One week down

The first week of school was great. Just wanted to leave a quick update. I'm excited for my classes. Right now they are just getting going so there is a lot of review material, which has been good for me. There are some things I just didn't grasp as well as I should have and this is giving me the opportunity to make sure I really understand it. The classes move fast though and new material is coming up so I hope I can keep on top of everything. I love interacting with the people in my program and I like the direction and vision the teachers have. The program is great. I love going to school...hopefully it stays that way :)

Besides school starting we have been trying to finish taking care of all the small things with moving, like registering our car. Unfortunately this hasn't gone so smoothly. I don't know if it is just Pennsylvania or any state, but registering our car has been a nightmare. We had to get Pennsylvania Insurance, then go and get our Pennsylvania drivers license, get inspections etc... Getting our drivers licenes was a nightmare also because Sharon at one point had a PA license, so they wanted to see it and since it had her maiden name on it we had to come back with our marriage license to show why/how her name had changed. It was crazy.
After getting our PA insurance lined up, they said they couldn't register us because it didn't start until the 1st of September(a whole 3 days away). On top of that because the car was 'gifted' to us less than 6 months ago they want us to make sure we've paid some sort of taxes on the car so we have to pay a sales tax of 7% of 80% of the blue book value of the car. What a joke. Any way we hope to have it all taken care of, inspections, insucrance, licesnes and all by the end of this week. This has been the most frustrating thing for us. We've been back and forth from our house and offices all week, valuable time when you could be getting other things done.

We made a visit this weekend to Del and Mary Lou, Sharon's parents in Marietta, PA about 3 1/2 hours from us this week. It was fun seeing them. We carpooled with them down to the DC Temple for a session Saturday. That evening we had dinner with Sharon's old High School friend and her husband, then headed back to Pittsburgh.

We are starting to make friends at church. We discovered a family that lives on our same street, just a few houses down. He is going to dental school at PITT. They have three little girls. They invited us to dinner tonight. We also have a church picnic tomorrow for Labor Day that we are looking forward to.

Sharon starts work this week. She will be helping in the classroom for a non-for-profit pre-school/daycare called interplay. They work on integrating children with diablilities with other children. It should be fun. She is working on all the paperwork and screenings for that, like finger printing, FBI background check, etc.

We hope you all have a great week.

Pittsburgh

We've now been in Pittsburgh for a week and our little apartment is coming together. We’ve been learning a lot with our first big move and have been experiencing a lot of growth. We got the internet up and running and I have time to sit down before classes start tomorrow to update our blog. Here are some pictures from the summer. Some of Sharon's sisters family, who we stayed with in Washington and some of the fun activities they took us along on, as well as some pictures of the famous Pike's place market.


Sharon got here last week with my family and we piled the boxes in our living room and slept on the floor. It was fun to have my mom, dad, and littlest (but by no means smallest) brother McKay here for a couple of days. We appreciate the help and support we got from them. Monday I gave them the grand tour of campus, which was fun, but probably not the most exciting. We then went down the road and saw some of the University of Pittsburgh and showed them the Cathedral of learning and checked out some of the museums and other buildings. While I was at a meeting they went and checked out the botanical gardens just behind campus, which they reported was pretty cool. You can see pictures that my mom posted here.

Tuesday my family took off for Amish country and Indianapolis and we started to unpack. Things are definitely coming together. We made a couple trips to IKEA and found some nice, relatively, cheap solutions for furniture that should get us through the next couple of years. I have some pictures of how the apartment is starting to look, but pictures never do much justice.
Before:

After:



We only have a few minor things to take care of now. A mattress, a possible couch cover, some curtains, and I'm going to try and build some shelves for food storage in a little closet by the kitchen.

