Blogs from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, North America - page 11

We took the scenic route into Minneapolis on Friday through the South suburbs to unload my suff into storage, before heading to the hotel. The hotel was very nice, although we thought one Concierge, Kathryn, might be a indentured servant because she was always there working every time we left and came back. However, she finally got the day off on Monday when we decided to stay an extra day to find the perfect apartment as I did not believe I had been thorough enough over the weekend. However, I am getting ahead of myself. After checking into the hotel on Friday afternoon, we had to run buy some black dress shoes for my meeting with my internship advisor at the giant 2-level Target in Downtown (Minneapolis is the Corporate Headquarters and birthplace of Target BTW), ... read more

Ever since she was little, her mother always told her that she shouldn't have been born here. She took it to heart. She never quite fit in. There was never a time where she could defenitly call this place home. It made her sad, often depressed, and lonely. She had friends, but many times the phone never rang after promises of calls. People have their own lives, she understands that, but was it so hard to just call and say hi. Growing up, she was made fun of. She wasn't like the popular kids. She had darker skin, dark brown hair, and dark brown eyes. They had money. Her family wasn't rich. Few kids she called friends, resorting to playing with her brother and her two cousins most of the time. She tried hard to not ... read more

If you are familiar with the bloggers on this site, you will know that when most of them return home from their world trip, they take time to recall the adventure, and write a summary of the best moments, or their most recommended sites. And many of the entries are quite creative. I had planned on attempting just that- but since we landed back on American soil, we haven't slowed down, and I haven't had time to blog! Maybe a retrospective will come later... One much anticipated aspect of being home has been to be with our children and family. So off we go to the Mid-west, the land of "ten thousand lakes" Minnesota, to visit our daughter, who no longer lives in our little town, but, has flown-the-coop, up north, to the big city. This ... read more

Here we go again. (6:00 pm, Wednesday, Minneapolis time): I'm sitting in the Minneapolis airport (Northwest/Delta "Princess Lounge") waiting to begin my third trip to "The Kingdom," aka KSA, aka Saudi Arabia. To get there I fly first to Amsterdam, change planes and fly to Kuwait and then on to Bahrain. From Bahrain I will take a taxi over the causeway (a very long bridge that has the Bahrain/Saudi Arabia border in the middle) to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It will take about 24 hours of real time, 32 hours of clock time (Saudi is 8 hours ahead of Minneapolis). For those of you reading this blog for the first time, I am returning to do another series of assessment centers my company's client - Saudi Aramco. Each trip is three weeks long (plus 4 days of ... read more

We finally made it back home. We left Tokyo at 4:15 PM on April 22, flew 11 hours and arrived in Minneapolis at 1:15 PM on April 22. In other words we got back three hours before we left. I’ve crossed the International Dateline at least three times in my life, but I still don’t understand it. We flew a Northwest 747 back and got to sit in the upper deck. That’s also a first for me. Here’s a recap of our trip by the numbers: 13 foreign countries visited 28 hotels/beds slept in 19 airports visited 20 separate flights 13 different airlines 10 different aircraft 7,493 pictures taken 470 voice recordings 70 movie clips recorded 1 God who guided us the whole way We were surprised and pleased to see that our grandchildren had made ... read more