October Update

It's been another month since I posted last. I definitely have some good updates for this month though seeing as how I spent 2 full weeks in the Philippines! The trip was great but I was REALLY anxious to get home during that 2nd week. I never realized how hard it would be to be that far away from home for a short amount of time. But, before I get into those pictures and stories, the first thing that happened in October, before I went to the Philippines, we all went to the Jazz scrimmage.

The Jazz just had an exposition game where they played against each other AND they unveiled the new floor design. It was kind of cool so here are some pictures from that :)

Chris, Ramin and I had fun going to that and then going to lunch afterward. This ALSO happened to be the same day as Tanner and KayDee's wedding. So of course Ramin and I went to that later in the evening :)

It was so great because they held it in the cutest little outdoor area of an Victorian house - which I loved. And everything was so well done and I thought it was really great. I cried a lot of course because Tanner and KayDee are so cute together. On a side note, Chris and I are going to go see that Paranormal Activity 2 movie today with Tanner & KayDee because we all saw the first one together as a group. Anyway, here are some pictures from the wedding - I did not take these. These were taken by Tanner's stepmom.

And now it's time for my Philippines trip!! It's not going to be that long of a story, because honestly, I was there for work and BOY did I work!! I worked incredibly hard while I was out there and I was extremely exhausted each and every day I came back to the hotel. The hardest part was that you have to work through the night over there in order to match up with daytime in the United States. So I'd start work at 9 pm over there and leave the office around 7 am - which was really 7 am to 5 pm back home in the Us.

For the first week I travelled out there with my co-worker, Tim. That was good because he had already been there before and knew what to do logistics-wise, which was sort of my main worry before leaving. So he was with me for the first week and I was alone the last week. We stayed the first 3 nights in Manila - it is very metropolitan and crowded with tons of people! It was crazy but felt like any normal big city to me. On Friday we took a plane to Cebu City - which is about an hour long plane ride away from Manila. Cebu reminds me of sort of the Florida or Hawaii of the Philippines - everyone said it is beautiful there - and it is! Tim spent the night working with me there and then left back for Manila and then home while I stayed in Cebu for the weekend. I even worked on Saturday because there was that much work to do!

I came back to Manila early Tuesday morning and spent the rest of my time there. Just to clarify - we outsource to 2 companies out in the Philippines. And each company has 2 locations. The first company has both locations in Manila, just in different areas. And the other company has one location in Manila and one in Cebu - so that is why I had to travel out there. So basically I was meeting people from 4 separate locations and trying to remember names while also accomplishing the mission I set out to do. It was rather intense!

Anyway, the people are AMAZING in the Philippines. Everyone is so gracious and nice. I loved it - I think it was the major thing that got me through my time there. The food isn't so great. I don't even want to get started on my opinions - but I DID get the chance to go to a few really good restaurants - Chinese, Middle Eastern, Italian - and I actually some of the best food from those 3 genres that I've ever had. So without further ado, here are my pictures from my trip. Some were NOT taken by me but by other people there with cameras :)

One of the first places we went out to eat was Jollibee - it's sort of like their version of McDonald's. The people I work closely with were so great and took us to all these places and we all went as a group.

And then this is the same group of us back at the office.

I also took a picture of us in the van driving to dinner AND we also went out again when I was with them by myself to a place called Red Ribbon. I really liked that place!

And here is what my hotel room looked like when I was in Manila - I stayed at a place called the Shangri-La and it was a really nice hotel! Here is the view from the hotel and the actual room.

And then when I flew to Cebu, here was my room and the view from it! (for some stupid reason I can't get the picture of the room to rotate the right way - Blogger is being stupid :P )

And here are some pictures of Tim and I at the Cebu location. I do have more pictures from here but they are actually printed out. They had a little celebration while we were there and rented a picture machine that is really cool so all of those printed pictures I got with everyone are on my desk at work right now.

And I just realized that I don't have many other pictures from the other location in Manila. Hopefully someone will post up those pictures somewhere so I can have them.

But that's my trip. Glad to be home but really glad I had the experience over there and got the chance to learn about the culture :)

Another One Down

Another month has passed and time has flown by yet again. A few weekends ago I convinced Chris and Ramin to go with me up to Fort Bridger, Wyoming to the Mountain Man Rendezvous. This was something my mom took us to when we were littler and when my elementary school hosted our own little mountain man rendezvous day. Anyway, we made up to the real rendezvous this year and it was pretty awesome.  While I didn't actually take any pictures while we were at the rendezvous, I did take some pictures of our stop at Fossil Butte National Monument. Ramin always likes to make our road trips as fruitful as possible so we took a little detour in order to hit up this place.