School starts tomorrow. I’m excited. Orientation was fun. They did a good job at giving us time and information to get settled in before the load of classes falls on us, which I think will help. Orientation involved everything from a scavenger hunt all around Pittsburgh to some tests to see if we qualified to exempt any of the core classes. I partially exempted the database class, so I have some open credits for an extra class. I was hoping to exempt a few other classes, but I guess I wasn’t up to the Carnegie Mellon standard. It’s bitter sweet. It will be sweet to solidify my knowledge of the subjects I was hoping to exempt in classes that will be really good, but it’s bitter because I could have opened up some credit hours to take some classes in other areas.

Sharon has been busy since we’ve been here as well. Besides doing most of the house organizing she has been interviewing at a couple of places for a job. She recently had two second interviews with good results. One place, only a mile from our house, said they would love her help. It’s a non-for-profit daycare/pre-school called interplay. She would be helping in the classroom. The other interview was out in Columbus, Ohio. It is a political action and research group, non-partisan. Unfortunately they don’t have anything fulltime in Pittsburgh, only a couple part-time things with the elections coming up. She doesn’t know for sure what she’s going to do yet, but has to decide soon because they are waiting to hear back from her.

Career paths have been a subject we’ve been discussing a lot between ourselves lately. It’s hard to know where choices of employment will lead and how to choose employment that will take you where you want to go. We would love to hear people’s thoughts on this. Feel free to post something, or email us.

I’m hoping to keep up the blog; it might be back to once a month with classes starting. If you need our new mailing address you can email us. For security and privacy reasons I'm not going to post it.

We love you all and hope all well for you.

Coast to Coast...again.

Well, I finish my internship for the summer. It was a wonderful experience, and I feel that I have some good experience under my belt. Many have asked if I could see myself with the company I interned with or working for some other Big Accounting firm. After reflecting I have decided that I could do this kind of work, but not for a long time. I found it interesting to be in different companies and to talk with management in those companies to understand the way their systems worked. It was exciting. That said, I don’t see myself with an accounting firm for more than 5 or 6 years. Why not? I don’t have much of a desire to be a Partner. Accounting firms main business is Auditing, although there is some ‘advisory’ or consulting work too, I’m not interested in the core of what an accounting firm does. 5 years would give me two years of being at the bottom of the chain doing grunt work, understanding all the ins and outs of IT auditing and understanding business processes. Then three years in a position where I could actually start getting experience managing a team, being part of planning, resource allotment, and building relationships with the firm and within the team. The firms are good about keeping their employees qualified with certifications and other education that would also be advantageous for continued career development. It seems to me that at the five year mark people stay because they want to be a partner or keep moving up the chain, something that doesn’t really interest me.

I don’t think audit is my true passion. I have come up with this analogy and it seems to work well for the current time. Auditing to me, perhaps not to others, is like rappelling. It is interesting and fairly engaging. The focus isn’t so much on moving forward as much as it is on sitting back and looking at what is going on around. There is vision and insight of what one would have to climb or has climbed. My passion and what I eventually want to be involved with as a career will be more like climbing. As much fun and as useful as rappelling can be, I personally feel more fulfilled and challenged climbing. I want to be involved in the dirty work and challenge of building something. Having to trouble shoot and come up with solutions. I want a job where at the end I can look up and see I’ve gotten somewhere and feel like I have overcome, accomplished something significant, and fixed a problem or made the world better. Talking with my brother-in-law and visiting Microsoft, I realized that being involved in software development is defiantly one way I feel that; auditing, not as much.

I had strong reviews, and the firm was prepared to offer me job for next September, however, changes in plans and switching schools means I will not be back in Seattle anytime soon, so they could not formally offer me the job. There is still a chance I could work for them wherever we end up, possibly the UK. I do hope to one day end up in Seattle though.

