The final stretch!

The store opens Thursday!!!!
It's been a CRAZY few days here in Milan! I haven't seen sunlight since the middle of last week! We have been working 14 hour days in preparation for and during our CEO's visit to the store! It has been going well and he seems to be very pleased with the way the store is coming along! He is very nice and is very involved in what the store looks like on the inside and what the atmosphere is like. It has been a very intense and very long weekend! His final walk through is tomorrow and then we get Tuesday off because of all the hours we have put in these past couple days. The store looks amazing- I can't even explain it! You'll have to fly out here Thursday to see me to get the full experience :) Our greeters started on Saturday and will be outside of the store until this weekend talking to people on the street and waving to passers by. And by "Greeters" I mean really hot guys in unbuttoned plaid shirts, haha! They are usually just shirtless, but it's a little chilly here! There is a huuuuge banner on the front of the store and there are at least 10 guys outside of the store at all times! A few are on the balcony on the 3rd floor above the banner and the others are out on the street being pretty! I am going to try and get a good picture of them in the next couple of days- it's too funny!
I am verrrry proud of Mom, Ms Lynne, Manda, Ms Joyce, and Ms Vicki for their walk this weekend to help find a cure for breast cancer! They raised almost $11,000 for the cause and I am so happy to have such amazing people in my life that do great things like that for others!! Walking 39 miles in 2 days and raising $11,000 is definately something amazing!
We have to be at the store at 6am again tomorrow, so it's bedtime for me! We had daylight savings time here last night so I got an extra hour of sleep last night- but I'm in need of a solid 12 hours of hard sleep!! I'll be back in my bed in 5 days- Halleluiah!
Goodnight & sweet dreams to all! XOXO

More pics :)

The Last Supper painting! It was AMAZING! No pics allowed inside!
The church where the Last Supper is held

McDonald's!

Louis Vuitton- there are at least 3 Louis Vuitton stores in Milan!

Prada

In front of the Cathedral!

Duomo Cathedral!

Bring on the pain!

Hello all! Hope you guys are doing well! I am laying in bed enjoying my last day off of the trip! I was suppose to have off Thurdsay, but my day got moved up because our CEO, Mike Jeffries, is now coming Saturday instead of Sunday. What does that mean?? Well, for us it means 14 hour days and no sleep!!! Let the hard work begin!! We are starting full overnights on Thursday and pretty much are going to be at the store around the clock until the store is 100% ready to open! I am not really upset about all the work because I'm so anxious to see what it will look like when it is all complete- it's already amazing!
Our biggest issue at the store has been the stockroom- basically it is waaaay too small to hold all the merchandise we recieved. So, we have had to make walls out of cardboard boxes to hold all the merchandise that won't fit in the bays in the stockroom. It's insane! So we have had to re-do (over, and over, and over..) a lot of the sales floor to try and get as much merchandise on the floor as possible. It's definately been interesting. A lot of verrrry important people in the A&F world are coming to the store this week- so it should be interesting to see how they respond to the cardboard craziness!
I haven't really done much outside of work this week- we went back to some of our favorite restaurants since we know we won't be eating out much this week! I had my first try at hand washing clothes.. and it will be the last time that happens! I'm guessing the maid had a good laugh when she walked into my room to clean it the next day! I had clothes hanging everywhere! We are going to try and go to the laundrymat again today- the man that runs the place speaks NO english and seems to have constant issues with his washers and dryers! We aren't going to do much else today- laundry, snack shopping for our long days of work, and trying to find some gifts to take home!! Nothing crazy though (sorry, no one is getting Italian shoes..) everything here is crazy expensive! The Euro is killing the dollar right now!
I'm going to post more pictures from my site seeing tour last week- enjoy!
Love you all! Back to the states in 10 days! Then the Japanese adventure begins :)

Site seeing and people watching!

The front of the church

Paintings that are only up during this time of year. They celebrate a Saint that was around during the time of Luther and tell the story of that era. It was very interesting!

The beautiful marble floors!

The Duomo Cathedral- the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world!

The baptismal area- they only baptize on one day of the year for people converting to Christianity!

A beautiful pic of the front of the Duomo Cathedral!

Yummy!

