RA>Our pension plan is pretty good, although a few years back the governor
  >appointed some of his political cronies to the investments board.  They
  >didn't know what they were doing, made some stupid investments with
  >predictable results.  It created quite a scandal when the news came out,
  >and several municipalities in the system withdrew all their pension
  >funds.  We're about average on vacation.  We start out with two weeks a
  >year and it goes up depending on length of service.  Next year I get
  >another 2 and a half days before it's prorated--I'm seasonal.  I think
  >the top end is 5 weeks for those who've worked more than 25 years for the
  >state.
That really isn't that different from private industry, then.  I think
Mario gets four weeks paid vacation a year.  I, of course, being a
free-lancer, get *no* paid vacations a year.  On the other hand, I can
drop everything and take a day or two off whenever I want.
RA>I'd have to say that it depends on one's mother tongue.  People who were
  >raised speaking a highly inflected language like German frequently have
  >difficulties just the same as English speakers tend to have problems
  >dealing with declensions and conjugations.  And a lot of people who speak
  >English as a second language have problems with articles.
Actually, a lot of folks in Germany already speak English.  I have a
friend who spent a couple of years working in Germany, and married a
German girl while he was at it.  He said he was amazed at how, even in
private conversations, people slipped into and out of, English.
                   Sondra
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 þ SLMR 2.1a þ Fax me no questions, I'll fax you no lies.
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