Assalam'alaikum.....

I'm in Seattle!!! I arrived yesterday, at 11.30am Pacific time. Unfortunately, they didn't have my room ready yet, so me and a few other people had to camp out in the key pickup lobby until 3pm. Luckily, one of us had the bright idea of ordering Chinese for lunch. Yummm.... Chinese food. I was pretty bummed at first about having to wait in the lobby, but luckily enough, it was a pretty decent bonding experience, LoL. I met with a few interns and managed to make some friends while eating Chinese food and watching Harry Potter on Chris's laptop. Extremely cool.

Afterwards, I took a cab to my new apartment and met Lauren, my roommate from Tufts University in Boston. She's very cool, which is great considering that we'll be living together for the next two and a half months. We both wanna do the same stuff for the summer, which involves checking out the local gyms, local night life, activities, beaches and of course, the Seattle social scene, whatever that may be. And we were both terrified for our first day. It's a good thing we like each other 'cause now I have someone to go places with. Yay!

My apartment is absolutely amazing. It really is like a hotel. Lauren and I each have our own room and connecting bathroom. We share the living room, dining area and kitchen. The maid (yes, there is a maid... or two) comes once every two weeks to vacuum, dust, change the linens and towels and do some other cleaning related stuff. When I first got here, the linens weren't set up and there were no pillows. One phone call and ten minutes later... poof! Cute guy walks through the door complete with linens and fluffy pillows. He even made the bed, which is extremely cool. First time a guy makes the bed for me instead of the other way around. I was bowled over by the whole apartment. The scenery is gorgeous, there's trees all around, the pool is right behind the apartment.. it was perfect. The only thing I wasn't too crazy about was the fact that it's 15 minutes drive from my office by freeway. And that's where the car comes in.

After orientation today, I had to go to downtown Bellevue to pick up my car. Making the trip downtown was not easy, I wanted to take the bus but missed the right one, there were a lot of conflicting directions and I ended up having to take a cab. So a trip that was originally supposed to cost only $1.50 ended up costing $16 (no reimbursement for this one... darn). I was not a happy camper and was starting to doubt whether or not it was really worth the $360 I'm spending per month for a car. When I got there, I was ready to be told "your car is not ready, you have to wait 30 minutes". Luckily enough, it was ready.... and the car made the trip all worthwhile. It's a white convertible Ford Mustang and is quite possibly the nicest car I've ever driven in my whole life. My jaw just dropped when I saw the black soft top, I had to double check to make sure they gave me directions to the right car, it was insane. No wonder the Avis lady said "Lucky you, you're getting a really nice car." I was happy... until I realized I was stuck in downtown Bellevue with no directions to go back home to Redmond because I didn't have time to MapQuest anything. Lucky enough, I remember the freeway that I needed to get onto, and somehow managed to not get hopelessly lost and got home safely. Of course, it does help when your apartment complex is right off the freeway.

My mentor for the summer is really nice, and I'm looking forward to doing actual work and really applying myself. All these benefits the company gave us are really, really great motivations to an intern :) . I'm just excited, right now I feel like the luckiest person in the world.