You guys, I still cannot believe how lucky I got to go back here (at least for the time being). I love this city! Still makes me smile all the time when I think about how much I wanted to come back and now I really am here. Scary enough though if I don’t get this visa (hello lottery) I’ll go back home in 6 months! I can’t believe half of the year is almost gone! I should know within a month or two what the deal is.
So one of the things I love about Charlotte is how green it is. I had kind of forgotten all about that because it was winter when I got here and last summer had this big drought so nature was more yellow/brownish. But the grass and the trees are green now and I even saw some goslings the other day. Yay!
Last night I went out with my neighbor Ash and my friends Luca and Tasha and we ran into Joeran who is visiting from China. There is a free outdoor concert every Thursday at the Wachovia Plaza during spring and summer (Alive After 5). And nice enough we can take the lightrail there and back since it’s over at 9pm (5-9). The weather was gorgeous with 24C most of the day. Surprisingly I did get quite tipsy last night from just one beer and one glass of wine. Hmmm! we finished the night off with some pizza at Fuel and then I was home at 10 but kind of drunk and soooo tired the next day! Uarg!
Oh and wow, there have been 15000 visits to this site in the 15 months that I’ve had this blog! Wow! Congrats to the person from Frankfurt surfing with Firefox and IESY Hessen provider. Yay! Thanks for stopping by here so often guys and giving me so much advice on my life and sharing in my joy and sorrow! You mean so much to me! 🙂
In other news, I booked a flight to Savannah for Memorial Day weekend with my frequent flyer miles (not sure how I got so many but cool) and will hang out on Hilton Head Island with Richard then. Yay! I can’t wait to travel and hang out at the beach! I really am missing travelling sooo much!
My parents will also be travelling pretty soon, as they will visit me here with my sister for a week in August. Yay! I’m really kind of bummed that it’s only a week and they had to schedule it in the week before the biggest trade show of the year for me but hopefully I can take almost all days off and spend LOADS of time with them. 🙂
Coupons!
OK so I don’t know what made me do this today but I googled “coupon lowes” because I was going to buy some plants there (Lowes is a home improvement store). Normally when you google anything with coupons you get to these weird sign up pages and loads of scary looking stuff. But today I came along this and they had a link that without hassles brought me to the Lowes website where I could print a 10$ off coupon that I totally just used. I also got a 10% off World Market foods coupon and I’m sure there’s so much more, I just had to leave work ;-). So yes, got my 10$ off coupon and bought some herbs to replace my turf herbs that looked dead (I guess they were dead…) and a plant for me and a plant for Yung and Axel whose house warming party is tomorrow.
Hope you’re all having a great weekend and hopefully the US based readers among you will get some good use out of that coupon site.
Cheers!
Bullet Posts
I figure it’s about time I do a regular update about what I’ve been up to in addition to those secret posts so here goes:
– Two weeks ago I was really bored on Sunday and so my buddy Markus dragged me along to some women’s wrestling movie set where we were spectators for Diva Mania’s World Championship. Yeehaw. We had a blast screaming and yelling and it sure did feel very rednecky. Watch the press conference here.
– The USCIS has selected all the visa petitions that get to apply for the H1B work visa and we should hear back from them by June 2nd.
– I went to the gym a couple of times. I suck badly at running so I wanted to go back on the cross trainer. Accidentally though I got on something like crossramp, which was very strange and made me feel like a complete idiot. Stayed on that thing though because I am so intimidated by other gym goers and the machines that I try to create as little attention as possible. *blush*
– Saturday I got up at the crak of dawn to go the monthly Intro to Yoga class at the gym at 8:30. That was interesting. Not sure if I can get into that but it felt like a good stretching for my body. Thankfully normal classes are at normal hours. 😉
– This weekend when I got out of the shower and looked into the mirror I actually saw me resembling my grandma who passed away last summer. That was an intense feeling. I’ve seen likenesses to my maternal grandparents and to my dad in photos of me or when I look in the mirror but I never really thought, oh yeah that looks like Oma Auguste. So that was nice. And then I realized I don’t think I know what my paternal grandpa looks like as I’ve never really seen many photos. So who knows what of him I have in me. Hmpf! 🙁
– The weather has been getting nicer so I got to sit outside on my steps or at the cafe or on my friend’s balcony and enjoy the outdoors. Of course the weekends were usually somewhat icky though. 🙁
– I got to drive up to High Point near Winston-Salem last week to visit my company’s sister company. It was a gorgeous day and the highways were really pretty with loads of green and loads of blossoming trees. Got to eat lunch outside at Micky D’s and I noticed how nice southerners are once you leave Charlotte. Now, they are nice in Charlotte, too, but there are so many transplants from the north and it’s a city that it’s really not that typical American friendly anymore. Nice to get out for a few hours and drive a nice car (as they deemed the golf not safe enough to go 1.5 hours on the highway (oops, surprised that we made it to Charleston and back ;-)).
– Did all the usual social activities like Massimo’s birthday party at Press, a nice new winebar uptown and then dancing at HOM and then sharing a taxi home with Chadi’s brother who tried to make a move on me (ewwww gross) but failed of course. A few dinners out, like Ru Sans with Birgit yesterday, a nice band, U Phonics, and good food this Friday at Ally Cat and the usual hanging out and coffe events, like Caribou with Daniele yesterday.
Visa Crap
So the time frame where you could hand in your visa application is over (and my application is there – at least I hope so). So far so good. But they’ve already received way more than the 20000 available visas for American MBA holders. Alas, there’s going to be a lottery that determines who gets one. Then if you’re not a lucky winner *rolls eyes* you get thrown into the pot of other applications, which I’m guessing is probably at almost half a million applications (think last year 133000 received in first two days and this time everybody knew you only had the first 5 days to hand your application in), for the 65000 available visas. Oh fun…. 🙁 Bloody hell….