The day after finishing we were in the car on our way back to Park City; we have had such good luck with our car that we should have foreseen trouble on this trip. It started out a couple hours after we started and I got pulled over in Yakima. I was going 73 in a 60 zone, the lame thing is that it was about to turn to 70 L. I learned my lesson. A couple hours later we were about to gain some good elevation up a big hill so we stopped for our first fill up of the day and to switch drivers. As Sharon started the car up and put it into gear the car barely moved, it was like the gear just wouldn’t engage. Pushing on the gas just made the RPMs go way up. Even switching gears didn’t seem to help. With some patients the car eventually got going. We stopped and looked up the closest mechanic which took us back a couple of miles down the highway. By the time we got there it seemed to be working again. He said the clutch might just be slipping or the clutch needed replacing. He also said that if we made it over the big 7 mile hill we would probably be fine the rest of the way. We proceeded much slower and took the hill easily and cruising the rest of the way without any clutch problems. However, as we were rolling past Twin Falls and looking for a place to fill up, we suddenly heard a crazy sound like starching, banging and rattling all at the same time. It came from the back and under the car. We pulled over immediately. Sharon jumped out of the car and started looking around frantically. It sounded like the side of the car had fallen off or something, but she didn’t see anything wrong. We slowly started up again and after a couple of seconds it started again, only worse. We pulled over and again inspected the outside of the car, and below the car, starting to get worried. Again nothing seemed wrong. We started up again and the sound started again almost immediately. Sharon once again hopped out and as I slowly started driving she observed to see if anything fishy was going on with the car. We found it. The treed on our tire was starting to come off. A big flap with wires and all was flopping around and banging the inside of the wheel well. Lucky for us we were about ¾ of mile from the off ramp to the gas station. We pulled in slowly and a nice man with a garage for trucks helped us throw the spare on. He sent us up the road another 30 miles to the Mal-Mart in Burley. They were still open and not too busy so they got us in and out quickly. After that we didn’t have any problems. The next day at the shop it was determined that the clutch was slipping and all it needed was adjusting. We also had the Air Conditioner looked at, but they couldn’t fix it because it is the old rayon kind of coolant, so we are content to keep using the natural ‘windows down’ kind of air conditioner. With everything that happened we feel the lord was really looking after us and are happy most everything is working well now.

The next morning after arriving in Park City I jumped on a plane with as many bags as we could justify paying for (2) and headed to Pittsburgh. It really is amazing how things just seem to happen and work out. As I was on my way to the airport I got a call from Sharon’s sister. She and her husband, who are on their way to Africa for a few weeks to do research, were in Pittsburgh. They picked me up at the airport, took me to dinner with their extended family, dropped me off at our apartment, and took me to the grocery store. I’m so thankful for good family and charitable people. It was so nice to have some familiar faces the first day in a new town and some help. The alternatives I had planned on would have been much messier and hectic.

I have been doing all the fun orientation stuff the last few days. I made a quick calculation and I think that about 50% of my program is from India, about 20% from China, Taiwan, and Japan, maybe 20% from Europe, Africa, and South America, and I think there are only 10% of us from the US. I’ve only officially meet three, but I’ve seen some others that I feel confident are from the US as well. Today was my first day at church; the ward seems like a good one. There are a lot of couples with small children. Sharon, my parents, and McKay should be getting here tonight! Exciting. Good news is there have been no major car problems on this leg of the trip. I think the stereo might have stopped working because of a fuse, and apparently we might have a bad spark plug, but it hasn’t affected anything too much.

Pittsburgh has been great so far. It was stormy the night I got in, but the rest of the time has been sunny and very nice. I thought it was going to be really hot and humid, but so far it’s been fairly cool and I haven’t noticed the humidity. The sun has been out and everything has been beautiful. As I’ve had time to finally sit down and relax and think as well as reflect on the past couple of weeks and especially last three days at school, I am really excited and I feel deep down that this is the right move for Sharon and me. We appreciate everyone’s love and support.
Thanks for everything everyone has done for us the past few months. We love you all. Keep us updated on life.

Mid-Summer thoughts.

I have the time to update! This will be the first time I get two updates in one Month; this is a major mile marker for me. We'll see if I can keep it up. The last two weeks haven't been super eventful.

