Meetings of the future.

Salut!

I am currently in Beaverton, Oregon and would like to share some of my feelings about this place, and my work.

1. It is my opinion that Oregon has the most roses of any place ever. There are so many roses, they put them  along the HIGHWAYS. There is a thing called the Rose Festival which I just missed. Sadness. There are also roses at the house I'm staying at! Unsad now.

2. Everywhere I am smells good. The house smells good, the bathroom at work smells good, the food my host family cooks for me smells awesome, my dresser drawers have these little spice-filled things that make them smell good and the path that I go running on smells like nature! mmm...

3. People at work are pretty nerdy, and a bit awkward. Everyone at work gets a 4-letter username, which is some pretty random combination of the letters in their name (mine is legc...) and yesterday I met someone named Kyle whose username is kyle and he introduced himself as the person who receives all of the emails to anyone named Kyle in the company. An equally nerdy introduction (in my opinion) would have been that he was Kyle, pronounced like the C compiler Keil which we use at work. I think that guy lives in the office, he won some prize for most debugging of the week...which brings me to:

4. I went to the best meeting ever today. Everyone in the department (~30 people) wanders in causally, gets pizza and then people get awarded gift-cards for the most bug fixes over the weekend. There is a raffle for everyone who fixed at least one bug over the weekend. Then we leave. That was the meeting. WHAT THE WHAT?? I think these software people know whats up--I'd like to think that they are on the cutting edge of meetings.

5. The local strawberries here are amazing. I can't even describe them. I think I almost vaulted over the cube wall when I tasted one that my super-nice coworker Wen gave me. Wen is the best. There is a thing called the Oregon Berry Festival which I will be going to. There is also a Blues Festival the weekend after the 4th of July. Oregon has a lot of festivals--hooray!

6. My project is slow so far, but I like this place. I did not bring a camera but if I can find a way to take pictures I will get one of the garden here and the antique train that a neighbor of ours has. And of my friend Yoshi the Japanese exchange student who's nickname at the house I'm staying at is "Number 4" because he is the fourth Yoshihiro to have stayed at this house since they started taking boarders. He works out every day and eats tons of this protein powder stuff. It looks like dust--bleh!

Miss you all,
Lizi