New Adventures: Q&A

Neither of us are great bloggers but a lot of people have been asking us about our upcoming adventures, so here we are to resurrect the blog and answer some questions! These are the ones we get consistently.

What new adventures?
Patrick and I are moving to Boston to work for Google as software engineers!

Why are you going to work for Google?
Honest to goodness, the opportunity just fell in our lap and we felt like it was where the Lord was leading us. The work seems interesting, the pay seems excellent (especially in comparison to graduate school!), it seems that Google cares for its employees, I didn't hate Boston when I lived there for a couple months, and our families don't hate the idea of us moving there. Our church also has a church plant up there and there is much work to be done for the sake of the Gospel in the northeast. Oh, and after all the hassle of the Ph.D., I decided I didn't want to be a professor. At least at the moment. So it just seems like all the pieces fell into place.

Why are you moving so far away?
We know, we didn't want to move that far either. But Boston's only a two hour, $75 dollar flight from Charlotte. And again, it just seemed like this opportunity was the right fit.

When are you moving?
The movers come July 29. Our flight to Boston is August 3.

Do you need help moving?
Nope! Google is taking good care of us and hiring movers that will pack and load everything, then unload it all on the other side. They're also shipping our car. And I'm going to hire someone to clean the house because I hate move-out cleaning and don't want to spend my final few hours in a place I love doing something I hate.

When are you coming back?
I have no idea. To visit, it will take a little bit of time to build up vacation days. Permanently, unless the Lord calls us to stay up there, we'd like to stay at least 4 years because part of our payment is in stock that vests over four years, then ideally we'd like to make it back closer to family.

Where exactly will you be living?
Google has graciously provided us corporate housing until mid-October. So for those ten weeks or so we'll be living in the Financial District in downtown Boston in a furnished apartment. After that we'll be looking for a permanent place to stay.

What kind of place are you looking for?
Well, primarily we're trying to find a place where our three closest communities will overlap the best--our neighborhood, our coworkers, and our church. We'd like something with 3+ beds, 2+ baths, a garage, and either a basement or a garage spot for a second car (so Patrick can have some space to work with his tools). It'd be nice if it were a less than 30 minute commute on public transit to the Kendall/MIT stop where Google is. A yard would also be nice. We're aware that finding all these things in a city might be tricky or impossible. However we're also confident that God will provide the right place for us.

Are you going to go to Redemption Hill Church?
(Redemption Hill Church is in the same network as our church here.) We're not sure because of the housing situation. The Boston metro area is large and depending on where we lived it could be a really long commute to Redemption Hill. It's hard to love and serve a community you don't live in--in college, both of us separately tried to be a part of churches 30-45 minutes away, and it's taxing. So we'll find some quality churches and settle down somewhere within reasonable distance to one of them.

When can we hang out?
We're going to plan a couple going away parties here in Clemson, so if you live in this area hopefully you can make it to one of those. If you live in Fort Mill or Columbia, we hope we can fit all of you in during the next few weeks! Also you are welcome to plan a trip to Boston to come visit us.

Home sweet home!

Obviously we gave up blogging as soon as the driving got boring. Really, there's not much to write about passing through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Tennessee. (Although we did enjoy our time in St. Louis with the Kerrs and will post some pictures soon.)

But! We are home safe! Unfortunately, my cell phone did not make the last half of the journey with us--it is in Denver. So if you need me, please call Patrick or e-mail me.

We're super glad to be home. I forgot how much I liked my household stuff. Not because it's super nice or anything, but just because I picked it out. Other things we appreciate right now:

- ceiling fan
- dishwasher
- air conditioner
- the ability to make it pitch black in our bedroom while we sleep (the only thing behind our townhome is an overgrown field; no streetlights!
- the sound of crickets at night
- rain (it only rained once our entire summer in LA)
- being in the same time zone as our family
- courteous drivers & interstates that actually have moving traffic
- carpeted floors

Thanks for reading about our trip! We'll continue posting pictures of our various adventures (and of course will update with the last few days of our trip soon)!

Safe in Kansas + Pictures from Day 3 (Arches NP, Rocky Mountains) and Day 4 (Denver, CO & KS)

Hello everyone! We're in for a relatively early night here in Kansas. Today was a pretty boring day--we spent a couple hours in Denver at the REI store and eating lunch, then went ahead and drove to our destination tonight. There is pretty much nothing but farm and prairie between Denver and Salina, so our only exciting pictures are from yesterday.

Like Zion National Park, I also have a billion pictures from Arches! Here is just a sampling of them.

They had some fun bronze animal sculptures. Here's Patrick riding a goat.

