got tomato puree or something), ground beef, mushrooms, and cream cheese. It turned out to be a very good meal, and I have leftovers! So that's cool stuff.

Anyway... things other than food are going well too. Today I worked on a review of JC Decaux's Q2. They are an advertising company and one of the things they do is make bus stops shelters where they rent out ad space. They are a very big company that is based in France. Today was a one-day thing where we just did a quick review to make sure everything looked right. I had a good time!

Last night I went down to the southern island of Stockholm with Flo and Rob. We ate at a Czech restaurant and I had schnitzel for the first time (other than Wienerschnitzel). According to Flo (who's from Germany), it was almost like the German kind. The other guys got a good bit of drinking in, but I was still able to have a good time.

Another cool thing that I did yesterday was get a subway pass. I've gone for a few rides on the subway already and it's pretty nice. I still like walking around the city, but it's nice to be able to go anywhere in town without wearing out my feet too much.

So yep.... things are going well. I need to remember to take my camera around so I can get some scenic pictures.

Workin'

First off.... I've added a couple things.... I put comments on the pictures in my album and I put a link to a document that I'm making about things that I'm learning each day (part of goal setting for the program). So go ahead and check those out if you want.

Things have been going well! I've started work and I really like the people there. I'll probably talk more about stuff tomorrow, because now I'm tired, but I just wanted to post something. So here's a little taste of Swedish work life. This is what a desk looks like when the employee is on vacation (a lot of people are right now):

And this is what their desk looks like when they are working:

And here is another important part of Swedish work culture:

The coffee machine! We also have one in Sacramento, but this one is HUGE! And it's really nice. Mattias (a Senior Manager and my Performance Manager over here) talked about how drinking coffee was a core competency of auditors. But he is ok with me not drinking coffee. I use the machine though, for water and hot cocoa. So yeah... that's a little taste of office life here in Sweden.

Church - July 5th

So this isn't quite what the LDS chapel in Stockholm looks like, maybe next week I'll remember to take my camera and I can post a picture of the real one. But there are a lot of big old churches here! On my way to church the streets were really quiet - it was nice. I thought maybe they just didn't do much on Sundays, but on the way back the streets were busy again. So I guess they just relax on Sunday mornings - so that's neato.

I had some frosties for lunch, and then, because my spaghetti wasn't good, I had more for dinner. Turns out that it was milk! And it's good milk! Even though my cooking didn't have good results, I really enjoyed it and so I think I'll try to make Swedish meatballs next Sunday. After my meal, I went out and took a few pictures.

So it was a good day. I'm excited to start work tomorrow! I'm not quite sure what to expect, but I'll find out soon how the rest of my month will be.

Here's a video showing what my elevator is like.

First Day - July 4th

Well I'm here now! I had a long flight from Atlanta to Stockholm (it was only 9.5 hours, but I wasn't comfortable and didn't sleep much, so it felt longer). I hadn't thought about the route we would take though - we went up north over DC, New York, Halifax, Greenland, and then over Norway. I got to see fireworks in DC from the plane window, that was neato. But yeah, I made it.

Meltem, my mentor, picked me up from the airport and we took a cab downtown. I got into my apartment and found out that I have internet - which is such a relief. I got Skype ready so that I could call Chelsey. And after talking to her I went out!

I walked from my apartment to where the church is, just to make sure I knew how to get there for tomorrow. Then I wanted to explore a little bit and looked for a place to get dinner. I checked out where the office is and then walked around town more before going to the grocery store. That was a different experience - I was really suprised at how little English was in the market (not like Singapore and Malaysia that had a lot of products labeled in English). So I ended up getting cereal, what I think is milk, eggs, bread, and pasta supplies. Maybe I can get some pointers from the missionaries about where to shop and what to eat.

Anyway, it was a good first day. I am excited to get to know the city more. So that's it for today! I'm going to post some videos that show my apartment and tomorrow I'll talk about church in Sweden.

Intro

So I decided I would make a blog about my trip to Sweden. I thought it would be a good way to document what goes down, especially since I am horrible at keeping a journal. So I’ll be posting pictures, videos, and stories here for anyone that is interested.

Right now I’m flying to Atlanta where I will get on my flight to Stockholm. So I don’t have any cool stories about Sweden yet, but I thought I’d have my first post be about how I got here and what has happened so far.

I’m majoring in Accounting at BYU and most of us in the program at BYU end up going into one of the Big 4 accounting firms. So I had to decide which city and firm would be a good fit for me. Since Chelsey and I don’t like the snow, we thought of California. And we decided we would go to Sacramento because it isn’t as expensive as LA or San Francisco and my parents live there. So then I needed to decide which firm I would go with. Last year I visited some firms in Sacramento to get a feel for where I would fit in and one of the major deciding factors for me was that KPMG made a global rotation seem much more plausible than the other firms – KPMG seemed to have more of a global focus. So when I got an offer for a Summer Internship from them, I accepted.

After I accepted my offer, I saw KPMG advertisements for “Global Internships” and I thought that sounded pretty cool, but I also thought that I had missed the boat because I didn’t know about it when I applied and got my offer. I also thought that maybe those types of opportunities weren’t available for a small office like Sacramento. So I didn’t think much of it.

But then on my birthday, February 26^th, I got an email from KPMG inviting all summer interns to apply for the Global Internship Program (GIP). I was so excited about it, but I knew that Chelsey wouldn’t be as happy as me. I told her that I thought this opportunity was my birthday gift from God and that it was something I could not pass up. Although she knew she would miss me, she supported my decision because she knew how much this meant to me. So I applied for the program with my first choice destination being the UK.

A week after applying, I found out that I had been selected for a phone interview. I found out that about 400 of the 1000 interns applied for the GIP and about 60 got phone interviews and that 15-20 would be selected for the program. I felt like the phone interview went well, but the day they were supposed to get back to us I kept checking my email and I wasn’t getting anything. So I figured that I hadn’t been selected and tried to move on. But later that night I checked my email again and I had gotten a reply. It said that I had been selected to participate in the program and that I would be going to Sweden! I was so surprised! And Sweden?? It wasn’t even on the list of participating countries. But I was so excited! So it turns out that the UK wasn’t able to participate this year, but Sweden came in late and said that they could, so I get to go there! And it’s perfect because I am a quarter Swedish, so it will be cool to go to the land of my ancestors.

So I started my internship in Sacramento, went to a week of training in Orlando, went back to Sactown to work on the audits of Sunsweet and Blue Diamond, and now I’m here – on my way to Stockholm. I just think that KPMG is so cool for providing this opportunity. I’m not even a full time employee, but they’re investing a bunch of money in me for me to go to Sweden for a month. And especially during these tough economic times, it is really cool that they kept this expensive program going because of their commitment to being a global firm with global employees. So thanks KPMG!

So that’s my introduction! I hope that I didn’t bore anyone, but I promise that my future posts will have pictures and stories to keep your interest. Thanks for following my trip to Sweden! If you have any questions, feel free to post them and I’ll respond.