Week One = Done!

I finished my week of training today. The week started off a little rough, but it got much better as time went on. On the first day, all of the interns in the SF office were together in a big room, and it seemed like everyone else knew each other from home, school, or recruiting events. It was more of an orientation day, so we did kind of silly group activities all day. Starting on Tuesday, we were broken up into much smaller groups that would be permanent for the rest of the week, so I actually got to know a few people. So for the past few days I've been going through actual audit training and I admit, it was hard to pay attention sometimes because the view outside our training room was b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. My office is in the Financial District close to the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge. From our training room, I was constantly staring at the Bay, a cruise ship docked at one of the piers, Navy ships and submarines going by, and Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill. I don't think I'd ever get work done in an office with a view like that. Here's a glimpse, but the picture doesn't do it justice.

As for the other interns, nearly all of them are from California and go to to school in the area. They're also all a grade lower than me, because California has different requirements than Michigan so students can be CPA-eligible after only four years of school, whereas I have to do the final fifth year. The ones I've had the chance to talk to seem like nice, fun people! The only problem is that everyone is so spread out (living at home, school, or someplace random like me), so I doubt there will be much socializing going on once we're all out at clients. I won't actually be starting client work until after the July 4th holiday because next week we will all be back in the office working on an intern case project. They do this since so many of their staff take the week off for vacation, so it would be hard to send an intern out to a dead project.

Besides all the boring training stuff, I did some fun things this week too! On Tuesday, as a social event for all the new Assurance interns, I went on a scavenger hunt around the city to find clues at certain locations. Here's one of the clues we had:

"From where the father of our country meets the power source behind a hard-charging rabbit, head south towards a bridge. Before you reach the "Castle" that's paired with a pachyderm, you'll find "treasure" at your feet. What's buried here?"

Translation: At the corner of Washington and Battery streets, head south until you reach the bar called "Elephant Castle". Look down and you'll find that the General Harrison ship was unearthed here. We ran around for an hour and a half trying to solve these clues, and it was pretty fun! At the end we all met up at North Beach Pizza for dinner, but sadly my team didn't win.

On Thursday night after work I actually met up with Kimberly and Melissa (Jordan's cousin who lives in the city) for happy hour at a little bar on Pier 23. It was super fun! We got to talk lots about weddings since Melissa is getting married in August, and about different things to do in the area. Hopefully we'll all be able to meet up again before I leave! Since training ended today, a bunch of the interns went to a restaurant/bar nearby for a few drinks after work. I didn't stay for long because I wanted to get back to Oakland while it was still light and have time to catch up on things (blogging..), but I think the internship is off to a pretty good start!