the first days

I have been in Canada for 2 days now, and today is my first day at the office. I'm surprised of how much I have learned already. For the past days, I have stayed at the house of David and Maggie, both extremely kind people. During the days, I discovered that there is not a big culture difference, since both Canada and the Netherlands are Western countries. David is the head of Adamson Associates, an architect company in Toronto. He has already told me a lot about how everything works in his company. He compared his company with the back-up band of a singer. Adamson Associates is never in the spotlight, because the pupose of the company is to design the main idea of a building ( a building plan), not the design of the building itself. So the people that work there create the very first drawings of a building, an overview of how many levels the building can have, or for example how many elevators it will need in order to operate efficiently. Then, they usually collaborate with a famous architect who designs the appearance of a building, but Adamson Associates is responsible for producing the final detailed drawings.

Besides this, David also showed some of the buildings that he and his team have participated in, which I thought was very impressing. I had never heard of the company before, but was surprised of how many of their buildings I knew.

Due to the fact that I had my first two days off, we went to the Niagara Falls, and to a town close by. Both were amazing to visit. Even though there isn't such a big difference in culture, with everything you see, you can feel that it is not the Netherlands. The roads and traffic lights look different, the cars are different ( a lot of people own pickup-trucks), the villages look different. In general I feel like some aspects of Canada look a bit messy compared to the Netherlands, for example the electrical wiring that is visible everywhere. However, I do really like the atmosphere here. Everyone that I have met so far was very kind and open. It is common here to start a conversation on the street with people you have never met before; I personally really like this attitude.

So today is my first day at work. They already gave me an office-tour. Furthermore, today I will probably talk to people with different functions within the company to see what their task is and how they work together with others.