Te Quiero, España
Before I get into my amazing weekend in Valencia, let me just wrap up my business trip discussion. So aside from everything working perfectly fine, everyone being so nice, and me being pumped to speak in English, I feel like this trip honestly helped me to learn about not only TJX, but also a lot of general logistics things. As I probably mentioned in my last post (who knows, really, I feel like that was a year ago), I got the chance to sit down with a bunch of logistics departments that I didn't even know existed. From distribution finance to our three freight forwarders to inbound allocation, I learned literally SO much. Next semester I'll be taking two final supply chain management requirements, one of them being transportation. Sooooo I have a feeling I'm going to ace that class.....
Besides meeting with a bunch of different departments internally, I was also able to go to the UK headquarters of the freight forwarder I work with in the international team, APL Logistics, which was right in London. Again, I was freaking out about the logistics of this, BUT EVERYTHING WENT FINE!!!! This trip honestly solidified that fact that I need to massively calm down. Like, in life in general. While I was at APLL I was able to get a better grasp their side of the business, what they do for us, and fully understand why we complete certain tasks for them on a daily basis. It was super cool to see their side of things, and wonderful to meet the women I email with every day. Both of our main contacts in BVS International, Marta and Malwina, were very welcoming, informative, and took me out for a yummy lunch at one of their favorite places 😋
We wrapped up around 2:30 PM, and since I had nothing else planned work-wise, I spent the rest of the day in London! Aka one of my favorite cities! I visited London and did all of the touristy things with one of my friends last semester, so I had already gotten the big things out of the way (London Eye, London Bridge, Trafalgar Square, Harrod's [the true love of my life], etc etc). But, truthfully London is MASSIVE and there are endless things you can do there. I knew I wanted to go back to the British Museum, which is a gigantic museum filled with ancient artifacts, art, you name it. Also, I looked on the app TodayTix (download it now, totally worth it), and got some cheap tickets for that night to see An American in Paris. In between those two activities, I obviously had to squeeze in a trip to TK Maxx, where I obviously had to buy some stuff.
Here's some photographic evidence of my London trip:
A truly wonderful trip.
Followed immediately by another one!
The taxi picked me up at the office in Watford and drove me (an hour and a half 😑) to Gatwick Airport where I was off to Valencia to meet up with some family. I've been to Spain before-- in high school I did a two week exchange program with a girl from Cordoba, Spain; I stayed with her family for two weeks and traveled all around Andalucia (and Madrid), and she stayed with my family in Connecticut and honestly I have no clue what she did. My friends and I had an amazing time in Spain traveling to all these beautiful places, but I truly can't think of what they did while they were in Connecticut. They def got the short end of the straw there...
Anyways, I had already been to Valenica, I speak (lol) (more like understand at this point) Spanish, and Spain is definitely one of my favorite countries. That trip in high school was one of the main factors that drove me to choose international business as my major, and Northeastern as my university because of the year long expatriate experience in the BSIB program. Also, fun fact, I was initially on the Spanish track and was going to go to Spain for a year (or Mexico), but I ended up switching to German because NEU had told me that I couldn't take Spanish classes until the year before I went abroad because I had scored so high on the placement exam. I figured I was going to lose so much of my Spanish in those two years that I might as well switch tracks. SO voila, German.
Anyways, I flew in, dropped my stuff off at the hotel, and set out to meet the fam. My cousin Nathanial (the one from my Paris trip in March) is doing the UGA equivalent of a Dialogue in Sevilla, and the rest of his immediate family came to visit him/Spain for the week. So naturally I tagged along. Night one involved mostly just food:
Oh, and me remembering why I love this country so much (I seriously couldn't stop smiling on the cab ride from the airport to the hotel):
And then it started pouring. And thundering. Soooooo we tried to go to the beach, but then decided to ditch that for some lunch. After lunch (another paella. yum.) we went back to the beach, where I proceeded to take a beach nap (the best kind of nap, in my humble opinion), and enjoy the on-and-off sun.
After a quick shower, the fam took me on an abridged version of the tour they had gone on the day prior, and we got some gelato and dinner, in that order. I love vacation.