Work

I finally got to do some real work on a client project. After a week and a half of training I was able to finally see what people in a big 4 firm do. The fact that they are willing to train us is nice, and it has given us all a good foundation for understanding the firm we are working at, but it's nice to be doing; instead of just sitting and listening. The project I was on didn't have the ordinary kind of work for us so I still don't have a solid idea of what a 'typical' engagement is like, but this coming week I'm on a new client that we do more traditional work for and I should get the feel.

After one week of being on a client, we (the interns) were off to more training in San Francisco, but it was a gathering of all the professionals in the specific division we are interning with, so it was much larger in scale but more focused as far as the scope of the subjects being trained. Again, we had our special intern training, but lots of time to meet and network within the practice. My impressions and feelings so far are still in the middle. I think it would be a great place to get some great experience, but there are still some things I have reservations about. One being 4 weeks in and I've only had one week of actual work, with the rest being training and such. It's hard to form a solid opinion without the experiences. Hopefully the next two weeks will be more typical of the everyday life.

Life

Sharon and her family are all in Iowa this week for a family reunion. I'm sad I didn't get to go out with them. It's been a long week being away from her and I can't wait for her to get back to Seattle next weekend. Before she left we went on our mega date of the summer. It was really fun. We went to the Seattle temple in the early afternoon and then headed into town. We ate downtown at the cheesecake factory then took a stroll through the Pike's Place Market as things were closing up. The main event was the 'Cirque de la Symphonie' put on by the Seattle symphony for their 'summer festival' with the guest performers being jugglers, contortionist, strong men, aerial specialist, and a 'cube specialist'. It was really fun and cool. We could hardly believe our eyes when one man did a one-handed hand stand while another man did another one-handed hand stand on his neck. Here is their website. Go to their gallery and you can see the 'strong men' doing handstands on each other. I couldn't copy the pictures, so you'll have to do some digging yourselves. If they are ever in your area it is definitely worth seeing.

So, I still love Seattle. I can't speak for Sharon, but whenever we talk about it we agree we like this area. Coming home from the long week in San Francisco I felt good returning here and while reflecting on it, I found myself thinking it is a place I would love to 'come home' to and in a sense it already feels that way. With that said we are gearing up to move to Pittsburgh for the next year and a half. Hopefully we fall into place as easily as we did here. We wish you all the best. Cheers.

Washington Days

Well, this update comes from the beautiful city of Duvall 30 miles east of Seattle. We’ve now been here for about three weeks and we love it! We were able to get here on a Sunday evening leaving two days for us to settle in before we got to business. We took a day to get familiar with the area we are staying and a day to go into Seattle and get acquainted with the city.
The Durant Family
We are staying with Sharon’s sister, her husband, and their five boys. I will refer to them as the Durant Family. We were in Chile with them at the time I was offered the internship and they kindly offered to let us stay at their home for the 2 months of the internship. We have enjoyed staying with them and appreciate their generosity. Mr. Durant works at Microsoft which has lead to some good insight and conversation as well as many opportunities to meet and network with other people who work there. I was actually lucky enough to get a whole tour of the Microsoft campus and shadow him for a day. It was really exciting and fun.
Seattle
We figured the bus system out. There is one bus that runs in the mornings and evenings that starts a couple minutes from the Durant home and goes right down town about a block from work. The only possible ‘con’ to the situation is that it takes anywhere between an hour to an hour and a half to get there. If I drove I could probably cut that time in half, but then I would have to deal with some insane traffic at the times I would be commuting, paying parking fees around $35.00/day, not to mention gas. It is pro for me because I am able to finally get some reading in. We stopped by the ‘famous’ Seattle library. It is an amazing glass building right down town. It is actually where I get on and off the bus so I signed up for a visitor pass and can check books in and out and read them on my commute.
Some other fun things we did were, bought a bus pass and some tickets to get into town at the transit center and then walked up to the Space needle just to check it out. We didn’t go up it, or into the EMP (Experience Music Project), but we now know where they are. On our way there we stopped by the Symphony hall and were lucky to catch the noon tour that took us into the hall while they were practicing and we got to hear them play for about ten minutes. Unfortunately they were practicing for their final show that weekend. They do have some cool jazz things lined up for the summer, I don’t know if we’ll make it into any of them.
We also explored where Sharon will be working. She isn’t that far from where I work, she is just down closer to the docks. We were happy to meet the people at the organization she will be working with and get a better idea of what she will be helping with. It sounds like she will be helping them organize grant information an important part of any NGO.
Basically we love Seattle.
4th of July
The 4th of July was fun. I didn’t have to go into to work so we loaded up the car and went with the Durant Family out to Ephrata to spend the day with Mr. Durant’s roommate from college and his family. He runs a big bee business. We got to go out to the bee hives and see how the whole operation is run. It is a fun and interesting business. They recently learned that their honey is what is being used in the new Haagen-Dazs honey flavored ice-cream. It’s a little on the pricey side, but I highly recommend it for anyone interested. It was a good excursion because we got to see the central/east part of Washington and meet some of the good people that live there, they were every bit as nice and accommodating as those we’ve meet in Seattle.
Check back soon because I will be adding pictures

