Preparing for Summer

Ah yes, Naomi and I have finally jumped onto the blogging bandwagon, thanks to numerous hints that we do so from far too many people to count! Thank you all for the gentle reminder!

I suppose that the most interesting point to write about for my life would be the upcoming summer events for our family. In exactly 2 weeks and about 8 hours from the time I post this, I will be on a 747 crossing the Pacific enroute to Beijing, China. I'm doing a Study abroad as part of my Civil Engineering studies, and will spend 2 weeks visiting Beijing, Yichang, Shanghai, and Hong Kong touring and seeing some of the tallest buildings and longest bridges in the world. Some interesting trivia: in Hong Kong, there are more 40+ story building currently under construction than there are 40+ story buildings in all of New York City! Crazy construction going on there. As part of my class, I've been assigned a specific building and bridge to study. My building is a residential highrise located in Kowloon, Hong Kong called "The Arch".

Just to give you a sense of how massive this building is, the LDS church office building (the tallest occupied structure in Utah) could fit inside the hole created by the arch of this building! The units for sale in the building are ultra-luxury, selling for millions apiece!

For the class, I get to study this building in depth. I know how much force is pushing on it from the wind, how much the whole building weighs, how far the top floor will sway in an earthquake, and even what computer program the designers used to optimize the design of the structure.

The bridge I'm studying is called the Runyang bridge, currently the 3rd longest suspension bridge in the world. The main span is just 500 ft shy of a mile. And if you want to truly understand how massive this bridge is, this massive suspension bridge that dwarfs even Verrezano-Narrows in New York is but the southern end of a bridge system that works its way 22 miles across the Yangtze river. 22 miles! It's crazy, and very interesting to learn about.

So for the Study abroad opportunity, I'll be giving a short presentation about this building to the other students in the class, after which we'll be visiting the actual structure. How cool is that? I am beyond excited.

After China, I fly straight from Hong Kong (P.S.: Beijing and Hong Kong - currently the two largest aiports in the world! Everything's huge there!) to Chicago where I will start a summer internship with Burns and McDonnell. I got this opportunity thanks to my brother, Brian, who while living in Chicago was kind enough to mention my name to a friend, who just happened to be the VP of a large Engineering firm currently in search of interns! Woo Hoo! Thanks Brian! We'll actually be taking over Brian and Natalie's residence in Chicago (while they're off in Texas and their summer internship).

Naomi, by the way, is an absolute stud. She is driving with my cousin, Jenni (also stud-worthy), all the way from Provo, UT to Chicago, IL while I'm in China! Talk about a road trip!

Other than preparations for our 3 month leave from Utah, I stay busy! I'm still working full time at UDOT, part time for Naomi's brother Josh on the weekends helping to referee and coach laser-tag games (lately we've been playing 3 games a week or so! Sweet! Check out the company at http://www.uvtag.com/), and or course, I find time to play with my adorable and ever-puking daughter!!

Speaking of my daughter, Brooklyn, I'd add some pictures of her, but Naomi has informed me there's plenty of pictures of her in the slide shows of the blog. So check those out! She's a cutie!

Until Next time!