Funny Turnaround

Well, as luck and cooncidence would have it, I was not met by C in the airport when I arrived in Germany three days go. Due to family matters, she couldn't be in Mainz that day and instead, I was met by a dear friend and had a lovely brunch with her that both nourished my stomach after airport food and also kept me engaged as I battled the inevitable jetlag sleep all that first day. 

But C wasn't there, and it was odd to be in that apartment- except it still feels a lot like home, too. The complication really came with the trip to Scotland that we had planned. I'm not sure if I've told everyone about this, but C and I planned a trip to Scotland almost immediately (approx. 27 hours) after I arrived in Germany as my dearest friend Erin has been living in Edinburgh for the last year and will be returning to the States tomorrow. Rather than be on opposite continents again, we decided to use the opportunity. And after she departs, C and I will embark on the West Highland Way - a long distance walking path into the Highlands.

But the point is, C couldn't be with me to travel to Scotland. But she did manage to find a flight from her current location and now, flipping the planned circumstances, I am on my way to meet her in the Edinburgh airport as she arrives from Germany. :)

Also, the following photo is from my road trip with my mom up the coast of California. I hadn't had the chance to post it yet, but I wanted to. 

Southern California Mini Adventure

So, there is no more work. It's all done. This is a bit weird to me- especially today, as it's Monday and I'm hanging out at my aunt's house and my uncle is about to come home after a day of work and normally if I were to be here on a work day, I would be riding home with him right now. Odd.

But, like any normal person, to respond to the end of an internship at a satellite company, I went snorkeling to see sharks this weekend.

Let me give a bit of backstory. Just a few miles South of here is a town called La Jolla (pronounced 'la ho-ha' -- and coincidentally was one of the areas that I was researching as a high housing appreciation area for Primarq last summer) that has some lovely shoreline that is home to many sea lions (or seals? Haven't found out which yet), snorkelers, and sunburned tourists. I went with a few other interns (I always seem to be going on these weekend trips with only boys - one of the occupational hazards of doing a tech internship, I suppose. I hope this changes soon.) ((Not that boys aren't nice. Just a 1:1 ratio would be groovy.)) and we went to a beach that is also known for hosting many, many leopard sharks.

Now, these sharks are bottom feeders (I realized the necessity to use this term after I told my girlfriend "It's fine, they only eat little things near the bottom" to which she responded "but what if you're kinda little and near the bottom?!") - shrimp, fish eggs, clams, etc. So, here's what happens. You squeeze your face into the borrowed snorkeling equipment (the water where the sharks are is fairly shallow, so none of us used fins) which is mostly just a face mask over your eyes and nose as well as the snorkel and then you star tot march down the beach, feeling silly until you get into the water. But, you are also informed that this area is known for it's plethora of sting rays (wikipedia says "the injury is very painful, but seldom life threatening..." -usually stings occur from when unsuspecting beachgoers step right on top of these critters that are chilling in the sand). So, the experts say, you just have to "shuffle" as you walk into the water to scare them away. This means scrunching and shuffling your feet on the sandy floor so that you make a ruckus down there - I did a combination stomp-shuffle to ensure that no sting rays hung out by my feet - and always keep at least part of your feet on the ground as you move forward, never just pick up a foot and plop it down on the sand.

So, even though I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, I was convinced that every tiny bit of seaweed that brushed my toes was going to send me to the hospital and was very shaky as I went into the water.  I took my feet of the floor and began to swim in earnest as soon as that was possible - so, in about 2.5 feet of water. Imagine how silly this looks.

Anyways, then we were in the water and it looks as it normally does in the Pacific Ocean. No clear blue water, no clear blue skies, even - it was an overcast day. The water is dark, the waves are big but we are out past where the waves break so you just gently float over them as they come. And as everyone swam way in their different directions, you feel very alone - until you put your face under the water and realize that a school of fish is around you!

I had fun with the schools of fish. I paddled gently around with my face in the water and they swam with me, most of them about the size of my hand, and then all of a sudden I would see a dark shadow ripple along the floor underneath me -- and I realized it was one of these sharks! The ones I saw (about five in total) were between four and five feet in length and they move just like you'd think they would after watching so many nature documentaries. They glide. They swoop their tail across the xy plane (as I see it - if you consider their fins to be on the z axis) and are incredibly serene. The fish flit in comparison. Though I did, at one point, also see a sting ray and let me tell you, I was distinctly un-calm for the five minutes that followed.

All in all, a fun experience - and all you need is the mask and people to convince you to jump in.

There went twelve weeks.

I'm sitting in the very comfortable armchair in my room at my host family's house, the house I'll only be staying in for two more nights. Yesterday I said all my goodbyes to friends, coworkers, and bosses at ViaSat. I had high hopes for that internship - that it would be fun, that I might learn a thing or two. It exceeded all of my expectations. I learned "material" things if you will (new programming languages -- though I'm not great at them, I had to write at least a little bit of code in 4 different languages by the end of my project, also new software in general) but also intangible things lil learning to interact in a more corporate environment, finding out what work I like and what work I don't, etc.

Even when I worked at Primarq last summer, it wasn't this kind of work experience - though I remember thinking then what I thought this week. Namely, that work is apparently 8 hours a day, but it's really more than that. You don't actually have 8 hours for you, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for you each day. No, because you take lunch at work and that isn't really your time, plus the time it takes you to get to and from work - just like even if you lie down at 10 to sleep and technically have until 6, it doesn't mean you are immediately asleep at 10. These things are tricky.

And now, again, it's time to pack up and leave. I mean, I don't leave for a few days, but coming and going seems to be one of my main activities these last few years. When I say this, I don't mean to sound ungrateful for the opportunities I've had to live in all of these amazing places -- San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Budapest, Santa Cruz, Carlsbad -- but all of those have been in the last year. I'm very familiar with my big red suitcase. And in a few weeks, that suitcase will be pushed into the belly of a plane and come with me to Frankfurt, where it will get dragged onto a train in the airport, then down an escalator a few stops later and pulled down the street in Mainz, and finally hauled up six flights (12 half-flights) of stairs on Pankratiusstr. And when it gets there, I really hope it stays there, unused and empty, for a long time. Say, longer than six months. At least.