Transitions

My sister threatened me that if I didn't update our blog I was going to be removed from her favorites list. Hopefully this comes soon enough to avoid being taken off the only favorite list we are probably on.

Camping
Being graduated and finishing up some projects at work I finally had time to do fun things with Sharon on the weekends. Since we are leaving the beautiful mountains and desert of Utah we spent most of our weekends in May camping. My brother and his friend Angie went camping with us up Spanish Fork Canyon in Diamond Fork. It was a chili night, but fun. We treated ourselves to pancakes the next morning. yummm.



I guess the next week wasn't really camping, but we were up in the mountains. We volunteered at the Hugh O'Brian Youth leadership conference (HOBY) for Juniors in High School held at Aspen Grove at Sundance. We had a lot of fun with our group of about 10 kids. Each group had a color to represent them and we were assigned Black, which lead to an association with Pirates. Over the course of a couple days the kids went through various leadership exercises, activities, and a series of panel discussions. The most interesting for me was the religion and political panel.



We then spent a weekend in Zion National Park with some friends from high school, Gabe, his friend Johanna, Keith, Emily, and Dave. We did the traditional hikes like Angels Landing, the Weeping Wall, the Emerald Pools, and the bottom of the Narrows. Unfortunately the water was flowing high and fast and the park prohibited us from going to far. The trip was a success. The only casualty was the rearview mirror in the car. We came back from hiking and found it dangling in the car. It wasn't just the mirror that came off, it brought a little chunk of glass with it too. My guess is that the glass heated differently in the sun and it caused the glass to fracture. Gorilla glue did the trick gluing it all back together.



To end our marathon of camping we spend Memorial Day weekend in the church's 'Camp Zerahemla' in Morgan, Ut. My youngest brother McKay was doing his eagle project. We scraped, sanded, and re-painted 40 picnic benches. It was a good time and we were happy to get all the work done that he had planned.

Leaving Provo

After doing some math we decided that it wasn't worth sticking around in Provo past the end of May, for financial reasons. It was a fairly sudden change in plans so we put together a fun Ice Cream party to see all of our friends one last time before we left. Thanks to everyone who came! It was a good turn out and we were able to see and catch up with most of our friends in the area. We were sad to leave all the people we love in Provo. It is a different experience moving away from something that has become so familiar. I guess it's a lot like the mission. We are excited for what the future holds.
Park City

Since leaving we've taken refuge at my parents house. We are grateful for their hospitality. Since coming up we have been able to get out and enjoy the blooming mountains. It's been really nice. In the process we've been getting out to run every morning, which feels good. I have also been able to get out on some good bike rides with my youngest brother. It's also been enjoyable to have some time with my second to youngest brother who just graduated form High School and is getting ready to move to college and preparing to serve a mission for our church, meaning it might be awhile before we see him again. I've attached some of the beautiful flowers we've seen while hiking.