Besides meeting with a bunch of different departments internally, I was also able to go to the UK headquarters of the freight forwarder I work with in the international team, APL Logistics, which was right in London. Again, I was freaking out about the logistics of this, BUT EVERYTHING WENT FINE!!!! This trip honestly solidified that fact that I need to massively calm down. Like, in life in general. While I was at APLL I was able to get a better grasp their side of the business, what they do for us, and fully understand why we complete certain tasks for them on a daily basis. It was super cool to see their side of things, and wonderful to meet the women I email with every day. Both of our main contacts in BVS International, Marta and Malwina, were very welcoming, informative, and took me out for a yummy lunch at one of their favorite places 😋
We wrapped up around 2:30 PM, and since I had nothing else planned work-wise, I spent the rest of the day in London! Aka one of my favorite cities! I visited London and did all of the touristy things with one of my friends last semester, so I had already gotten the big things out of the way (London Eye, London Bridge, Trafalgar Square, Harrod's [the true love of my life], etc etc). But, truthfully London is MASSIVE and there are endless things you can do there. I knew I wanted to go back to the British Museum, which is a gigantic museum filled with ancient artifacts, art, you name it. Also, I looked on the app TodayTix (download it now, totally worth it), and got some cheap tickets for that night to see An American in Paris. In between those two activities, I obviously had to squeeze in a trip to TK Maxx, where I obviously had to buy some stuff.
Here's some photographic evidence of my London trip:
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| The outside of the British Museum |
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| Only adding this bc that was a REALLY good scone. |
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| Honestly how could I not love this museum. |
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| At An American in Paris! |
A truly wonderful trip.
Followed immediately by another one!
The taxi picked me up at the office in Watford and drove me (an hour and a half 😑) to Gatwick Airport where I was off to Valencia to meet up with some family. I've been to Spain before-- in high school I did a two week exchange program with a girl from Cordoba, Spain; I stayed with her family for two weeks and traveled all around Andalucia (and Madrid), and she stayed with my family in Connecticut and honestly I have no clue what she did. My friends and I had an amazing time in Spain traveling to all these beautiful places, but I truly can't think of what they did while they were in Connecticut. They def got the short end of the straw there...
Anyways, I had already been to Valenica, I speak (lol) (more like understand at this point) Spanish, and Spain is definitely one of my favorite countries. That trip in high school was one of the main factors that drove me to choose international business as my major, and Northeastern as my university because of the year long expatriate experience in the BSIB program. Also, fun fact, I was initially on the Spanish track and was going to go to Spain for a year (or Mexico), but I ended up switching to German because NEU had told me that I couldn't take Spanish classes until the year before I went abroad because I had scored so high on the placement exam. I figured I was going to lose so much of my Spanish in those two years that I might as well switch tracks. SO voila, German.
Anyways, I flew in, dropped my stuff off at the hotel, and set out to meet the fam. My cousin Nathanial (the one from my Paris trip in March) is doing the UGA equivalent of a Dialogue in Sevilla, and the rest of his immediate family came to visit him/Spain for the week. So naturally I tagged along. Night one involved mostly just food:
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| Paella Valenciana (with rabbit and chicken) |
Day two (Saturday) started out with [first off, a BOMB hotel breakfast 😎] an overcast sky and some skeptical navigation of the Metro, but we all made it to our catamaran cruise that included swimming in the Mediterranean!!! (So apparently I only have pictures of myself from this, my b)
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| It cleared up for, like, basically only the time it took to take this picture |
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| Post-swim, mid-photobomb |
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| HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THIS PLACE |
I am weeping this place is so beautiful.
On Sunday, we went to the Fallas Museum first, which is a museum dedicated to pieces of winning satirical floats from an annual parade. The winning float is voted on that night, a piece is taken from it for the museum, and all the other hundreds of floats are burned there and then. Yes, really.
The themes on some of these were a bit difficult to decipher (and there were no descriptions) (and most things were written in Catalan, which I didn't even know was spoken in that area), but I guess figuring it out for yourself was part of the fun. And WOW were these things intricate and impressive.
Afterwards we went to Gulliver's park, where the whole playground was in the shape of Gulliver's body from Gulliver's Travels, and you could climb up and slide down in various parts. Super cool, slightly dangerous in sandals lol.
We then walked around the area a bit, which included the aquarium, and various other museums. None of which we actually went inside of, but honestly the outside was probably just as nice (okay, not really, but you'll get it after seeing the pics):
So yeah, that was Valencia. I feel like I'm overusing the words wonderful and amazing but like....they fit. Thankfully after my week or so of traveling, I had Monday off (another holiday) and I just relaxed at home. A week from today is also a holiday, and next weekend I have nothing planned and MAN am I looking forward to it. But first, gotta go check out that avocado restaurant in Amsterdam. I'll letcha know how it is.
OH ALSO, a GIGANTIC thank you to my aunt and uncle for letting me tag along this weekend!! It was fantastic to catch up in such a phenomenal city (I found some more adjectives 😎).
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