Let's go to Canadia, eh?

So we may or may not have spontaneously decided to go to Canada just for the sake of going to a new country and using my new passport. We're probably living as close to Canada as we ever will be, so we figured, what the heck? So we went to Montreal.
Even though we knew that they speak French in Montreal, we didn't really realize how French it would be. I don't know any French, and even though Adam took a couple classes in high school, he can only remember a couple phrases. But we thought, hey, it's Canada, they'll all speak English right? Well, we thought wrong. Even the border guy barely spoke English, and we couldn't understand half of what he said. The next morning our hotel's breakfast was in their restaurant, and our waitress didn't really speak English either, so that was pretty interesting. Plus it wasn't quite as easy to navigate as we'd thought. We're so used to using Adam's phone for internet everywhere we go, but guess what? No service in Canada. Oops. Guess that's what we get for being spontaneous!We still got to see some pretty cool stuff though. We went to the Notre Dame Basilica, which was gorgeous. It was so big and ornate, and a lot cooler than the little English churches we've gone into in Boston.
Another thing that's really cool about Montreal is they have this underground city. You go down into the subway system, and there's a ton of interconnected shopping malls and food courts that are all down there. And the cool part is that each section is designed by a different person, so they were all decorated differently, and a lot of them had chandeliers and things. It was really interesting.
Another thing about their subway system, other than obviously being a little cleaner and nicer than some others, is that the trains run on rubber wheels, not metal tracks.
We went to Chinatown, and it really was like stepping into another country. It's shaped in a square, and each side of it has a little entrance gate. Once you walk in, everything is in Chinese. Some stores had signs in French too, but those didn't do us much good either lol. It's not really a cool place to go shopping or anything like that though, unless you're looking for weird Chinese food. It's really just where all the Chinese people live. But it was definitely very ethnically different and fun to walk through.
We saw this sign on our way out. I'm pretty sure that sign says Ray Lamontagne...ok ok it says Rue de la Montagne, but close enough right? I mean Adam loves the guy enough that I can play along.
Yay for visiting new countries! It was only a short visit this time, but next time we go to a new one, I think we'll be a little more prepared :)

Maine Lobster and Dead Authors

We decided to take a little drive up to Maine, eat some fresh lobster, and see what there was to see. Turns out there's not much north of Massachusetts. First we went to Portsmouth, NH, which was a pretty cute little town. There's a bunch of cute little shops, and it definitely has that old-town New England feel. Plus, they had a kitchen store where Adam FINALLY got the grapefruit knife he has always wanted. You just can't keep a boy away from his grapefruit...
Next we headed up to Portland, Maine; where we found none other than the Polar Express! I always thought that was in like, the North Pole, or only came around on Christmas Eve or something. But, apparently, it's in Portland. Who knew? Anyway, it was just this random train that you could pay ten bucks to ride like, a quarter of a mile on, so we just walked through it to check it out. There wasn't a whole lot in the area, so after exploring for a bit we headed on down to York, Maine.
We found a cute lighthouse and a great shore. Adam and Taylor got a kick out finding creatures and going as far out to the water as they could. I really enjoyed the view. It was a nice day, and the sun looked so great shining out from behind the clouds. It was just beautiful! It would be a great place to come stay for a couple weeks in the summer and just play on the beach.For dinner we went to a local lobster place and I got...drumroll please...lobster nuggets. If you know me, then you know that lobster + batter + deep fried = perfect! Man, those things were deelicious. And now, I can officially say that I've eaten real, fresh Maine lobster in Maine. Woot woot!
Our next adventure led us to Lexington and Concord (said: conquered; I know, Massholes haven't ever heard of phonetics). We figured we should probably some of the sites that are so close to us and we've grown up learning about.We went to Minuteman Park and the bridge that's famous for "the shot heard 'round the world." Mostly, it was just a statue and a bridge in the middle of a field. At least it was pretty though!
After driving around the town a little bit and drooling over all the houses we wished we could have, we drove to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where they have a hill full of dead authors. Notably: Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, and Hawthorne. It sounds a little strange, but cemeteries are actually a tourist attraction around here. I guess when you live in such an old place that comes with a bunch of dead people. Some of the headstones are really cool, like the one above, but most of them look like this.
Then we drove by Walden Pond, which was really gorgeous. I can see why someone would want to write about it. I guess in the summer people go there for canoeing and swimming, but we thought February might be a little early for that...brrr.In Lexington, after driving around and seeing some more fields and statues, we went to the National Heritage Museum. We assumed it would be about the history and things that Lexington is famous for, but mostly it was just Masonic stuff, since the local Freemasons own the museum. It was still interesting though, even it it wasn't what we'd expected.

