My Second Month in America
Taken directly from my email this evening
Hi Everyone!
First off, I apologise that I haven’t written these last three or so weeks. You’ll understand why when I tell you!
On the July 4th weekend, I decided that it would be a perfect time to take a break, so to speak, and travel back to Burnaby for a visit. I left after work on July 3rd, and it was a slight gong show with the planes. I had a 45 minute stop over coming home, and my plane left late from St. Louis. By the time I got off the plane, I had 5 minutes to run 15 gates. I flat-out ran, dragging my luggage behind me…and I literally cried with joy when I found out that my plane to Vancouver was delayed. My only complaint was that I was seated beside a rather large woman, and in the last hours of the flight, began to smell of a mix of body odour and fart. Gareth and my Dad picked me up and we collapsed into bed.
On Friday July 4th, Gareth and I literally shopped until we dropped! We went to the mall mainly for Gareth - he needed some new jeans and shoes. We got him two pairs of shoes - a brown pair of Adidas with an argyle print, and a pair of black Etnies. He also got a couple nice shirts and two pairs of jeans from Old Navy. I picked up some lovely new tank tops (a must in St. Louis humidity). We stopped by the Metrotown Build-A-Bear for a quick hello.
On Saturday the 5th, Mum and I went to the new Costco near Still Creek to pick up some supplies for a Barbeque. Around 5 pm, everyone started showing up. It was absolutely awesome - and a huge thank you to everyone who came. I loved it…we filled our house with people who I love and we had an absolutely fantastic time, and Gareth really owned the grill. He’s going to have to barbeque for me more often!
Sunday was much more lax. We stopped in to the Coquitlam Build-A-Bear, as I had some pins for Troy. I had a great chat with him, and after a quick tour around the mall, Gareth and I spent the rest of the day just relaxing together. We went out for dinner with Mum and Dad that evening as well, and I introduced them to Mable Slab Ice Cream.
I traveled home on Monday. It was really hard saying goodbye, but finally I departed into the airport. I breezed through customs and security, and had a pleasant flight to Minneapolis. I got some dinner, and as I sat down at my gate, a lightening storm rolled in. Any time lightening is around, all planes pretty much get grounded. In a small clear pocket, our plane landed, got cleaned, and by the time we boarded it had cleared up. We had to wait in the take-off backlog. However, we got back to St. Louis without any other incident.
On Wednesday July 9th, I decided to try a new kind of exercise - Bikram Yoga. Basically you do yoga in a heated room. I won’t go too much into what exactly happened, but it ended up with me suffering from severe heatstroke. I should have gone to the hospital, but at the time I honestly didn’t think I had dipped into the danger zone when it comes to heatstroke. Looking back on it, I was showing classic symptoms, but the yoga people did not know what heatstroke was. I ended up taking the next day off work to recover, and on Friday I only operated at half my normal capacity. However, I did decide that I felt well enough to go shopping, and scored a lovely summer dress and another pair of shoes on super sale - the dress was $17, and the shoes were $35.
This past Thursday, all of the Interns went to a Cardinals Game. It was fantastic! The stadium was quite new and very nice, and every time the Cardinals hit a home run, a small fireworks show would go off. I also visited the Build-A-Bear in the Stadium, and got myself a Clydesdale Horse and matching blanket. The Cardinals won as well, so that was a bonus! As awful as it sounds, I was quite amused when I found out that the intern whom I don’t like very much got fairly drunk, and took Friday off to recover.
Today has been a good day for me as well. When I came back from my visit home, my landlady went on vacation to California. She told me a couple of her friends would be moving in on the 20th for a little while because they were having house renos. They arrived today, so I had a little chat with them. I decided to have a walk around the Loop, which is a shopping/restaurant area that’s just a 5 minute walk from my house. I got some bubble tea, tried on some shoes (sadly, they were too small). I went to a movie theatre in one of the Malls and saw Wall E. Like all Pixar films, it was funny, adorable and just plain good. I found out the mall was open until 9:30, which lead to more shoe shopping and an adorable pair of Nine West heels became mine (I had my eye on them for weeks). I need to stop!
Work has been going very well. This last week was a build, so I did a fair amount of testing, and also developing content that is going to go into the virtual world. I have submitted roughly 6 requests in the last three days, and have many more to do this week. Carrie is very pleased - I’m really helping the virtual world team have more time to focus on larger content updates by plowing through the smaller dev requests. I’m really excited about the things coming up for the virtual world…I just can’t tell anyone yet!
Well, it's getting late, and tomorrow I'm planning on taking a Segway Driver's Course, and maybe stopping by the Hard Rock Cafe to pick up some pins for my Mum. And of course, Monday I'm back at work.
Talk to you all soon!
