Notes from Northern California

My has it been a busy month, and not just for the typical December reasons!  Can you believe that Christmas is only a week away? I have many updates to share but I'll start with our quick trip out to California at the end of last week.  It was short but totally wonderful.

Leo was very helpful packing me up

My interview at Berkeley was on Friday morning so we flew out early Thursday to get ourselves situated and on schedule. We got in early in the afternoon, picked up our rental car, made the mandatory stop at In-N-Out Burger and then headed to Greg's aunt and uncle's house.  We spent the late afternoon and evening catching up with the family, which was the perfect way to unwind before my big morning.

Mmmmm

The day of my interview we got up very early, which is luckily really easy coming from East to West, got all polished up and headed into the city.  Greg's company has an office in downtown San Francisco, so I dropped him off there for the day before heading over the Bay Bridge to Berkeley.  I arrived more than 2 hours before my interview and found a killer parking space a block away from the Haas School, which kind of felt like destiny in that moment.  After triumphantly parallel parking, I popped down to a little coffee shop right by campus that Greg's dad, who got his master's at Berkeley, had recommended to finish up my interview prep.  It was a gray, drizzly day but sitting on Caffe Strada's heated, covered patio alternating between people watching and preparations was exactly what I needed to calm my nerves before heading to my interview.

California golden bears outside the Haas School of Business

As far as the interview itself, I think it actually went really well.  I connected with my interviewer right away, so any remaining nerves quickly subsided.  Her questions also allowed me to talk about exactly what I wanted to talk about, which is a somewhat rare thing in an interview from my experience.  It is always hard to know exactly where you stand, but I left feeling good and more excited than ever about the idea of going to school there.  Based on a few of my interviewer's recommendations, I spent the next few hours bopping around Berkeley.  I walked through the beautiful center of campus and then headed down Telegraph Ave, which is filled with shops and restaurants and was having a Christmas street fair the day I was there.  That is where I discovered the little beauty pictured below. I kept seeing people walk by with ice cream sandwiches and knew I must have one.  A couple blocks later I found the source: C.R.E.A.M. You get to pick your own cookies (which come out of a warm oven) and flavor of ice cream and it is total bliss.  I went with snickerdoodles and salted caramel ice cream and I'm kind of still thinking about it...

Helloooo there!

A few hours of shopping later, I drove back across the bridge to grab Greg from work and head to dinner.  One of his coworkers recommended Salt House and we were lucky to score two seats at the cozy little bar. The drinks and food were creative and delicious and the atmosphere was bustling and festive - in other words, the perfect place for a low-key Friday date.  It was so fun to share updates from both our days in a brand new city and imagine what it might be like if that dream became a reality.  February 1st can't come soon enough!

Isn't it a lovely little glowing space?

The rest of the weekend was very low key compared with Friday's adventures and consisted primarily of relaxed drinks and quality time with Greg's extended family.  We returned very late on Sunday night to an enthusiastic greeting from Mr. Leonidas and got ready to start the last full business week of 2012.

One final bit of news to close out this post - I got accepted to the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business yesterday so one way or another, this girl is getting an MBA! Fingers are still crossed on Berkeley and UT Austin, but I breathed an enormous sigh of relief when I opened that email yesterday morning.   I hope all your weeks are off to great start as well!