Do you think we bought our first car?

I know that for some of you, this might be one of the biggest questions question marks when reading todays entry. For that reason I think I am going to talk about it at the end:-)

Last Monday Lita had her first work day (for me it was the second but for Human Ressources - HR was the first one as well). We had to be in the main lobby at 8:30 am to get our "Orientation Training". We got there a couple of minutes early and where surprised to see so many people waiting for the exact same thing. This Training was very interesting as we could learn a little bit more about the company in North America. For those who are interested in some of the facts that we were told (number of locations, number of associates, etc) should definetely have a look at the following link:
Bosch in North America

After this first presentation we took a one hour tour to learn what are the different services and facilities that we have at our location (cantine, gym, car pool, distribution in the different buildings, etc). The entire "Orientation Training" took about three hours being then time for lunch ("Mahlzeit" as the germans would say xD).

Of course we still had to fill in many documents, request our debit cards from the bank (as we are not yet allowed to have a credit card, due to the lack of credit history... It seems it is even better to have a very bad credit history than not having one...) so we took the lunch time to drive from one place to the other in order to provide these documents as soon as possible. The only one that we have not been able to provide yet is the Social Security Number (SSN). It seems that you have to be in the country for at least 10 days to be sure that your information has been entered in the system. That way you can get your SSN within one day. If you have the idea of requesting it earlier, the Social Security Office will have no problem to start the process BUT as you are not yet entered in the system the process could get extended in some cases up to a couple of weeks.

From that point of time until today the work has been great. It seems to be very common in the US that the boss, shows the new employee his desk and tells very friendly: "Here is your desk, let me know if you need anything" and leaves the employee in his cube to have the freedom to sort himself the difficulties out, that he might have. They request from the employee a high degree of initiative to get in contact with the co-workers and get their support if something needs to be clarified or explained. This makes things a little bit more challenging but fun at the same time.

Another highlight of this week was the home search. We have to say that having a relocation service that takes care of us makes things much easier. They usually work with a certain real estate agent that provides you a list of houses/apartments that are available for rent and shows you around ten per day. Our requirements were clear:
- 1000 to 1500 sqft (93m2 to 140m2)
- commute time: a maximum of 30 min
- if possible a condo (condominium). You usually have to pay a little bit more but you do not have to care if something brakes or needs to be repaired, usually has gym facilities, etc.

With this information the real state agent took us to several houses in Novi and Farmington Hills

 

Bosch is located in Farmington Hills and for that reason this two areas are pretty convenient to live in.

Some of the houses we saw, looked like this from the outside:

 The first three we saw, were around 1000sqft, which is actually a very good side. But for some reason the architect designed the condos in three floors, requiring a lot of room to place the staircases to get you to the next floor.... This resulted in a master bedroom with a ridiculous size, where we were questioning ourselfs if our bed was even going to fit in!

This first contact with the real estate agent helped us a lot to see what are the different options that are available in the market and provided us a much clearer view of what we are looking for. For that reason we scheduled already a meeting with the real estate agent for next week. Let see if we have better luck next time and find the house of our dreams:-)

And last but not least.... we bought our first car! Lita and I were having some discussions on the type of car that we should by for her. At first we thought that we should go ahead with an SUV (Ford Edge 2010 or Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo MY2009) since in winter there might be some snow on the roads but we realized that the weight of the vehicles "neutralized" the pros of been a 4WD.  We decided to be on the safe side as well that Lita will then attend to a safety driving training with her new car to learn how to react in case the car skids.

 Another "killer argument" was the high consumption of these two vehicles ( 18mpg or 13l/100km and 19 mpg or 12,4l/100km respectively).

After checking in serveral websites like cars.com, kelley blue book, edmunds.com, etc. and due to the expirience that Lita is doing with her rental car, a 2012 Hyundai Elantra, we decided to give it a shot. In the US, Hyundai has been growing quite fast and the 5 years warranty or 60,000 miles gives a better feeling on how good the manufacturer trusts its own car.

On saturday we went to a dealer to see the 2012 model year of the hyundai Sonata (the big brother of the Hyundai Elantra)

 

Here some facts about the car:

- Base engine size: 2,4 liters

- Cylinders: 4 inline

- Horse power: 198 hp @ 6300 rpm

- Torque: 250 Nm @ 4250 rpm

- Front wheel drive

- Fuel economy (city/Hwy): 24/35 mpg (9/6,5 l/100km)

It is a very popular car right now and they had several vehicles where the lease contract had just finished. It only took us three test drives and 4 hours (mainly only because of the interior design and colours) to check all the car, see that every thing was as we wanted it to be and decide to buy one for a very reasonable price;-).

I must say it is the first time in my live that I wrote a check and it felt like been in the stone age:-)

This next week we will keep on the house search, get the car insurance and go to the Detroit Motor Show;-)

Write to you soon!!!