Fenway Park and the Freedom Trail

I'm pretty sure that as soon as we found out we were moving here, all that Adam could think about was sports. What? Fenway, Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, all so close? So of course we had to take the Fenway Park tour when we went into Boston for the Freedom Trail.Even though I'm not into baseball, it was still a pretty cool tour. It's like 100 years old now, and we got to sit in the old metal chairs (which were teeny tiny!), go up to the booth, and sit on top of the green monster.I thought the Freedom Trail was a little more fun though. Neither of us are really history buffs, but even so, it was enjoyable just to explore Boston and eat some delicious cannoli. Seriously, I cannot get enough of the cannoli from Mike's Pastry. I'm not even a dessert person, but I just can't help myself! A couple weeks ago I convinced Adam that we needed to drive to the North End just for cannoli and a lobster tail. Mmm...lobster tails. What is a lobster tail? Well I'm glad you asked. It's like a giant, crunchy croissant filled with cream and sprinkled with powdered sugar. But the most important detail? The enormousness. It's so much more fun to eat huge food! Plus the powdered sugar gets on everything, yum yum.
We saw a lot of cool historic sites: old cemeteries, churches, and Paul Revere's home, among others. What we most enjoyed was just wandering around the North End, which is the Italian district. It's just an old part of town with a bunch of little, one-way cobblestone streets and houses all smashed together.
From there we walked across the bridge to the Bunker Hill Monument and USS Constitution. The climb to the top of the monument was so much harder than I'd expected! It doesn't look that high from the bottom, but that spiral staircase is a doozy. I started dying about half way up, but I guess I was doing better than the girl I passed who was yelling up at her boyfriend, telling him how much she hated him for making her climb up. LOL. The view from the top though, totally awesome. Probably not something I need to do for at least another ten years though. My legs are still recovering :).The USS Constitution was cool, and the museum would've awesome if we had kids. It was really interactive, and we had a lot of fun playing around and learning how to shoot cannons and stuff. It was the last stop on the tour though, and by the time we got there we were pooped. We found a little movie room and laid down to take a quick nap. If you know Adam, you know he always wants a nap.
We finished off the night with dinner at a little Italian place in the North End, which is known for having some great Italian food. Also notable, I rode the real live subway for the first time. Yep, sure thing, I really did. I know all of you back at home are pretty jealous that you don't have such luxurious public transportation in Utah; I'm sure I'll miss it when we get home.

Mansions, Shopping, and Superbowl Blues

A lot has happened since we posted last. We try to go out and see something new every weekend, and we have been pretty successful.

Our first week we went to visit Cambridge with our friends Josie and Taylor. We got to see the Harvard Natural History Museum and then walk around Harvard Square. It was pretty neat and they had some really cool buildings. We also drove over to the MIT campus. It was a pretty cold day, but really fun. It has been nice to have friends close that know the area and it makes it fun to explore.

I heard at work that there are some really big outlets only 20 miles south of our apartment, so we decided to go check that out one saturday when it was snowing. It was unbelievably cold, this meant that every time we left a store we wanted to get back into one as soon as possible. I am pretty sure went into 75 different stores. It was pretty awesome but by the end of the day we had spent our shopping budget for about the next 10 years. We also got suckered into walking into the Lindt Chocolate store. They had a giant bin full of truffles but the price sign was facing towards the inside of the store. We stepped in to see how much, and POW!!! they got us. The store clerk gave us a truffle to sample and we walked out with a pound.