This place was awesome because they literally had a timeline of the history of the Earth. It said that every 9 inches represented 1 million years. And the timeline started way back at the entrance of the place and continued to the actual visitor center. It was REALLY cool. We spent a good 20 minutes just reading the entire timeline. And then we spent another 1/2 hour in the visitor center reading about all of the fossils at this place. Apparently the entire area is great for finding fossils of ancient sea life - YES, sea life. The whole western part of the US used to be submerged in water. It was all very interesting!

And we did some driving throughout the park and ran across some cute deer! It was a mom and her two babies. We ended up seeing the dad deer when we turned around and came back but he was running too fast we couldn't take a picture of him.

Next weekend is going to be KayDee and Tanner's wedding on Saturday and then on Sunday I need to spend all day packing myself up for my trip to Manila, Philippines. Yep, I am definitely going for 2 weeks - from the 4th through 17th. I'm excited but I'm also really nervous too. I'm glad I have a co-worker going with me as we fly out and he will be with me for the first week. On the 2nd week I'll be by myself but there's always a few eBay people out there at any given time, so I will be ok.

But, the reason I brought all of that up is because I figured next weekend I'd be too busy to worry about Halloween Decorations - and I wanted to make sure I got them up before I left - sooooo....I did them all today!!  I know I know, I always post my decorations and they usually aren't any different than the previous year, but this year I do have a few new things and I tried to mix things up a bit. So here is my decor:

That's all my updates for now!! I'm planning on taking LOADS of pictures while I'm out in Manila so hopefully I'll have a lot to post when I get back!!

WHOA

So I know it's been an incredibly long time since I posted last. I'm trying to do more to make sure I do things for myself instead of focusing 100% of my energy into work. What have I been doing over the past month?  Well...here is a brief list:

1. Finished up my Summer semester of school. BY FAR the hardest semester of my Master's Program so far due to all of the new software I had to learn and all of the projects I had to do.
2. Working my ass off. We went through the process of interviewing a ton of people in order to get us some more help. I'm hoping we'll have 2 new people start in mid-September. Until then, I'll still be on overdrive at work. We're also going through some "performance management" deal to basically determine whether we're the right fit for our job. I'll learn my results on Tuesday ;)
3. Being sick. Thanks to working my ass off I overloaded myself and got really sick last weekend. I took Monday and Tuesday off work. I ended up getting behind but it was worth it in order to stay in bed all day and sleep. Needless to say, since I've been back at work this week I've been forcing myself to take it easier. 
4. Starting Fall semester. Started this week again. I'm anxious for this semester because it's a lot of reading and projects specifically related to Instructional Design. This is where we're getting to the really good stuff. So I'm excited to do lots of reading and learn as much as I can.
5. Helping Tanner and KayDee prepare for their wedding. So last year (I'm sure I posted about it last year), I helped Tanner make cute cards for his proposal to KayDee. Now we're a month away from their wedding!! Tanner is seriously like my brother and I was so happy to help them make their invitations. I told Tanner last year that I wanted to help them with everything. A few weekends ago we went up to Sundance and Bridal Veil Falls and I took their engagement pictures, yes ME! And this weekend we finished their invitations. On Friday I went over to their house and we spent the night cutting paper and gluing it together. And yesterday I spent all morning and afternoon printing on vellum, cutting, hole punching and then assembling the final invitation.  Here's how they turned out:

 
Aren't they super cute? It's hard to tell in the picture but the paper is all metallic. Eggplant, copper, ivory and the envelop is saffron. I LOVE it! I also love their engagement picture so much because it's so atypical from the normal engagement picture. They wanted a fall wedding and their colors are so subtle and pretty. I'm really proud of how hard we worked to make it come together. We made 175 invitations in total. I learned through this process that this really is something I really would love to do for a living. I need to keep making small steps to make that happen.

So what is on the horizon for the next little while? I will most likely be traveling to Manila for work the day after Tanner and KayDee's wedding. We'll see if that happens. I'll also continue doing my thing at work and at school. If I have any interesting news to report I'll make the time to post it up!