Going back to work, yet still looking!

After four months of looking, have finally found a job. Its a contract position with the opportunity of becoming permanent, so until that happens - and I decide that this is a place I want to stay a while - I will still be keeping my eyes open.

The weather in the midwest has been insane! If you live here, you know that this has to be one of the worst spring seasons (can you say 'tornadoes'?) on the history books... I haven't seen the sun shine for more than a few hours for the past two months! Not to say it isn't hot though... and humid! I lived nearly 11 years in Phoenix and never experienced anything so unbearable as 90 degree weather and 90% humidity. You can't breathe! And yeah, since I lived there (Arizona) I am entitled to say this: Even though Phoenix gets hot... its a dry heat!

I think I have stumbled upon the next stage of my professional career... or at least I hope. I see that more and more companies utilizing web applications are going global and are therefore in need of localization (L10n) or internalization (i18n) QA Engineers. I have the QA background (more than 15 years), my problem is that I don't have fluency in any other language. Most are requesting European languages such as German, French, Italian and obviously Spanish.

I attempted a German class years ago only to be interrupted by the pregnancy of my son, so I am leaning towards picking that up again. If anyone has any information on learning a second language such as German and the best way to approach it, I would be interested in hearing your experience. At this juncture, I figure on taking a 5 credit hour class at a local college and hopefully I will be 'fluent-enough' at the end that I can make the transition.

Well, time to go tempt fates and leave the house. Hopefully the rain will remain at bay for a few hours.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Julie