From School To Home To Work
Posted January 25, 2009
The following is the "to make a long story short" version of how I got from Waterloo, Ontario to Santa Clara, California, from school at the University of Waterloo to home for Christmas to my fourth co-op term(internship), this time working for Nvidia.
The story starts at Grebel, which I left around 11am Saturday, December 20th with my good friend Karl. I went to his house for bit before heading to the airport at 8pm (my flight had been delayed due to the snowstorms). I finally left the ground around 11:30pm on a flight that was supposed to have left at 5:45pm. Needless to say, I got into Calgary around 1:30am, missing my connection to Regina by about 3 hours. Thankfully, my airline got me a hotel for the night, which I finally got to around 4am. My flight out of Calgary the next day got delayed two or three times and finally left around midnight. On the way down, I started feeling quite sick and my limbs felt all tingly and froze up, which was quite the nerve wracking experience for me. I arrived in Regina sometime before 3am, where my dad met me and started the 1 hour drive home. Unfortunately, I was still feeling quite sick and ended up throwing up on the side of the TransCanada highway around 3 in the morning in -37 degree Celsius weather (one experience I'll never forget)!
I spent about five days at home during the Christmas break, two of them feeling sick and never once leaving the house. We left the day after Boxing Day (December 26th) to start the road trip down to California. On the second day, our van started acting up so we exited the highway to try and figure out what was wrong. My dad didn't find much and it was a Sunday, so we weren't too hopeful that a shop would be open, but God provided a Firestone just down the road that took the van and fixed it up. We lost a day in the process, but my dad was able to share the Gospel with the man managing the hotel we stayed in, so God had a plan even in that. We arrived in Santa Clara on Tuesday, December 30th and looked at two apartments that afternoon. That same night, I filled out an application for one which we then handed in the next morning at 8am and was processed by 11am. Even now, I am amazed at how God provided the apartment so quickly for me. After opening a bank account and making the initial payment for the apartment, we headed down to Fresno to visit my dad's family.
After a really good time of seeing family that some of us hadn't seen in five years, we came back to Santa Clara and then my dad, brother, and sister headed back to Saskatchewan. My mom stuck around for about two and half weeks to help me settle in and we both saw how God continued to provide greatly for me. A convenient bus route, subsidized lunches at work, a great Bible study group and church as well as great people who would help me out if I needed it are just a few of the things that God has provided. So there it is, my "short" story of the transition trip(s) from Waterloo to Santa Clara, from school to home to work.