We've just passed the first two weeks of our CSC assignment - time to reflect about the first half time.

Hotel
JM Suites is a very good hotel with friendly and helpful staff. I'm good with my room, except that is just above the restaurant and bar: Thursday till Saturday the walls are shaking to the beat of the lout music below me. And some of us got even better rooms with separate bath tub and big terrace. Fortunately the lucky guys shared... well, the terrace, not the bath tub. Oh yeah, we actually came in a bad time, a lot of construction work is going on, the French restaurant is now a Pizzeria and currently we don't know if the spa will be usable before our leave. But that's complaining on a very high level.

Casablanca
We stay in a quite modern city with contrasts. A new electric <a title="Casablanca Tramway (Wikipedia)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_tramway" target="_blank">tramway</a> connects distant points of the city metro-like, but does not reduce the hectic car traffic on the streets significantly. You can spend your time (and money) in the alleys of the old medina or go to a super-modern mall.  You'll get traditional moroccan food, enjoy a <a title="Hamam (Wikipedia)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_bath" target="_blank">Hamam</a> session, listen to the prayers from the minarets, glimpse women in <a title="Burqua (Wikipedia)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burqa" target="_blank">burqas</a>  - or have a burger at McDonald's, observe Moroccans ordering a six-pack of (alcoholic) beers in a local (non-touristic) restaurant, see young (Moroccan) ladies in mini-skirt and go for clubbing at weekends... . Casablanca is not black-white, it is a vivid city with many contrasts, but also with charm.

Work
We 15 IBMers from all over the world have been assigned to 4 different organizations, each with different challenges. Nevertheless, many teams face similar challenges, too. The data gathering phases took a lot of time, many, many interviews have been conducted so far. And of course the language: each team has a team member or a translator who speaks French - nevertheless, a lot of time and information get lost in translation.