James-as you may have seen on Facebook-was accepted to The Wharton School-an excellent business school at the University of Pennsylvania!! He is an awesome guy. We're both grateful he got in and relieved to finally know where we're moving!! With GMAT, applications, interviews, and lots of waiting, the whole process has taken two years. And now it's official: we're moving to Philly in two and a half months! Crazy go nuts.
Speaking of Philly...earlier this month that same awesome guy James and I took a trip to Philly for Wharton's "Welcome Weekend." I've been excited for the new adventure of moving to the -apparently Philly is on the east coast?? I definitely hadn't looked at a US map in some time because I did not picture it so close to NY, DC, and Boston! Driving into the city from the airport made me swallow hard. We're trading in mountains for smoke stacks? No way Jose.
A simple (and gigantic) cheesesteak changed my mind.
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| Ribeye steak, hot cherry pepper relish, fried onions, pepperjack cheese, siracha aioli. I really shouldn't be writing about this while still fasting... |
The cheesesteak's name was 'Effin' Hot Steak, and I loved him. Plus also I loved those sweet potato waffle fries. So yeah, first intro to Philly food was a success.
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| I look like a hunchback in this picture. LOOK AT THE FOOD! |
....plus a brand new temple and the feel of the city (which reminds me of a small-scale Buenos Aires or New York) and all the nice people we met and seeing James so giddy to go back to school also changed my mind. Philly is going to be super.
Our weekend there was awesome. The weather was perfect, so naturally I will assume Philly always has perfect weather. Won't that be nice? Anyway, our schedules were packed and separate. James hung with the students while I hung with the "partners" of the students. We were pampered with breakfast and lunch each morning, vouchers for coffee (or hot chocolate if you're a kid...or a Mormon), we had a housing panel, housing fair, career panel, couples panel, small group dinner with current students at a Korean fusion restaurant, receptions with sushi, lobster/mac n cheese balls, and wine (or coke if you're a kid....or a Mormon). We met some way nice LDS couples and had a great time at church in what seemed to be not only a diverse ward/branch, but a ward/branch full of young couples in school who we can befrand...or they can befrand us.
We checked out some housing in Center City (where nearly all the students live) and can't wait to flush twice as much rent money down the toilet as we do now. False. We can wait for that.
I guess we thought an apartment would fall out of the sky for us because we didn't really schedule in time for house hunting on our quick weekend visit and we don't plan on going back until we're moving there. So wish us luck on that one!
I should have taken more pictures but we're moving there and when we do I'll take plenty. Here is a picture of James and I going to work out after eating those cheesesteaks:
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| As you can imagine, this was pre-workout. We did not look that good 20 min later. That's right, the cheesesteaks only let us work out for 20 min. |
Here is a picture of one of the two giant cookies James bought at the airport after I left my iPad (among other things) in a Philadelphia bus station, broke my rolling suitcase, and we found out our flight was delayed. The cookie was too crunchy and disappointing, so James promptly went to the next restaurant over and bought two massive brownies. I guess drowning your sorrows in dessert works because the next morning I got a call from a guy that had found my iPad and guess what? I got it back this week! (We won't go into the suspicious nature of my case being missing and the time and background being changed, and this guy being logged into my Facebook. Well, I guess I just did go into it, but bottom line: he sent back my iPad).
Here's a picture coming into Salt Lake City. We will greatly miss Utah and the mountains and everyone here. But come visit us in Philly, because as everyone always tells us "Philly is so close to some really cool cities." So apparently Philly's not a really cool city, but if you come we'll eat a cheesesteak and then go to New York!