Hello all! Hope you guys are having a good week! It's been a high-stress week here in Milan! My department of the store had all it's changes early this week which caused me to temporarily loose my mind. I have it back, no worries :)

On Sunday we had a lot of interesting run-in's on our way to work and home from work.... on the metro on the way to work we were the only people on the train that were not still drunk from the night before... there was one guy passed out on the train the whole time we were on it, then when it got close to his stop his friends were yelling his name trying to wake him up... at one point even checking his pulse.. not what any of us needed at that time- a dead guy on the train... but no worries, he woke up (well enough to open his eyes..) and his friends carried him off the train. This was 7:15am mind you... a late night for anyone. On the walk from the metro to the store we witnessed more drunks trying to ride bikes on the cobblestone roads.. a skill even a sober person would need practice to master.

Today I took a tour of Milan with one of the girls on my team. It was so informative!! We walked around part of the city and took a bus tour of the rest. We had sweet audio packs to carry along with us so we could hear the tour leader the entire time. We were the two youngest tour attendants.. everyone else was an average age of 60, so we fit in very well:)

The highlight of my day was getting to see the Last Supper painting. The history behind the painting is unreal and it is more amazing in person then I could have ever imagined. The security at the church where the painting is explains it's significance. You went in with a group of no more than 15 people and were only allowed to stay in the room for 15 minutes. As a group you have to go through 3 glass rooms to get to the painting. When everyone gets in the room, the door you came in locks and the door to the next room then opens. After you finally get to the room with the painting there are employees of the church watching everyone to make sure no pictures are taken (sorry no pics this time- you'll have to come to Milan to witness this masterpiece!) . The painting is on a large wall in what use to be a dining hall for monks in a church. The church was bombed during World War I and II so there was a lot of damage done to the painting when it was exposed to the elements during those periods. It has gone through 3 renovations, the last one ending in 1998. Before coming to Italy, I had no idea the painting was a mural on a wall, not on a canvas hanging on a wall... it is huge! The detail and how Da Vinci made it seem 3 dimensional was amazing. I know nothing about art, but this was such a cool thing to see! Another thing I didn't know until seeing it was in the actual painting you can no longer see Jesus' feet. The painting was on the wall in the dining hall with the kitchen on the other side of the wall. (The heat from the cooking caused the painting most of it's damage in the early years) When the cooks decided they needed a larger doorway to the kitchen they just made the doorway larger, cutting off the middle of the bottom of the painting. So Jesus' feet are no longer shown in the actual painting- interesting huh!?

The rest of the tour was great- we saw the inside of the Duomo Cathedral, the Scala Theatre, and learned a lot about the history of Milano!

I'm extremely tired, I didn't get my laundry done today, and I have to be at work early! AH! But I hope you all have a great week- enjoy the pictures- and I promise to try and be better about posting more often!

Love you all!!! Ciao!!

Lost in merchandise!

In the mounds of fleece after sorting shipment! Oh and the bronze statue of an A&F guy!
So, when I say I have a lot of work to do... I'm not lying, haha! This is one style of men's fleece- so much!!

More men's fleece and a nice corner view of the ground floor- there are murals on all the walls of different scenes- in this room it is a hunting scene.

Finally a day off!

Our view on the rooftop restaurant- the top of the Duomo!
Brushetta!

Our "large" beers at dinner- 1 liter!

The entrance to the Mall that has all the designer stores like Prada and Louis V.

Where all the shops are at the Duomo

Statue at the Duomo

Our view when we step off the metro every day- the cathedral at the Duomo! It's breathtaking!

The train/ metro station

I had my first day off yesterday and it felt so good to sleep in!! I slept until 10:30 am (amazing next to my every day 5:30am wakeup call!) I spent some time in my room getting organized and then I took a long Arbonne detox spa bath! It helped with the achy legs I have from running up and down the stairs at the store! I finally got to talk to Kellen, well, I talked, and he typed since he can't find the set up disk for his webcam and can't seem to find the microphone on his computer! Haha- we tried! After that I went to the pharmacist with one of my team members who was suffering from a sinus infection- we got her some meds, sat down and ate lunch, then decided to try and go to the Duomo cathedral. Then I remembered you can't wear shorts into the cathedral and I definately had shorts on- bummer!

We made a trip to the grocery store then met up with some other people from the store and had dinner at an italian restaurant near the Duomo. Instead of wine this time we decided on having some beer. Another girl on my team asked for a large beer and I said I'd take the same. Well turns out a large beer there was a 1 liter beer! They brought them out and we about fell on the floor laughing!

Today after work we went to a restaurant on the roof of a department store by work. We were right next to the Duomo and had an amazing view from the rooftop! Mrs Lynn- I finally ordered Risotto and I loved it! Another girl with us ordered a pizza with sea food on it and it came out with whole squids on it! It was sooo gross!!! We dared a guy on the team to eat one and he did! He said it wasn't that bad, but it was hard to chew up to swallow- yuck!!

