A week of finales and goodbyes

This week was a sad week in some senses. First off was the last day at Kellogg. I've had a great time there each Monday learning about different aspects of management and spending time with some great students. I won't go into my experience at Kellogg anymore because I write about it on the other blog.

Notice anything missing? Check out how Northwestern is spelt.

The other point of sadness was the fact that the interns I have had the pleasure of working with had their last week at INVO. From next week onwards it will be much, much quieter. The other interns were on the I2C Fellows on the I2C program organised by INVO (innovation to commercialisation). They adopted me in my first week at INVO and I have had the pleasure of working and socialising with them for the last couple of months. They're a great bunch of people from many different backgrounds and stages of their university education. Some are almost finished with their PhD's, some are in the middle, some are undergrad and we even had a lawyer! It's been great to make some good friends over here and I'm gonna miss them dearly. I mean who am I going to have lunch with now??

Lunch at Edzo's, Evanston. Apparently famous for their Nutella Milkshake. Their burgers are pretty damn good too. #I2CFellow (inside joke...)

On the interns' last day, after their amazing presentations about their two months' work, we headed downtown for drinks at the Trump Tower to celebrate. The Trump Tower is really pretty and has a terrace on the 16th floor which is only about a 3rd of the way up. It is part hotel and part private residences. Judging by the drinks prices I don't even want to imagine what the cost of an apartment there is. It was a great experience to go there and a lovely finale to the last couple of months. However, I don't think I would make it a regular habit. The bill for six drinks came to $134 including tip! I guess you have to think of it in the terms that they could have charged less for drinks and asked for $10 entry fee, because the view was fantastic.

I love this pic. This was some of the fabulous crew I got to work with - you guys are great! (photo credit to #notasillymonkey)

The one drink was followed by dinner at an Irish pub, called D4. In our defense, we had tried going to a Japanese barbecue place which had a 45 minute wait and we were starving. The fish 'n' chips was the best I've had outside of the UK. Shame I couldn't wash it down with a beer - apparently my Finnish driver's license wasn't good enough ID!

How many pieces of fish!? This portion was ridiculously large. So I thought I would take the remainder in a doggy bag and give it to a homeless person. It was too good to waste. 

Friday morning was pretty lazy, after a quick conference call to Finland, I headed over to South Evanston to Hoosier Mama's Pies (try saying it out loud) with some of the interns for breakfast before clearing up at work. I don't normally eat sweet stuff in the morning but it was an opportunity to hang out with these guys some more (and eat pie). Hoosier Mama's makes their pies on site. While it takes a little time to get them, they're well worth it. I love citrus fruits and key lime pie is a quintessential American (Floridian) dish. A small pie is only a couple of bucks more than a slice, so being greedy (and following everyone else's example) I ordered a "small" key lime pie. I still have over half of it in my fridge. The pie was great when I could find it under all the cream. By the way, have you ever seen a key lime? They are tiny, well at least the ones in my local Wholefoods were!

My key lime pie is the creamy looking one. Thankfully my friend loves cream and "helped" with finding the filling underneath.

We've had a lot of laughs together and I think I have made some good friends. I never imagined when I came here that I would actually meet such a great bunch of people. Especially people who I can see myself keeping in touch with when I head back to "not America" as one of them put it! #I2CFellow - INVO won't be the same without you!