Cross Country
We took a week to fly out to Niagara Falls, NY to see Sharon's sister Joan and her family and to pick up an old car they were getting rid of. Thanks again Joan & Ruben. After spending the weekend with them doing fun things like going to a drive in( my first time ever!), seeing the Niagara Falls, and getting familiar with town, we started our drive across the country.

The first day we went from Niagara to Iowa City, IA with a couple hours detour to Pittsburgh, PA. In Pittsburgh we looked at apartments and found one we liked! Yahoooo. It's nice to know we have a place to live. All we have left is figuring out how and when we are going to get there. After the apartment hunt we tried to straighten out the title on the car and insurance, but meet with a lot of red tape. We hopped back in the car that afternoon a little frustrated and continued our drive through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and part of Iowa.
We were lucky to beat some of the storms and flooding. The only rain we saw that day was a little in Pennsylvania.
We pulled into Iowa City, IA at 2 am and were recieved by Lynne and Brian another one of Sharon's sisters and her husband. They let us stay there a day and rest up a little. I really enjoyed Iowa City. It was a nice town. We got to walk through an old Mormon hand cart camp.
We woke up early again the next day and started the rest of our trip through Iowa. After a brief stop to visit with my cousin Josh in Des Moines we pushed through some rain and never saw more after that. We were lucky to miss all the major storms, flooding, and tornadoes in the Iowa, Nebraska area. Thanks to everyone for letting us stop and say hi and the updates on weather as we made our way through that part of the country. We made it back to Park City before mid-night. The car held up great and the drive really didn't seem that bad. We were in a '93 civic. It is in good condition for being 15 years old and having some 230,000 miles on it. We got about 35 miles to the gallon across the country. It only cost us roughly $225 (the average gas price for us was $3.95/ gal) to drive across the country where our one way plane tickets for two, which we bought months ago, were about $360.
Since we've been back we've been working the car. We got it all cleaned up, fixed a few things, got it inspected, and today, as soon as I'm done with this post we should have it all registered and the title transfered.



I know this was a long update, but I've been a slacker and haven't posted as regularly as I would like. Hopefully the next one will come sooner. We should be in Seattle by then :)

Graduation and Beyond

The last two weeks have been eventful. Life happens fast sometimes and you just get to enjoy the ride. Here is the update on the events of the last two weeks.
Graduation!
Sharon finished her classes in December, but didn't do any of the graduation stuff because she was in Brazil. She decided to put off walking until Spring so we could walk together. With finals behind me on Monday I was able to rest and relax for a few days before the big graduation ceremonies. Thursday, April 24th , was the commencement ceremony for all graduates at BYU. As we walked from our house to the Administration building we were surprised to find it snowing. First time I've seen it snowing that late in the spring in Provo.
After a long march, or procession, into the Marriott Center we heard from various speakers. A student graduating in accounting recounting the many things he had learned while at BYU that would help him and us have success in the 'real world'. After that the keynote speaker was Elder David A. Bednar. The main focus of his talk was centered around the BYU motto of 'Enter to Learn; go forth to Server'. His main point was that while at the University we should learn to love learning. He suggested that the motto for BYU, if there were unlimited space, should be 'enter to learn to love learning and to serve; go forth to continue learning and serving'. We were happy we decided to participate in the ceremony.



Friday, April 25th, were our separate convocation ceremonies. Sharon walked with the Anthropology department at 8:00 am and received her 'diploma' from the professor she went to Namibia with, Dr. Crandall. It's always nice to be congratulated by those you've worked closely with. I walked later that afternoon around 2:00 pm. The ceremony was fun for me too. I sat with two good friends from my program so it made it extra fun and special.
We then packed up and went up to Park City to celebrate with my family our graduation as well as my brother McKay and my Dad's Birthday.