Sadly, we did not see a grasshopper mouse, but we still think the animal is awesome.

The rock formations were indescribably incredible. It's crazy to imagine that all this has been shaped by the gentle forces of wind and water!

This area is called the Fiery Furnace, because the formations look like flames leaping from the ground.

You can see Landscape Arch in the left of this picture. Better pictures are coming up.

On our hike to the Landscape Arch, we saw a lizard!

The cactuses were cool.

There's an arch above my head, if you look carefully!

Here are some better pictures of Landscape Arch:

This area was beautiful, with lots of plant life among the red rocks.

At every angle of this park, there was something incredible to see.

We only had time to do the short hike to Landscape Arch, but most of the other arches and formations are visible from the road winding through the park.

Here is Balanced Rock:

Given more time, I would have spent more time in this area (the "Windows" area of the park). Some of those arches you can walk up under.

The drive from Arches to Denver cut through several national forests, with steep slopes, beautiful trees, and a pretty river by much of the drive. Unfortunately, we were too busy enjoying the scenery to take many pictures, and even the pictures we took don't begin to capture the beauty of what we experienced.

This portion of the drive was honestly the first portion of our trip back home that I would consider beautiful. Driving through Utah was absolutely incredible and pretty in its own way, but the mountains, trees, and rivers were truly beautiful. Maybe it's because that's what we grew up with.

We arrived in Denver around 9pm and it was pouring down rain! On the recommendation of my boss in California, Dr. Krum (who had lived in Denver some time ago) we tried out a restaurant called Le Central. We were both very hungry so we ordered mussels as an appetizer, and then Patrick ordered duck, and I ordered trout. It was SO delicious. By the time we finished the mussels and fries we were already full! I'm not too enthusiastic about shellfish but I really enjoyed the mussels. The fries were some of the best I've ever had as well--perfectly crispy. We took most of our duck/trout dinner with us in takeout boxes and then enjoyed it for dinner tonight.

We slept in and decided to just spend a little time in Denver then get on the road. It sounds dumb, but we went to the REI store there, which has its own rock climbing wall and bicycle test path! It was neat to look at all the outdoors equipment. There was also a park surrounding it that was cute.

Since Dr. Krum had not led us astray for dinner, we also took his recommendation for lunch and went to Zaidy's to order the pastrami latke sandwich. It was gigantic and delicious. (Thanks Dr. Krum, if you're reading!)

We then drove from Denver to Kansas, which was mundane. This is what it looked like most of the time:

We were very disappointed to miss the world's largest prairie dog and the five legged cow that the signs told us about for 40 miles. Unfortunately it was closed by the time we got there.

We found a "Tillman" replica in the middle of Kansas:

Tomorrow we head to St. Louis to meet up with friends! We're excited to be headed back into civilization. Three more days until we're home!

Safe in Denver + Pictures from Day 2: Zion National Park

After a half-day at Arches National Park and a drive through the beautiful Rocky Mountains, we're safe in Denver, CO for the night! Here are some pictures of our time in Zion yesterday.

Even the drive into Zion was pretty epic. We got kind of a late start--it was about 11:00AM when we were driving into the park.

When we got there, the park's parking was full! So we had to park in the nearby town and hike in (there's also a shuttle).  We didn't have a whole lot of time to spend since we had six hours of driving ahead, so we had to narrow it down to only a couple things. Of course, this still produced a billion pictures!

I can't remember the names of all the different peaks, but many of them had Biblical names. The giant white mountain you'll see in some pictures among the red mountains is called The Great White Throne.

Zion National Park is in a canyon. There's a bus that runs within the canyon where private vehicles can't go. So even though we didn't have time to hike and climb it all, we did get to ride the bus along the whole loop and get a quick glimpse of all the sights!

 Here you can see the trees that run along the Virgin River, which carved the Zion Canyon.

Our favorite hike of the day was up to Weeping Rock, which is continually dripping with water filtering through the rock. Plants spring up anywhere there is water, so you can see the flowers hanging from the ledge and in every crevice that water falls.

It was surreal how beautiful the red rocks were against the perfectly blue sky.

On our way out we took our traditional picture at the park sign!

The road from Zion to Moab, UT was pretty, too. We passed through everything from mountains to farmland. Most of the drive was super-rural. Sometimes there were 130 miles between gas stations.

Unfortunately, it was mostly dark by the time we got to the canyonlands and the salt flats. The glimpses we got, though, were completely otherworldly. I wish we could have driven through it in the daytime, but at the same time, I'm really glad that we got to spend the time we did at Zion!

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of Arches NP!