First week at Google Cambridge

This past week was our first week at work in our actual offices!

Most of the week, for both of us, was spent learning. As with any new job there's a lot to learn, but especially here. There are so many things that are unique to Google that even if we had studied publicly-known material all summer we still wouldn't have been close to prepared. But that's okay, everyone expects you to spend a long time learning.

For me, on top of learning Google things, there's a lot of airline things to learn. Airlines are really complicated. Here's an article on airfare pricing: https://flightfox.com/tradecraft/how-do-airlines-set-prices --and that's just pricing, not even things like which airlines play nice with each other, or which seats are available at what times, or anything like that! Now, of course, the computer does all the hard work of calculation, but unless you know all the variables going in to the calculation working on the code doesn't make a lick of sense. And then there are the airline and airport abbreviations that everyone except me knows by heart. So for now when someone uses an acronym I write it down in my notebook to look up later and during the meeting I just make up a meaning for it that makes the meeting more entertaining.

My coworkers have been nice so far. One of my coworkers gave me a little lecture on Friday about a piece of technology and for his example he used pizza and its parts (pizza, pepperoni, etc.) so we're on the same wavelength :) I also did my first bugfix on Friday, so I can say I actually contributed something to Google overall!

The office is neat. It's really big, covering three buildings. We have a rooftop garden that's nice. Our coffeeshop brews the same kind of coffee Victoria (my sister) brews in Charleston so that makes me happy. My best friends so far are the receptionist, the barista, and the technical support intern, because all three have been lifesavers.

Every floor has a theme relating to a subway stop on the public transit here. My floor's theme is Wonderland, which was once a beach theme park. So on my floor we have a claw machine, photo booth, and fun house mirrors. Each floor also has a little kitchen with free snacks and drinks, and each kitchen has a special treat in it. My floor's special treat is ice cream. Patrick's floor is sailing themed and has gourmet coffee. Probably our favorite floor in our building is aquarium themed. I don't know what that kitchen has for its special treat but there is a really fun aquarium there that we like to look at.

The little things I appreciate:
- My desk can be sitting or standing
- It's not freezing cold like every other place I've ever worked
- I sit near windows looking over a grassy rooftop
- In the kitchen there's a sparkling water dispenser (has always been a treat for me)
- There's always fresh fruit
- Pretty much every day there's been a fish option for lunch
- Friday is pizza day

That's pretty much the story about work. Oh! Except we got paid on Friday. So that was really exciting, haha.

Tuesday we went back to Park Street Church to try out a different small group. We also visited there Sunday morning. We've met a lot of people there our age and have already become friends. Patrick played games with several of the guys on Thursday night. I met up with one of the ladies on Thursday and we've decided to do some one on one Bible study together. Last night, we had a few people over for dinner and games, and this week we're going over to one couple's house for dinner and meeting up with another couple at a pizza place. So they've been very kind and hospitable and we are so thankful. The only little snag is that it's a long commute from where we'll be living. It's really close to work so weeknight things are no problem but Sunday mornings would be a little tougher. So we're trying to figure out what to do about that, as we'd really prefer to be able to get to church using public transit. From Watertown it'd take over an hour on transit to get to Redemption Hill, so that's not seeming to be an option. From Watertown to Park Street is about 45-50 minutes. There are a couple churches less than a mile away from our future home that we think we'll check out once we move there, because that'd be convenient.

Yesterday we registered for Community Boating and took the sailboat rigging class. I can now rig a sailboat! (Patrick already knew how but had to take the class anyways.) Next is shore school, which we might tackle today or sometime this week, and then we'll be able to take out sailboats if we want.

The (only) grocery store near us is kind of fancy. Most notably it has more varieties of cheese than I knew existed. I got "everything bagel" flavored cheese, which was pretty tasty. I also bought some cauliflower that was naturally orange. It's a strange adjustment to make, not really needing to have food in the house. We keep cereal for the mornings, and I've been making dinner most nights, but we don't really need snacks or leftovers because work feeds us all day.

Otherwise it's been pretty low key. Not sure what we'll do this afternoon--maybe shore school, maybe Museum of Science, maybe some looking at furniture?

We miss you all. Start planning your visits!

week 2 in Boston + week 1 at work (in California)

So I haven't been the greatest at keeping up with the blog. And I'm still super backlogged from Yellowstone. I'm also not doing too great managing work and personal e-mails together. Oh well, I'll get it together eventually.

Week 2 in Boston

Actually, it was kind of boring. By Friday we were starting to get bored and antsy without anything structured to do and were getting kind of tired of making up things to keep us entertained. So I guess it's a good thing that we started work when we did!

We did do a few fun things though. On Tuesday we decided to buy a membership to the Museum of Science. Actually going to the museum that day was kind of a poor decision because it was a rainy day in the summer so there were a billion kids there. But the parts of the museum we made it to were pretty cool, especially the lightning show. 

That night we visited a small group at Park Street Church, which had been recommended to us from multiple friends and family members. We met a bunch of other young couples and felt right at home with them. 

On Wednesday we went to a free concert at the Hatch Shell. A couple friends from church the night before joined us as well. 

On Thursday we looked at potential places to live. The first townhome we looked at was pretty much our dream house. It had every single thing we wanted. We signed a lease for it today! It's a little further commute than we hoped for (about 40 minutes on public transit). But it's a block from the river (with bike and running trails), a block from a grocery store, across the street from the park and a short walk to the bus stop. It's less than 10 years old and everything's in really good shape. It's just a tradeoff we had to make because anything closer in is like 200 years old or very tiny. It would have been really hard (psychologically) on us to move out here, have great jobs, and live in a smaller and older place than we lived in as grad students!