Pittsburgh, PA
Monday morning we drove down to the airport and hopped on a plane headed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The purpose of our voyage was to evaluate the city and schools there to see if we would be comfortable and happy making the move. It was a fun experience. We rode the public transportation the first day to get a feel for how well we would be able to get around. There was a bus that went straight from the Airport, through downtown, past all the Universities including Duquesne & University of Pittsburgh (PITT), and ended at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). It was a colder than normal day, overcast and damp, not the best conditions for a great first impression. As we explored campus I found myself noticing people smoking on campus and run down buildings. However, after exploring the buildings more my perspective changed to admiration as I noticed the character they had from so many years of use and how great their architecture was. We also got to the newer buildings, which were also very beautiful.
Tuesday we woke rested and to a much more beautiful day, which helped get a different perspective on the city. We returned to campus (CMU), and I meet with my student host, Salahaldin Hussein from Palestine. Sharon & I went with him to a Business Intelligence class offered at the Tepper School of Business. The classroom environment really sold me. There were maybe 25 people in the class. Of those 25 a max of 4 or 5 were white Americans and few other African-Americans. The diversity was great. There were people from India, the Middle East, Asia, and I believe some European or Eastern European. The discussion in class was centered around a case on the Sysco Corporation and their strategy for implementing technology and whether or not they should give the go on a new project. I thought it was interesting. I even participated a little. After that I meet with the Director of the Information Systems Program and had a great conversation, followed by some informative meetings with career services, financial aid, and admissions directors and assistant directors. They were all helpful and answered many questions as well as gave great advice from succeeding in school to what and where to look for housing.
Sharon's parents made the trip across Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh so during my meetings and a little after they walked around campus with us. We then faced some construction traffic on our way back to our Days Inn and had an enjoyable evening visiting and eating out.


Wednesday we were back in town at University of Pittsburgh(PITT) for Sharon. She has been looking at their Anthropology and International Development programs and had lined up to meet with a few people. Again, very informative. I highly suggest meeting and discussing in person programs of interest. It is so much more enlightening and informative than emails and websites. We then took a few hours to explore PITT's campus. You can't really tell you are on campus because it's just part of the city, kind of like NYU. However, there is one building called the Cathedral of Learning that you can't miss. It's a huge tower built in an old Gothic Cathedral style. We went in and checked out the architecture and a few of the rooms that they made into 'theme rooms' to reflect different cultures in the Pittsburgh community. I recommend visiting it to anyone. After lunch we were on our way back to the airport and back to life.

Beyond
So, the verdict is in. We've officially decided to make the move to Pittsburgh to pursue my Masters degree of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon, whether or not Sharon gets her degree at a University in Pittsburgh is still in question, but we are now looking into employment options, such as at an NGO. I have to say I feel really good about it. Of course I have the usual reservations and questions anyone has when it comes to moving and change in life, but deep down I know it's right. I'm excited for a change of pace from Provo. I'm look forward to making new friendships and networking with new people from around the country and the globe. I appreciate the experience and education I've gotten from BYU, but I'm eager to experience the difference. From our visit CMU seems very progressive, dare I say 'liberal' compared to BYU, which will be a fun contrast, as well as the, in my opinion, much more diverse environment. I also feel that CMU will open a lot of doors for Sharon and I in the long run. It's nice to have a decision made and be working out the finer details now. We have been in touch with the two wards that cover that part of the city and have had great responses to questions and help offered in finding housing. You have to love the almost immediate network and consistency the church provides when facing change.

So for the next month we are in Provo, then we will be in Seattle, WA for seven weeks, then we will be on our way out to Pittsburgh, PA.

We hope you've enjoyed the update. If you know of anyone who might want an update on our lives feel free to pass on the link to this blog. We also love to hear your comments and feedback, don't be shy about leaving a quick comment or two.