Kayla Goes Global

The first time I ever really traveled far for work was in July 2017. I attended a conference in Scottsdale, AZ called Fiesta in the Desert.

It was a good experience for my first trade show.

After traveling all day from Baltimore to Phoenix, my colleague and I were pretty tired. I remember getting to the hotel in Scottsdale and wanting to just go to sleep, but we had to get ourselves ready for a welcome event.

We stayed at the DoubleTree Resort Scottsdale/Paradise Valley, and it was really nice. It was a bit of a maze to find our hotel room, but it was cool to walk around and see all the landscaping at the hotel. The room itself was very spacious and clean. My dad had kept warning me to look out for scorpions while I was there, but I didn’t see any the whole time! I might have been a little disappointed by that.

The other thing that I noticed right away was that it was extremely humid. Maybe it’s just because it was July and rainy, but people back home have told me my whole that there’s no humidity when you’re this far West. It just wasn’t true this time I guess.

We got ourselves together and went to the Welcome Event. It was just a little social gathering with some drinks. I ordered a rum & Coke and mingled a little bit. It seemed like a lot of people already knew each other, so I let my colleague take the lead a bit. We didn’t stay too late and went back to the room to try and get a good night’s sleep.

The next day was full of business. We had a booth and met a lot of very nice people. It was interesting getting to do this for the first time. I’m glad I wasn’t alone because we got some questions that I wasn’t sure about – it ended up being a great learning experience.

We had the night free after that so we went to Old Scottsdale to explore. We browsed some of the stores and had dinner at Cien Agaves Tacos & Tequila. It was a lot of fun – they had amazing guacamole with pomegranate seeds on top!

On the way back to our room we stopped at the pool to grab one last margarita before bed. We had an early flight the next day, so tried to get to bed early.

Overall, it was a great time! I’m glad that the trip wasn’t too long and I’m thankful that I had a travel partner.