So that’s me now back in London after what can honestly be the most surreal two weeks of my life! Our business trip to the Cayman Islands and Tennessee is over and I have returned with so much more knowledge and experience than I could possibly hope for – not to mention the slight tan!!

Our first stop was to Grand Cayman, where we met with Greenlight RE – a re-insurance company. Re-insurance is bought by regular insurance companies to spread some of risk they take on in case of really large losses, such as natural disasters. We met with them as they are currently about to make a deal with Giles that is related to our project and also to spend some time with the actuaries and underwriters there. The whole week was amazing! On our first day – the Sunday – we spent on Seven Mile Beach situated two minutes away from our hotel! It was bliss - until it started raining! Luckily, it quickly died down and we did a bit of exploring! Our second day was spent with Claude, the senior actuary at Greenlight, and his two friends on his boat. That’s right… ON HIS BOAT! We went tubing off the back of it while we made our way to Stingray City – which is a very shallow part of the sea, not far from the island, where many stingrays live – and we spent some time in the sea feeding them. It was amazing! They are really quite scary to see at first, especially when you’ve got squid in your hand!! But after half an hour or so, you get used to their feel and their habits. I was totally blown away! The remainder of the afternoon was spent eating, drinking from RED CUPS – soooo Chad Hogan! – and speeding around the sea in Claude’s speedboat. Near the end of the day, we were driven home and slept right through until the next morning! Not without a midnight snack of leftover pizza of course… Yummers!

The next couple of days were spent in the office with the team. We spent a lot of our time with Claude and his actuaries, Isaac and Jordan, and also with Brendan and his fellow underwriter, Matt. There are only about 20 people in the company in total, but they’re all so close – it’s like they’re all one family! I think that helped our visit though, as it made them seem even more welcoming than they already were and we just kind of fitted right in!! I don’t think I could thank them all enough for all the entertaining they did with us that week though. On top of taking us out on a boat, they took us out many nights after work to ‘soak up the Cayman culture’ and even organised a staff night out on a pirate ship! Never thought I could say I’ve drank rum at the helm of a pirate ship in the middle of the Caribbean Sea… I’ll be buckling some swashes before I know it, yarr!

Also, while we were in Cayman we managed to meet up with GlobalScot, Tom McCallum and 2008 Scholar Sarah-Jane Whitehill for dinner one evening. After sharing our Saltire stories and homeland stories, Tom and Sarah were able to share some useful advice about the world of work and networking - I wish I had brought my notebook!! The meal was lovely and I'm sure the evening was enjoyed by all. I'm very excited to meet more of the Saltire network!

 After a very emotional goodbye from the Greenlight RE family in Cayman, we went on our merry way to the southern state of Tennessee, on what can only be described as the smallest yet most friendly plane I’ve ever been on. This plane was honestly three seats wide, but we must have made more friends on that journey than we did on our entire trip! Everyone was so friendly – and obsessed with our accents! I don’t think it was a common occurrence to find three Scottish girls on a Miami-Knoxville flight and so we were the talk of the plane! Once we’d arrived, said our goodbyes to our new friends and made our way to our hotel, where we promptly went to bed!

Not too many hours later, we were up celebrating Jenny’s 21^st birthday! The day consisted of munching on a well deserved American pancake breakfast and touring Wal-Mart and Target, checking out their Ben and Jerry’s selection. It’s pretty impressive, by the way – and only £2 per large tub! You can tell there's not much to do in Knoxville for tourists, huh? We did end up finding some cooler shops though and we all managed to get our Sephora fix while we were there, so it wasn't all bad! Later we went for dinner with a few of the locals we met on the plane to end Jenny’s bday on a high! There was even free key lime pie for the birthday girl!

Monday came really quite quickly and so our two day ‘insight session’ with Appalachian Underwriters began. AUI are a company very similar to Giles in background and potential, so we were basically going to check out how their company is run in the US insurance market! We saw their marketing, underwriting, finance, claims and customer service departments among many and quickly realised the sheer size of the company! Everyone at the office was so chatty and really friendly towards us during our stay – so much like the Tennessee natives on the plane! We even had an ‘all American’ cook-out at the Vice President’s ‘all American’ house in our honour. It was a brilliant night. All of the ‘young’ employees were invited so the food, chat and ginger ale were flowing throughout and I even got to take away some homemade sugar cookies with me afterwards! By the way, if you haven’t tried them, do it! They’re like a little drop of heaven per bite! Again, everyone was obsessed with our accents and on numerous occasions we were even asked what our first language was! AND they were shocked to find that it was in fact English! Strange!! Anyway, the rest of our time in Tennessee flew past so quickly and we headed back to London to start on our final 5 weeks at Giles – via the most ridiculous flights I could ever imagine. Think running through Newark airport to catch a flight and then sitting on the runway for an hour... I was glad to get back to my bed, I can tell you that!

Until next time,

Susan x