MVM: Wayland

I had promised myself that I was going to blog more since Alexa and Abi are busy seeing the sites in Europe and I’m doing pretty much nothing, but let’s face it: I’ve never been a very reliable blogger.
Anyway, you may or may not know that my hometown, Madison, WI holds a Brat Fest every year over Memorial Day weekend; this fest almost always sets the world record for brats sold (beating their record from the previous year). They also offer veggie brats, so I can join in on all the excitement too! I was looking at the schedule for this year’s fest, and realized that a band I recently discovered and quite like is going to be performing! I figured I should look at a little more of their music before seeing them live, and in doing so I found out that a lot of their songs are in Spanish (unless there is a Spanish band with the same name, which is probable – this Wayland is from MI, so it seems unlikely that they have an almost entirely Spanish album)! Even if they are different, I like both. I figured I’d share one of their Spanish songs with all of you, but couldn’t find a video for one, so here’s one of their songs in English (as I’ve mentioned, they are probably two separate bands, I couldn’t find out online, but I’ll still share an English song):

Note: I found the Spanish songs on Spotify (an awesome app that everyone should have), so if you’d like to hear one (and you should), you can download Spotify

-Maddy

Update: I found one site that makes me believe they may actually be the same band after all, but I’m still not sure about anything… hopefully I’ll figure it out when I see them live!

Snapshot Summary

WE’RE IN EUROPE! Here’s where we’ve been so far:

Ireland – Cliffs of Moher

London

Madrid

We’re having a blast so far and can’t wait to give you guys a rundown of everything we’ve done!

-Abi & Alexa

Commence EuroTrip2013!

Tomorrow Alexa and I will be heading to the airport to begin our Euro trip! Truth be told, it still doesn’t feel real, even with our bags packed (rather, still in the process of packing) but we’re beyond excited to see what Europe has in store.

We’ll do our best to give updates along the way but you all can look forward to details of our adventures when we get back in a few weeks!

-Abi

Life Announcement: Moving South

It’s been a whirlwind semester.

Actually, it’s been a pretty crazy month, mostly.

No, I’ll be honest… this past week has been ridiculous.

It’s finals week, which is all fine and dandy. On top of all the projects and huge papers (hey, 15-page honors psych paper… Who signed me up for that?), I was given my location options for my job. Oh, wait. I never actually told you about the job offer I accepted? Huh. Here’s a hint.

If only the offer had come in this form.

You’re reading words written by a future sales rep for the Hershey Company. As I’ve been telling people who know of my addiction, my lifetime dedication to chocolate is finally paying off! Literally.

So back to location options.

I had been telling all of my (many, many) Hershey interviewers that I really wanted to stay in Pittsburgh for these first couple of years after college. I kept my fingers crossed, but I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. Imagine a map of the United States that was used as a dartboard on a Saturday night at a dive bar in a college town, and you pretty much have what my options looked like. ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE. I had some thinking and narrowing down to do. Welcome to the past week of my life.

This brings me to the next announcement because I figured it out! Come June, I’ll be moving to…

Can’t tell? Hold on. I’ll zoom out.

Yes, that’s Texas. I am not only a future employed person but also a future San Antonian. My mom ventured around Texas in her 20s, so I guess it’s my turn, huh?!

Even so, I have close to no idea what I’m getting into, so if anyone knows people in the area or has suggestions of where to live, what to do, how to not look like a totally clueless out-of-towner, etc., I would much appreciate it.

Also, come visit me!

- Alexa

Dressed in Drab

We’re graduating!!! Well, technically not until Saturday, but we headed out to all the landmarks around campus to get pictures yesterday. Two hours and 300 pictures later, we had some useable pictures and a little too much fun taking them.

I think I can speak for us both when I say we found some of the most amazing friends these past four years and have been able to share so many fun times with them. We’re going to all be spread out across the country in a few weeks, but travel plans are already in the works for us to meet up soon!

Congrats to our fellow 2013 grads!

-Abi

* “drab” is the name of that hideous brown/tan color we are forced to wear on our hoods. Makes for a good title though

Summer in “the zoo” Part II

I covered most of the exciting Kalamazoo happenings in the first post, but there was one outing with way too many cute pictures to fit in with everything else – a trip to the actual zoo! On the day we went it was over 100 degrees and sunny, so many animals were just laying under a tree panting, but I still managed some cute pics.

Yeah, that’s how I felt about the temperature too.

 

Those giraffe tongues are long and slimy!

