The second half of our Patagonian honeymoon started with a bus ride from Argentina to Chile. This bus ride took about 7 hours, which obviously isn’t ideal, but it was our best option unless we wanted to take a super expensive flight with layovers. The customs process was pretty annoying with 2 busses filled with…
My New Year’s Resolution was to start blogging about my trips again….and now it’s February 17th and here I am, writing my first post since last summer! Better late than never, right? In all fairness, I was a little busy buying a house…. and GETTING MARRIED! Photo Credit: Jackalope Photography But now that life has settled…
The first week back home was tough for a lot of reasons – the biggest one being jet lag. A 12-hour time difference is not an easy adjustment to make. My first couple of days I thought I was doing ok and I was just a little out of it. However, mid-week I CRASHED. I…
I first said hello to my CSC teammates in February on a conference call. In the months leading up to our departure, we continued to have weekly team calls as well as some one-on-one meetings. When I arrived in Chengdu 4 weeks ago, I finally said hello to everyone in person. And now this past…
Being away from my family and friends for almost a month now has obviously been difficult, but it seemed to get even harder as my birthday got closer and I wondered if I would have anyone to celebrate with. Luckily my team members came to the rescue! I mostly spend every day with the 2…
The whole reason the CSC program exists is to improve the lives of communities all around the world. For my team specifically, we are working with an incubator in the hopes of creating more stable businesses to improve youth unemployment. This week, the whole IBM team came together for an event to help improve…
This weekend I did a few of my favorite things. Two of them have been long-time favorites: hiking and shopping. But another is quickly becoming a new favorite since I’ve been in Chengdu, drinking tea! I’ve never been a coffee person, but over the past year or so I have started to enjoy a cup…
It’s weird how the past 2 weeks have gone by so quickly, but at the same time it feels like I’ve been here for months. We’ve seen and done and learned so much. It’s hard to believe that in 2 weeks this adventure will be over, and I will have to completely switch gears back…
One of the first things our client said to us when we met her last week was that she expected us to “work hard, play hard.” Surprisingly, she actually said this to us in English! So far, I think our IBM team has been living up to this expectation. One of our translators gave me…
After a weekend filled with tourist activities and fun events, we started our assignments on Monday. The first week of work of work was challenging, exciting, and exhausting! It’s hard to explain what it’s like to be thrown headfirst into the business environment of a new culture, but I’ll try my best 🙂 On Monday,…