Much Love,
Meghan
Hi Everyone!
First off, I apologise that I haven’t written these last three or so weeks. You’ll understand why when I tell you!
On the July 4th weekend, I decided that it would be a perfect time to take a break, so to speak, and travel back to Burnaby for a visit. I left after work on July 3rd, and it was a slight gong show with the planes. I had a 45 minute stop over coming home, and my plane left late from St. Louis. By the time I got off the plane, I had 5 minutes to run 15 gates. I flat-out ran, dragging my luggage behind me…and I literally cried with joy when I found out that my plane to Vancouver was delayed. My only complaint was that I was seated beside a rather large woman, and in the last hours of the flight, began to smell of a mix of body odour and fart. Gareth and my Dad picked me up and we collapsed into bed.
On Friday July 4th, Gareth and I literally shopped until we dropped! We went to the mall mainly for Gareth - he needed some new jeans and shoes. We got him two pairs of shoes - a brown pair of Adidas with an argyle print, and a pair of black Etnies. He also got a couple nice shirts and two pairs of jeans from Old Navy. I picked up some lovely new tank tops (a must in St. Louis humidity). We stopped by the Metrotown Build-A-Bear for a quick hello.
On Saturday the 5th, Mum and I went to the new Costco near Still Creek to pick up some supplies for a Barbeque. Around 5 pm, everyone started showing up. It was absolutely awesome - and a huge thank you to everyone who came. I loved it…we filled our house with people who I love and we had an absolutely fantastic time, and Gareth really owned the grill. He’s going to have to barbeque for me more often!
Sunday was much more lax. We stopped in to the Coquitlam Build-A-Bear, as I had some pins for Troy. I had a great chat with him, and after a quick tour around the mall, Gareth and I spent the rest of the day just relaxing together. We went out for dinner with Mum and Dad that evening as well, and I introduced them to Mable Slab Ice Cream.
I traveled home on Monday. It was really hard saying goodbye, but finally I departed into the airport. I breezed through customs and security, and had a pleasant flight to Minneapolis. I got some dinner, and as I sat down at my gate, a lightening storm rolled in. Any time lightening is around, all planes pretty much get grounded. In a small clear pocket, our plane landed, got cleaned, and by the time we boarded it had cleared up. We had to wait in the take-off backlog. However, we got back to St. Louis without any other incident.
On Wednesday July 9th, I decided to try a new kind of exercise - Bikram Yoga. Basically you do yoga in a heated room. I won’t go too much into what exactly happened, but it ended up with me suffering from severe heatstroke. I should have gone to the hospital, but at the time I honestly didn’t think I had dipped into the danger zone when it comes to heatstroke. Looking back on it, I was showing classic symptoms, but the yoga people did not know what heatstroke was. I ended up taking the next day off work to recover, and on Friday I only operated at half my normal capacity. However, I did decide that I felt well enough to go shopping, and scored a lovely summer dress and another pair of shoes on super sale - the dress was $17, and the shoes were $35.
This past Thursday, all of the Interns went to a Cardinals Game. It was fantastic! The stadium was quite new and very nice, and every time the Cardinals hit a home run, a small fireworks show would go off. I also visited the Build-A-Bear in the Stadium, and got myself a Clydesdale Horse and matching blanket. The Cardinals won as well, so that was a bonus! As awful as it sounds, I was quite amused when I found out that the intern whom I don’t like very much got fairly drunk, and took Friday off to recover.
Today has been a good day for me as well. When I came back from my visit home, my landlady went on vacation to California. She told me a couple of her friends would be moving in on the 20th for a little while because they were having house renos. They arrived today, so I had a little chat with them. I decided to have a walk around the Loop, which is a shopping/restaurant area that’s just a 5 minute walk from my house. I got some bubble tea, tried on some shoes (sadly, they were too small). I went to a movie theatre in one of the Malls and saw Wall E. Like all Pixar films, it was funny, adorable and just plain good. I found out the mall was open until 9:30, which lead to more shoe shopping and an adorable pair of Nine West heels became mine (I had my eye on them for weeks). I need to stop!
Work has been going very well. This last week was a build, so I did a fair amount of testing, and also developing content that is going to go into the virtual world. I have submitted roughly 6 requests in the last three days, and have many more to do this week. Carrie is very pleased - I’m really helping the virtual world team have more time to focus on larger content updates by plowing through the smaller dev requests. I’m really excited about the things coming up for the virtual world…I just can’t tell anyone yet!
Well, it's getting late, and tomorrow I'm planning on taking a Segway Driver's Course, and maybe stopping by the Hard Rock Cafe to pick up some pins for my Mum. And of course, Monday I'm back at work.
Talk to you all soon!
Much Love,
Meghan