Personal news and my holiday plans

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned in my last post, I have an exciting personal update: My boyfriend Brian and I are engaged to be married!

We’ve already decided to do a destination wedding on the beach in the Florida Keys. My family has to fly in from Europe anyway, so we decided to go to a place that is special to us—where we spent our first vacation together. We’ll have a small ceremony with family and close friends, and then we’re hoping to take a honeymoon that incorporates equal time for relaxing and doing some serious SCUBA diving.

An engagement selfie with Brian

The holiday season has brought several opportunities for fun social events with colleagues, including our Chicago office holiday party at the Shedd Aquarium and our Operations team dinner and gift exchange. In addition to wedding/honeymoon planning and celebrating the holidays, work has been crazy busy. I’m going to share a separate post in a couple of weeks covering some of the events and programs I attended over the past month or so.

As I write this, I’m heading home to Germany to celebrate the holidays with my family and renew my US work visa. I’m hoping to do some wedding dress shopping with my mother and sister and spend some much-needed time relaxing. I’ll head back to the US in early January, barring any visa complications.

Wishing you a happy new year,
Britta