Eaton must like gophers

Apparently, Eaton supports the zoo – that’s a plus in my book. Now I figured I would tell you a little bit about what I did, hopefully stopping before I bore you to death. Technically, I was a supply chain intern in the purchasing section of Eaton’s vehicle group. What I actually did was learn a whole lot about a program called SharePoint and struggled to figure out how I was going to change the fundamentals about how people store and search for shared files – I’m now a near SharePoint expert and my boss did teach me quite a bit about both purchasing and economics, but I’ll admit that the internship wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.

- Maddy

 

Quote For Thought #3

-Abi

This Will Be the Summer of…

This summer will be the beginning of a new chapter in our lives (cheesy, but true), so what better way to start than to make a list of things we hope to work on over the next few months? It’s served us well in the past, and we’re currently clinging to any shred of familiarity as things start getting crazy/ending/changing/being terrifying, so here goes…

Abi’s

1. Travel – You lot already know about the Euro trip we have planned for May, and luckily I have a few other places I hope to visit this summer. First off, my roomie Cara is getting married in June, so I’ll be spending a long weekend outside Philadelphia as a bridesmaid in her wedding! It will be a nice little catch-up with some college friends after we graduate. Also, I’m crossing my fingers I’ll be able visit a brand new city – my road-trip buddy, Kristin, is interning in Boston this summer!

2. Take up skateboarding – This one came out of the blue, but I recently had the urge to skateboard and I have no idea why. My brother left his old one in the basement so why not take a whack at it, right? This could go two ways: it will become my new mode of transport (once I can stay on it for more than 10 feet) or I will forget about it next week. Either way, skateboarding is pretty sweet.

Leo vs The Skateboard

3. Learn guitar – Or maybe the ukulele (which, on second thought, would actually require me to have a ukulele), but I just feel like learning a new instrument. I tried to learn guitar a few years ago but, yeah, that didn’t last for too long. I guess if this fails then piano and violin will have to be enough.

4. Keep up with the exercise – After playing sports in high school, I kind of fell off the exercising bandwagon …until this year! Cara and I joined a cycling class this past fall and that has kind of evolved into us going to the gym about 3 days a week, which was required so we could actually keep up with cycling 20 miles each class. I don’t know what we expected exactly, but man was that first class a wake-up call. Now, with a wedding I’m required to look good for, and a 3-week long walking adventure across Europe, I have the motivation to stick with my routine. As long as I find an exercise buddy this summer (heyyyyy, Alexa) then keeping it up should be a piece of cake.

Alexa’s

1. Figure myself out – My first goal, above all things at the moment, is to figure out what I want to do and where I want to be. Pretty important details, huh? College is all about finding yourself and whatnot (I did some of that), but then SURPRISE! 4 years isn’t a long time. I have a few options, which I’m thankful for, but I’ve officially caught commitmentphobia. Why is college making me leave? Honestly, my biggest hope is that I get to stay in Pittsburgh a while because I’ve realized I don’t actually know it that well. Which leads me to…

2. Roam - As mentioned 13508123 times, WE’RE GOING TO EUROPE! So, yeah, that’ll be cool. I still don’t actually believe it, but I’m sure I will once we land in Dublin. I kind of want this goal to be an addition to the rest of my life, though. No matter where I am, I want to approach life as a tourist. If I get so lucky to stay in the ‘burgh for another couple of years, I plan on exploring every nook and cranny that I passed over while trying to not be poor and get decent grades. If I end up somewhere else, then I really will be a tourist for a while, and that will make achieving this mindset that much easier.

This weekend’s exploring: Our own campus!

3. Enjoy the down time… Or eliminate it - The biggest plus I’ve heard about not being in school anymore is that your time spent not working is truly your own. There’s no lingering guilt that you should be squeezing in some extra hours studying or, god forbid, getting a jump start on a paper. It seems like these days, I do everything I can to avoid that feeling by doing the complete opposite of anything even academically related, but I think I’m soon going to need some hobbies. I want to get back into playing volleyball again in some form, like I did all through junior high and high school. Do you have any other suggestions? Am I a budding amateur tattoo artist, perhaps?

Professional orchard skipper. Yeah. I can do that.

4. Whip Abi into shape – I just like her #4, and I like not being fat, so I’m going to go with that. I’ve always hated running, but I’ve also never tried hard enough to get much better at it. Maybe this is my summer.

5. Get better at appreciating music - As you may have noticed, my MVM posts have fallen off the map (thanks for picking up some slack, chicas). I suck at finding and/or listening to new music. Exhibit A: I’m pretty sure the majority of what plays on my iPod is exactly the same as what I listened to while we were in Argentina – great for reliving memories; bad for being super hip and current. Well, also bad because no one I listened to in Argentina would be doing a show around here anytime soon. Again, any suggestions? This is a serious cry for help! I may start losing friends if I play “Danza Kuduro” one more time.

How about YOU? Any exciting plans for the summer? Let us know!

-Abi & Alexa