The weather here is pretty gloomy. The forcast has said it is suppose to rain for the past week straight and it hasn't yet. One of the associates at the store told us the weather report is never right! But I've been carrying around an umbrella just in case! I'm so jealous of Mom who is going to be in the 90 degree weather in Cancun next week!! But she deserves it!!

Well, I'm exhausted, so I'm going to get to bed! Love you all!

Just another day in the Fashion Capital of Italy..

Hello all! Hope you guys are enjoying your weekend! I'm working all weekend- woo!
We have been working on girls merchandise all the last two days and I am in charge of the girls' side, so I've been crazy busy! It's going to be a beautiful store though, it's unbelievable! If you're ever in the area you should stop by :)
The locals here are really excited about the opening! We have been going to a cafe for lunch every day and they treat us like royalty because they found out we are from A&F- they even offered to throw us a party for opening day! When we stand outside the store they always stop and ask us when we are opening (or at least we think that is what they are saying..). It should be cool to see all the hype when it gets closer to opening!
Kari- to answer an earlier question, yes we get a per diem. We get $110/day or about 70 euros. Plenty to eat well!! On a normal day, we eat breakfast at the hotel in the morning, have lunch at a cafe for lunch, and go out to dinner after work. It's been a lot of the same food since we eat out for 2 meals/day every day! We have been trying to go to different places, we had Japanese sushi one night, cheeseburgers at the hotel another night, and even walked to McDonald's for lunch today! I have never been more excited for chicken nuggets (except for maybe after Scandal's..)! Tonight I had another amazing Margharita pizza from the hotel restaurant, I almost ate the whole thing again- they are so good!
Monday is my first day off and I have it off with 2 girls from the overnight team. I found out today we have a day off next week and the week after, then after that we are working 3 weeks straight. Neat. But I'll have a little over a week of comp days built up when I get back in between my trips, so that'll be nice (and much needed)!
I got to Skype with the family from Nanny's birthday party in Ohio tonight- it was so good to see everyone even if I couldn't be there in person!! It made me miss home though!
Well, I'm going to get to bed- 9:30 on a Saturday night... loser!
Comment on here or email me lots- I look forward to hearing from the US on here since I don't have a phone!! Love you guys!!

Work Work Work!!

First 2 days of work complete & I am exhausted!! The store is going to be AMAZING! It's 4 stories total- 3 of store and 1 stockroom. The walls, ceilings, and floors are all dark granite, there are mirrors and dark wood everywhere- its fancy! It took the whole first 2 days to figure out how to get around the store! I still got lost quite a few times today!

The associates and managers at the store are the most friendly people I have ever met and are SO excited about A&F coming to Italy! I was surprised today at how much English the young Italians knew- it was a sigh of relief!!

We built all the shelfs and put up all the marketing today- it took 7 new store members, around 20 store managers, and around 40 associates to do it for the whole store- and we worked non stop for 8 hours. That's how HUGE the store is!! We still aren't even 100% complete with that part! There is an overnight team that is there right now finishing up our stuff and taking truck loads of girls merchandise tonight. This store is the first ever Flagship A&F adult and a92 kids store so there are a lot of changes and adjusting to do along the way!

Yesterday I decided I had to have a cheeseburger and had a surprisingly good one at the hotel restaurante!! We had more Italian food for lunch and dinner today. We found an amazing deli just down the road from the store and have been going there for lunch. They found out we were in town with A&F and treat us like royalty! It's too funny! I ordered a little sandwich today that I thought looked good.. until I sat down to eat it and noticed it was on bread that had huge olives baked into it.. not for me! So I picked at it and just ate lots of bread!! That's the first thing I have gotten and not really enjoyed- and I'm venturing out a lot more than I normally do!

Well not too much exciting stuff has been happening since work started- boo! I saw my gypsy friends our first day of work at the metro station- but we made sure they knew what "NO!" meant this time!

The best part of the journey to work is the view! We walk past the Duomo every day and every night and it is just breathtaking! I took a couple pictures of it on my way home tonight- I'll take more of the front of it on the way to work tomorrow! The pictures don't do justice to how amazing it is! I will definately make the climb to the top of it on one of my days off!

Well, that's all for now! Had a looong 10 hour day today- so I'm going to watch some tv on my computer and hit the hay!

Love you all!