Another Saturday we made a trip to Rhode Island. First stop was Newport. It was a cute city with some famous mansions and a great ocean drive with a good view of some awesome beach houses, plus a cool rocky shore. We took a tour of "The Breakers," a mansion built by the Vanderbilt family. It was unbelievable. The tour guide pointed out that the ceiling was covered in 24 carat gold leaf, and the chairs in some of the rooms and some paneling was covered in platinum leaf. Next time we go, I am going to bring a ziplock bag and scrape off a few hundred dollars worth. I am sure they wouldn't miss it too much.

On the way home we stopped in Providence. We had heard that they had a cool shopping center. It really big and had a lot of stores and some fun restaurants. We got samples at some places in the food court including an indian restaurant. The next stop of Foxborough, MA. This is where Gillette Stadium is and a week before the superbowl was a good time to be there. It had some great shops and it was really cool to see the stadium. We found out the next day they had a big sending off party. It was really fun to be here for the superbowl. Everyone was so excited. Most of the people I work with came to work decked out in Patriots gear all week. It was quite a contrast to the next week when a lot of people wouldn't even talk. I sure wish they could have won because the parades and parties would have been fun. It was rough to go to work the next day. It really felt like someone had died.

We did watch the game, even though Jenn wasn't near as excited about it as I was, she humored me. About a week before she started planning our "super bowl party" for the two of us. I don't think I have ever seen so much food. We had everything you can imagine and enough for 10 people. It was amazing. However, I don't think I will hear her making fun of her mother for making "too much food" ever again. I am pretty sure that disease is genetic...but I am not complaining that is for sure.

So, You can see from Jenn's posts that our move has been an adventure and that everything has been going pretty well so far. She neglected to mention that Weston helped a lot getting the apartment finished and we had a lot of other people helping us along the way. The trip was great and we have enjoyed the time we have spent in Massachusetts so far and look forward to doing some exploring in the future.

I started work the Monday after we got here. I was introduced to many new people and an industry that I knew almost nothing about. The Dow campus here in Marlborough is an advanced (or specialty) materials site. That means that instead of producing huge quantities of commodity chemicals, usually sold at a low cost and high volumes, we produce a smaller volume of expensive products sold in more of a niche industry. This particular site produces electronics materials used in the Photolithography process in microelectronics fabrication. Most of that made very little sense for to me 2 weeks ago and I still have a long ways to go before I really understand what goes into it.

The team I am working with tests the products we make to ensure they meet the specifications required by the customers (IBM, Samsung, Micron, etc). I get to run tests in the lab and in a fab where I get to wear an awesome bunny suit (as seen above). It takes some getting used to but it is really not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Everyone at work seems really nice and I have learned a lot. There have been a lot of opportunities to get to know my co-workers better and some of them have really taken me under their wings to teach me about the industry.

