Probably one of the most exciting and interesting things that has happened to us over the last two years was Jon's opportunity to participate in an internship at Google. It all started when Jon made a joke to our good friend Andrew who has completed two Google internships himself. Jon jokingly said "Hey you need to graduate and get a job at Google so when I graduate you can help me get a job there." Andrew's response was "...why don't you just do an internship?" I'm not sure if Jon had really considered an internship at this point with the whole newly married thing going on but I could definitely see the wheels turning once it was mentioned. So Andrew was kind enough to refer Jon to an employee at Google and after a very stressful technical interview process Jon was selected.
His acceptance into the internship program was completed in March I think so we knew it was coming. We made plans that I would finish my finals early and we'd leave a couple days before the internship began. Our car was packed!!! And I mean packed we were lucky to have enough room in the passenger seat... The sad thing is we thought we packed light too. We headed out to California and since we didn't have a place to stay we planned to spend the first couple of days at my Parents house (which is a couple hours from Google Headquarters).
Jon's internship started May 2nd and we still didn't have a place to live so we just opted to spend the first week of so in a hotel while we looked for a place. So I'd say a lot of the myths about the bay area being really expensive are true. We were lucky to find an apartment with a month to month lease that was less than $1700 a month and if you're used to paying $600 that's a pretty big deal. Jon and I are both extremely frugal so after crunching the numbers and a lot of talking we decided to spend the summer in a hotel and trek up to my parents for the weekends. Google provides breakfast, lunch and dinner so it wasn't that big of a deal for Jon... I probably didn't eat as well as I should have but hey it helped keep my weight in check right? Plus, it was worth it to me to be able to see my parents every weekend and spend some extra time with them...
All in all it was a great opportunity and we were willing to do whatever we had to to make it possible. We lived through it all and we'll always be able to use the "When your Dad and I were broke and living in a hotel..." line. I'm extremely grateful and proud of Jon's hard work while working at Google. It was well worth all the extra stress and hassle of having to move.