On Friday afternoon we checked out the Community Boat House orientation. I think Patrick and I will join! You pay a yearly membership fee and then all the classes are free to take and the boats are free to use. In addition to sailboats they have kayaks, windsurfing, and stand up paddleboards, so I think it will be fun.

On Saturday we moved to our new apartment in the heart of the city. I was sad to leave the hotel (free breakfast! free dinner! free cleaning!) but at the same time we're glad to have a little more space. It's pretty nice here.

Starting Work in California

On Sunday we flew from Boston to San Francisco. Besides having to wait 2 hours for our rental car travels went smooth. We reported to work on Monday morning at 8.

Our orientation/training was mostly fun. We were assigned our Noogler (new googler) propeller hats on Tuesday. We found the ball pit:

We went to a company-wide meeting on Thursday where we got to see our CEOs speak, and then we all celebrated the release of Android Marshmallow (new cell phone software) with dancing and marshmallow treats.

We flew back to Boston on Saturday. Sunday morning we visited Park Street Church for the morning service.

We'll update at the end of the week about our first week here in the Cambridge office!

first week in Boston

We made it!

Overall our experience here has been good.

Monday: Landed in Boston about 2pm. Took until 4:30pm to get to our hotel. We were tired and grumpy. We ordered pizza and it made us feel much better.

Tuesday: Our anniversary! We felt even better after getting a good night's sleep. We took it easy in the morning and our car arrived (from being shipped) with no damage, so that was good news.

The key priority for the day was getting a Charlie Card, which gets you on public transit. So we walked to the nearest subway stop...where they didn't have Charlie Cards. But we were able to work it out by going to the CharlieCard store in Downtown Crossing.

Most of the day we spent shopping. Patrick forgot to pack: tennis shoes, dress pants, dress shoes, and a raincoat...all of which are kind of necessities! So we got him geared up for the most part. We  also were glad we were shopping when an epic hailstorm came through (quarter-sized hail) while we were in the mall.

We went out to dinner at Legal Sea Foods, which is everything we hoped and dreamed it would be and more. Seriously, we're still talking about how good our dinner was that night. Worth every penny.

We also took our traditional anniversary picture:

Wednesday: We got Patrick a raincoat (due to that hailstorm). We set up parking for our next residence--parking wasn't included in our corporate housing package. Can you believe we're paying almost $400 a month to park our car?! But mostly we just wandered around.

Thursday: We took a duck boat tour in the morning, which was fairly fun. It ended in the Charlestown Navy Yard so we took the opportunity to go on a ranger-led walk to Bunker Hill. We climbed all 294 stairs of the monument to see the view from the top. We shopped more.

Friday: We met up with Jon and Leigh Chasteen, some pastors of a church affiliated with our (home?) church, Crosspoint, for coffee. Since we have no friends here yet, it was nice to just talk to some other people! Jon and Leigh are very kindhearted. We ate some lunch then headed into the city. The highlight of the afternoon was going to the Haymarket, which is where people buy up the produce the grocery stores don't want and then sell it for really cheap. It's like Aldi on steroids.

This is $17.50 worth of produce. 3lbs of potatoes, 2 bunches asparagus, 3lbs clementines, 2 peaches, 10 plums, 3 ears of corn, 7 limes, 3 lbs of onions, 1 lb of snow peas, 1 pint purple figs, 1 lb mushrooms, 1 lb grapes, 1 head lettuce.

Most of it was good. I had to throw out the green beans today because they were moldy, but they probably would have been okay on Friday if I cooked them when I got home. So don't hate on the Haymarket. It's using up produce that would just get thrown out if no one bought it.

We watched Selma. It was a good movie.

Saturday: We actually took it easy most of the day. We have been walking a lot. 

We went to Penzey's Spices in the morning. I had taken the move as an opportunity to throw out all my (very old) spices and start over. I got about 30 spices for just under $100 and they're really high quality. And all the same size and shape jars. So in my opinon, totally worth the money.

I also went on a nice run down the Alewife Brook Greenway and the Minuteman bike path. One thing I love about the city is all the safe places to walk and run. And along the greenways and bike paths there are big trees and plenty of wildlife.

Oh, and we were both craving cookies at 10pm. So we went to the grocery store and bought some. Don't judge us. :)

Sunday: We visited Redemption Hill church this morning. We spent the afternoon driving aimlessly around the neighborhoods of Boston trying to decide where we might want to live. (We eliminated some at least!) We took a walk to Spy Pond park and enjoyed the 70 degree F weather.

Other observations:

- We've only heard a couple "Boston" accents. We understand most people just fine (and I think they understand us). It's a really international city!

- Our hotel is really nice. We were surprised to find that they also include light dinner four nights of the week, so it's been good to not have to cook. It's pretty awesome to be able to have hot breakfast every morning (without preparing it myself!) and to sleep in a king sized bed.

- We'll be moving into our next apartment next Saturday. We're on the 22nd floor!

- People are actually kind and courteous here in our experience. Even in the Haymarket. Just ask before you touch the vegetables, carry correct change, and you'll be fine. Say please and thank you to the bus drivers. Show common courtesy and you'll likely get it back! But...don't make eye contact or people will get creeped out, haha.

Thanks for all your support and prayers. We love and miss you all!

On our way to Boston!

I'll pick up on the Yellowstone series later. Moving kind of took over our lives for a while. We're waiting in the airport for our flight in!

We have two weeks until work starts. Our first week will be in California, then we'll be back in Boston for the foreseeable future. Between now and October we'll be looking for a church and a place to live, so prayers appreciated for that!