From the Mississippi to the Atlantic

We drove into Chicago without any real plans, we just thought we'd drive through and see what we could find. As we wandered, we saw a pier and thought that it looked fun, so we just went there. Somehow, after parking, we would up in a stained glass museum. It was a little strange, but it did have some really cool stuff. Then we found some sort of children's festival, that had some little rides and big inflatables, but we liked it for all the Christmas trees. This one was huge! Turned out there wasn't the much else to do on a pier in the winter... who knew? But it did look like it was a pretty hopping place in the summer time.The only bad thing about Chicago was the driving itself. Once you get into the city, the lanes aren't marked on the road anymore so you can't every tell how many lanes there are supposed to be. And the drivers were crazy, not to mention all of the taxi cabs. Let's just say I'm glad it was Adam driving and not me.
That day we drove to a super cute little lake town called Port Clinton, and stayed had a hotel that had a back patio right on Lake Erie. It was so pretty out there! And man those lakes are big. There wasn't much to do in such a small town, but it was definitely one of the more enjoyable places we stayed, plus they had a really good Thai place where we ate dinner. The next day was our most eventful, however, because we were able to stop in Cleveland, Kirtland, and Niagara Falls. The drive was also getting better as we headed east, because we weren't driving through just flat fields and plains anymore, but next to the lake and through bigger cities where there was more to look at. Plus we were getting really into our book, The Lightning Thief, that I was reading to Adam, so that was helpful. In Cleveland we stopped at a museum, and then in Kirtland we went to the temple, the visitors' center and the Newell K. Whitney store. This stop was quite a bit more exciting than Winter Quarters, and had a lot of the original buildings and infrastructure of the town. That factor was especially cool because we got to see places where many church founders actually lived.
That night we made it to Niagara, which was so awesome to see. The only bad part was that we couldn't go over to the Canadian side, because that's where the good view and all the fun stuff is. Our side had one casino and some hotels, mixed with closed-up building, but their side looked like Las Vegas. Adam joked that the Canadian side was like the great and spacious building, just laughing and mocking the pathetic U.S. side. We did get to gamble for the first time though (after convincing them that my driver's license was NOT a fake I.D.) and spend a good amount of time freezing while we looked at the falls. The funniest thing that happened out there was that we walked over to the island so we could see the other falls, and Adam noticed a possum. He was so excited to see his first possum that we had to chase it until it ran into the bushes, so we didn't get a picture of it.
By the last day we didn't have too much of a drive left to get here, and the views were pretty good. Everything turned into wooded hills and lakes, and everything turned so green. I can't wait to see what it all looks like in the spring when things really start to green up again. We finally made it here that afternoon, and have finally gotten everything moved in. We made it!

Repacking, Remodeling, and Sleeping on Strange Beds

As everyone knows by now, Adam and I recently moved to Massachusetts for an internship. When my dad (also known as landlord) found out we were moving, he decided that would be the perfect opportunity to get some re-modeling done on our apartment. As soon as we finished with finals, Adam started tearing down walls and I began packing. Adam ended up tearing out a closet, turning a doorway into a wall, and replacing some ceilings, among other things. I, on the other hand, had to figure out how to fit everything we needed into our car. Normal packing is bad enough, but going through everything and deciding what was important enough to bring with us and small enough to fit into the car was really hard. After I finally got everything separated and packed, we realized that there was no way we could fit it all into the car. Solution? Space Bags! So we sucked everything we could into bags, got rid of a couple more things, and somehow got everything in. It took us until two days before we were leaving to get everything finished, but we got everything done in time. Goodbye three-plex!
Before we knew it we were saying goodbye and heading on our way. After sleeping on air mattresses, and trundles and living in construction zone and my parents' den, we were excited to get to our new apartment. For the time though, all we got was strange hotel rooms. The first day we drove from Mapleton to North Platte, NE. It was definitely a boring drive, but on the way there we went through Vail, CO and it was gorgeous. The ski runs were right next to the freeway, so we could see everyone skiing down the mountains. And all the condos there are huge and amazing. North Platte, on the other hand, not so amazing. There were a bunch of hotels there, but for some reason there were only like five restaurants, and between the time change and getting checked into the hotel, it was eight o' clock by the time we left the hotel for dinner, and all the restaurants were closed, so we had to go through a drive-thru. The one redeeming quality about Nebraska and it's flatness, however, is the great sunrise. The next day we drove to Romeoville, IL, but all we saw was flat fields and windmills. We did stop at Winter Quarters on the way, but it wasn't quite as exciting as we'd hoped. I'm pretty sure we made that poor sister missionary's day though. We were obviously the only ones there, and I don't think they were expecting anybody to stop by. Though it was smaller than expected, it was still nice to have a reminder of our pioneer heritage and what those saints were willing to go through for their the church with only faith and their own testimonies of the gospel. The drive up to that point was pretty nice, but after Romeoville came the fun stuff. Next stop, Chicago!