Sunday, April 25, 2010

April 25, 2010 - China, here we come!

Hey there, hi there and a belated hello there. Guess I can blame wonderful visitors for my delayed blog from last weekend. It's been a pretty awesome last couple of weeks and the next couple are going to be even more memorable I do believe:)
Aflac has been pretty fast paced, as usual I suppose, the last couple of weeks. We said our final farewell to our pal Alicia as her promotion took effect about a week ago. It was bittersweet to see her go, we'll miss her but this is a great opportunity for her to advance her career ... wishing you the best Alicia! It's pretty impressive to note that less than a handful of people are getting promotions nowadays and one of our own made the cut. Business is quite hectic as well as we begin to prepare for 2011 project planning, I know ... only eight months early:) We've been fighting through some issues with our online services, but great collaboration and lots of customer calls helped us pull through. O yes, we also had a great team building activity this past Friday with our new future state PIC team partners. Helping out at Valley Rescue Mission with some yard work was a blast and a great way for us to get outside the walls to have some fun!
Today marked my last activities for semester number two at Emory. Wednesday I completed my last final, Financial Accounting ... how exhilarating ... not! It is done though, as well as Marketing and today we finalized our group work. It was actually a pretty interesting semester with a great group to do projects with. Now, Jenny, Meg, Jason, myself and 30 other MBA students are getting ready to converge on China for a week long international study program. We're heading out a couple days early to go see Beijing's Great Wall and other sites before making our way to Shanghai for class and the World Expo. Much more to come, probably a video at least:)
Jenny and I also had an extended weekend last week with some great visitors. Dad and Steph flew down for a very relaxing weekend full of food and fun. We started the festivities out with a glorious bike ride on the Riverwalk and a visit to the National Infantry Museum. Then we joined some of my pals at the Civic Center for the Columbus Lions indoor football game. After church on Sunday, lots of ping pong was played as well as more food consumed! Caden got a lot of attention with numerous walks and playing fetch time. After a viewing of Avatar on Sunday night, we spent a good bit of Monday at the park playing catch and fetch with the pooch. It was great good fun to have them down here, but I'm pretty sure I put on about 10 pounds. Thanks guys for a great weekend and magnificent memories.
Earlier this week I felt very humbled to be honored at the Annual Tri-Community Director of Volunteer Services luncheon with their Community Member Volunteer award. It was a huge surprise as both the Literacy Alliance and the United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley nominated me of which I was selected ... what a great honor. Also, this past weekend marked the six month reunion with the students from the Live United Youth Camp. We had seven of the students come back out and they each brought a parent and a friend to "pay it forward." We went out to a local food shelter to help pack boxes for those families in need. In a matter of three hours, our group put together 360 boxes, each with 50 lbs. of food ... that's 18,000 lbs. of food packed for families throughout the region. What an amazing feeling and a great time was had with the students. They all shared their stories of giving back and it was inspirational to hear all that they had done in just six months, I can't wait for the 2nd annual event this October;)
Last night we revamped the Aflac SIFE social interchange event at our buddy Bob's house out in Upatoi ... almost as small as Shueyville! We hadn't all gotten together for a while, so it was good to catch up with everyone to see how things have been, pretty awesome group of friends I must say.
Welp, I think I've about exhausted my typing fingers trying to fit two weeks in here ... but hope you enjoyed. I'll be taking another sabbatical her for a couple weeks as we venture to China. I wish you all the best, and Blake, don't forget to work on your golf game before you come down here because I don't want to have to show you up:)
Alwayz,
Nate

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