On Saturday, January 5th, Kevin and I finally arrived in San Diego! Coming from the chilly temperatures of Long Island, we were both very excited to land in 60 degree weather. We immediately made our way back to our apartment, which is graciously being paid for by NASSCO, and began fighting over bedrooms and bathrooms (I won).

Once we were settled, we decided to do some exploring of the city that will be our home for the next two months. Naturally, we started with our local Target. We quickly found out that the area in which we’re living (Mission Valley) is EXTREMELY dog-friendly, and neither of us were at all disappointed by this.

The next day, we went out to begin a quest that we had been planning for most of December. Our goal is to visit at least eighteen donut shops in the next two months.

After eating our first of (hopefully) many donuts and walking around more of Mission Valley, we made our way back to our apartment to prepare for meeting up with a few Webbies who graduated last year and are now living in San Diego! Nicholas Ratinaud, Kevin Prichard, and Megan Green invited us (and fellow interns Sarah Stretch ’19 and Isa Hill ’20) to have dinner in Little Italy, and we had an awesome time getting to know them. After consuming lots of food and lots of ice cream, we eventually made our way home to get ready for our first day of work.

The first three days consisted of mostly orientations and training sessions, but by Thursday we were both getting settled into our departments. Kevin started in painting (and was given approximately five tours of the painting and sand-blasting facilities). He hopes that next week he’ll start sand-blasting, and he’s assured his supervisors that he’s prepared to get dirty. He’s told that he’ll be switching departments every few days, so he’ll probably see most of the yard while we’re here. I’ve been placed in Accuracy Control, and it seems like I’m there to stay! I’m told that they want to teach me to do steel shrinkage calculations, learn to use lots of measurement tools, and do inspections on plates and blocks. Although the beginning of the week was filled with paperwork, it was all worthwhile when I was taken aboard the Matson container ship on Friday! I was sent to participate in my first inspection of the container cell guides, and I was quietly trying to maintain composure and not appear to be in complete awe of the ship in front of professionals who spend all of their time doing this kind of thing (I failed…I was very obviously excited).

We left on Friday feeling exhausted but super excited to explore more during the weekend. We again went out with the Webbies living here in San Diego and exploited those with cars to bring us to an incredible ice cream sandwich shop.

On Saturday, we continued our hunt for the best donut in San Diego. Along the way, we found an amazing secondhand book shop (Kevin resisted going inside at first, but admitted it was “really cool” once we got outside). On Sunday, we both tried In-and-Out for the first time! The verdict: Kevin and Juliette will definitely return for more.

After stuffing ourselves with more calories than any human requires, we went back to our apartment to get ready for our second week of work!

-Juliette