2017 Microsoft Explorer Internship — Week 3

Charlotte McGinn
Jul 26, 2017 · 8 min read

Lots of eventful stuff happened this week, so this is a lengthy one. Enjoy!


Week 3: Vancouver Trip, Fourth of July, Boat Party and Intern Warehouse Party

This week was kicked off with a lit weekend in Vancouver! We wanted to make the trip up this particular weekend because of Canada Day, and especially since it was the celebration of Canada’s 150th year. On Friday after work, two cars of us headed up to Vancouver. I was the later car because I had stuff to do at work in the afternoon, so only Susan and I were on the car on the way up there. I got to know Susan a lot better over this drive and we talked about things ranging from our Operating Systems class to boy talk (lol). The drive wasn’t too long, taking about 3 hours, and surprisingly the border only took about 10 minutes to cross. While I’ve been to Canada many times, this was my first time going to Vancouver, so it was a pretty exciting experience!

crossing the border to the Motherland!

We met up with the rest of the crew (Juliet, Caroline, Nina, and Uma) at a Ramen restaurant and exchanged some cash at a Canadian bank. They were amused by the colorful plastic Canadian money and talked about how much nicer it is than USD. After we went to our hostel (we stayed at the Triumf House near the University of British Columbia) and retired for the night in preparation for our long Canada day.

Saturday! We took the bus to Downtown Vancouver to spend the day celebrating Canada. We started off the day in Canada Place, where many of the festivities were, and got some free Canada swag and hit up the food trucks. The Olympic Torch was also lit in celebration which was definitely a sight to be seen!

ladies in Vancouver! (Caroline, me, Uma, Nina, Susan, and Juliet)
massive crowds in Canada Place!
wouldn’t have been a trip to Canada without some poutine!
the Olympic Torch!

After walking around and grabbing some lunch, Juliet and I picked up some Canadian flags to drape over us, and of course had to take a couple photos with them.

Honorary Canadian Sister! (Juliet and me)

One of the benefits of going to Canada is that the drinking age is only 19, so we were able to go to a pool party at Drai’s Vancouver and get some legal drinks! However, they turned out to be pretty pricey so we only ended up buying one (I tried their signature hard lemonade). There was an older guy swimming in the pool amongst a bunch of us younger peeps which was pretty strange, but later we figured out that he was probably the owner of the place because some prominent looking people came over to greet him.

drinks on the poolside
enjoying the party! (Uma, me, Susan, Juliet, Nina, and Caroline)

After the pool party we went back to our place at Triumf to get ready to go out that night. We then bussed back to Downtown Vancouver and grabbed some dinner at a pizza place. There, we met two guys about our age, and it turned out that one of them was actually from Westwood (where UCLA is located) and used to work at the California Pizza Kitchen next to campus, which was a pretty funny coincidence. They joined us to go check out the fireworks at Coal Harbour shortly after, but took off to get better shots of the fireworks.

heading out to see the fireworks
fireworks!

After the fireworks we hit up Portside Pub and spent the night there meeting some Vancouver locals along with other travelers visiting the city and dancing on the dance floor!

ready for the bars!

The next morning, we checked out of our hostel and went to Belgard Kitchen for some brunch. I had Salmon Gravlax Hash (pictured below) with a Mimosa, and it was rather delicious! The restaurant itself is sort of a little hole-in-the-wall, from the outside we weren’t even sure if we were at the right place because the area around it was a bit run down. The inside, however, was very nice, with rustic wooden walls and tables and barrels of freshly brewed beer lining the wall. I was very impressed with the scenery of this place to say the least.

photo courtesy of Juliet (Instagram: @notwilburbrunch)
photo courtesy of Juliet
photo courtesy of Juliet

We spent the rest of our afternoon shopping in the city, looking at some sights, and of course grabbing a bite to eat at Tim Horton’s. After that, we headed back to Redmond just in time to get ready for work the next day.

Some of us had to work on Monday despite Fourth of July being on the Tuesday. It was also Juliet’s birthday, so we went out to Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot to celebrate! It was my first time trying hot pot and it was an interesting experience; for those of you who have never gone before, essentially there is hot soup in a pot in the middle of the table that you cook meat, vegetables, and sea food in, and then fish out with a ladle and eat. They also brought out a plate of mochi ice cream and sang Happy Birthday!

Mongolian Hot Pot!

Later that night we had our first “Internstellar Adventure” where a bunch of us hung out at my place and watched Interstellar. I’m not going into much more detail on that other than the quote of the night was “did it hit?”

Tuesday was Fourth of July so we celebrated by going to a park next to Lake Sammamish to enjoy the outdoors and watch some fireworks. César bought a tent to shield the pale people from the sun, but there was a lot of shade from the trees so it turned out to be okay. We didn’t plan this event super thoroughly and shortly realized that we were pretty hungry for some dinner, so Antonio and I ordered pizza, sent it to a nearby residence, and went to pick it up.

some of the squad!

There were lots of different firework shows going on at Lake Sammamish shooting off from different docks, so it was like we had a bunch of mini firework shows instead of one big one. Allison brought some sparklers and we were able to get some cool shots (courtesy of Tessa) with long exposure photography. Can you tell that we are Microsoft Interns yet? ;)

Long exposure photography with sparklers!

As we were driving back from Lake Sammamish, a cop car pulled up behind us and turned his lights on. I was literally just driving normally on the street and figured it was probably something minor like a taillight was out, so I started to pull over and he turned his lights off. I thought that was weird, and it didn’t seem like he was stopping, so I started driving again and he turned his lights back on. This time I was like okay, this is actually me and pulled over to a stop and waited for him to come over and talk to us. He was in his car for a couple minutes and we started to get more worried because we had no idea what was going on, but eventually he comes over to the passenger’s side and tells us that he wasn’t pulling us over, but rather blocking off the road so people wouldn’t drive on it to catch drunk drivers. That was a relief!

The rest of the week was pretty standard without anything too eventful going on until Friday. Microsoft has Intern Boat Parties several times throughout the internship where we basically take a yacht out and tour around the water over dinner and a dance floor. Each party has a different theme, and this one was themed “Dress to Impress”, so I wore one of my new dresses that I got in Vancouver. I went with Caroline, Antonio, and Danica, and we strategized to hang out downstairs close to the food so that we could get first dibs (people still tried to cut in front of us, but luckily there was plenty to go around). We also checked out the view and sunset on deck, which was really nice but also really cold (if you go, I suggest bringing at least a cardigan!). We also danced on the dance floor for a bit which was pretty fun, especially when we started hitting some waves and the boat was moving up and down.

view from the boat!
me, Caroline, Antonio, and Danica!

The party never stops! After the boat party, we headed over to the first Intern Warehouse Party (not affiliated with Microsoft) which is a party thrown by a few interns for all interns in the Puget Sound area. I saw a lot of my Microsoft friends there and even my UCLA friend Shashank, who works for Amazon! All in all, a long, but very fun night.

Thanks for reading! :)

Charlotte McGinn

Written by

Computer Science and Engineering Student @UCLA | Software Engineering Intern @Amazon | www.charlottemcginn.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade