Visitors!!!

This weekend was a great for many reasons:

-Long weekend - I got Friday off, but I did have to pay for it. They loaded us with some extra classes proving that nothing comes for free, but nonetheless I was grateful for the day off. This was extremely helpful since I needed extra rest to fight cold redux #2; I slept a lot of Friday and managed to get some work in as well.

-Friends to come visit! Not only did Peggy and Leo decide to come visit this weekend, but Berto happened to be in town for a conference so we had a mini-reunion. Yay!

In my world, showing people Boston really means eating good food. I'm slowly developing a tour for visitors (really meaning stops for where we eat when you come into town). Here's what the visit looked like:

Dim Sum at Hei La Moon - I found this place online and it was pretty good. It was definitely legit since everyone that worked there spoke Cantonese, but my Mandarin was able to get us by...

Watching the Horns at Tommy Doyles. This was the disappointing part of the trip - enough said. At least the onion strings were tasty.

Giacomo's for dinner and Modern Pastry for dessert. Sharon and I did this when she helped me move in, and since everyone seems to really like Giacomo's I think this is a must for the tour (thank to Sheu for taking me there in the first place). Giacomo's has this red sauce that's lobster based and it's SO yummy. And then Modern pastry has delicious cannolis that they fill when you order. Yum yum yum!






























Breakfast/lunch at Hong Kong Eatery. This was on recommendation from Vanessa Hsu, and it was yummy. I really liked the pork with the crispy skin on it.
















Then we hit a bakery afterward. Check out these interesting cakes that they had...

My favorite is the sea urchin one. Doesn't it make you want to visit me? :)

Settling In

After a slow recovery from my cold, I finally feel like I'm starting to settle into life here. It's been an interesting transition with trying to get acclimated to school life again, but I'm adjusting better to the schedule. Yesterday was a momentous occasion since I found the time to go out for a quick run and be social last night - which is a new concept for me! And, I've started to become more familiar with my section mates, so the sense of belonging is developing. Hopefully, this upward swing continues. I'm trying to be better about initiating with people, but after living in Austin for so long, it feels awkward to ask random people if they want to eat dinner.

On another note, the last three days, there's been this duck that just hangs out in the courtyard outside my dorm. He just grazes the area the whole day.

And here are a few pics from the Duck Tour. So the one downside of the tour, is that it's moving, so it's hard to take pics haha!

Survival of the Fittest

I've quickly learned that succeeding here is going to involve a game of survival. There's knowing how to put in the right amount of work into cases so that you can survive the classes; there's knowing just how much sleep you need to balance all the activities going on; there's even survival of the fittest in terms of your health. Yes, within 1 week of being here, I've gotten sick. I've always been prone to getting sick, but this was tough; especially since it's my first week of full classes, being sick has not helped at all. 3 case days are super long, and when you're sick and stiff, it's even worse. Praise God that I've made it through. I've started to feel a little better and even played a little bit of racquetball today. I'm taking it easy tonight with dinner and a housewarming party so that I can get plenty of rest. Sadly, I can't rest too much since I need to do homework in the morning. The life of a student.

On the upside, hopefully I'll have some good pics to come. Tomorrow I'm going on a Duck Tour (free!) with the Women's Student Association. I'm all about maximizing the free events. I've totally adjusted to student money saving mode (even though my working life didn't really differ that much either).

Photo Time

All right, as promised, here are some photos.
This the view of the Charles River nearby my dorm. I basically just walk out and then hit a bridge with a view of all this.




There's also a boat dock, so I hope to go kayaking while here.















Here's a shot of my dorm from the outside. Looks very collegiate eh?















Also thanks so much to Vi and Stan for sending me flowers! So sweet and thoughtful. In addition to getting flowers, I had fun opening the box up too. They used ProFlowers - they have some neat packaging to protect the flowers in shipping. The flowers are rolled up in the bouquet - hard to describe.
Then you get a little list of directions and then the flowers perk up within 8-12 hours.

Thank you Engs!!!!

Class is now in session

More pictures to come I promise. I need to take some photos of the campus so you can see how pretty it and the Charles are. Today I went for a quick run around the Charles - it was nice, the weather is tons better than the heat in Texas, and I had a nice view the whole time.

Today I had my first case - so at HBS, all your classes revolve around a case. You read it ahead of time, discuss it with your learning team, and then discuss it in class; that's basically how you learn. You take on the role of the protagonist in the case, and try to determine what's the situation and how you would handle it. I like the idea of the case method but was a little uneasy because I wasn't sure how comfortable I would be fighting to share my opinion among 90, but I contributed and it wasn't terrible. :) I felt relatively comfortable so hopefully I'm well psyched for classes now. Now it's just the battle of homework. They say you should be prepping around 2 hours per case, and Friday is my first 3 case day. Yes, math geniuses, that means I have 6 hours of homework on Thursday!

My other observation about the case method is its similarities to inductive Bible study. They called the case method an inductive learning method which triggered me to think of the similarities - you read, pull what observations/interpretations you can find, and then through a group setting you discuss and try to learn from each other. Who knew small group was preparing me for HBS all this time. :P

The First Few Days Part II

Day 2: Move-in!!!!

This was a little more of a stressful day with an early start to go get my keys and move some initial luggage up to the room. Then, my aunt and uncle arrived. Thankfully, they were able to help me move all my boxes from a classmate's apartment across the river into my dorm. After some wrong turns, wacky space-saving methods to maximize the trunk space of a Camry,
and carrying the boxes up a flight of stairs, we took a break to head for lunch. Sharon was so kind to start the unpacking process while we were moving boxes; I was able to take advantage of her organizational skills to help maximize my dorm room.
After getting settled in the room a bit, we took a long journey out to meet my aunt and uncle to go to Target and Walmart. I was able to get the items I needed (that I remembered at the time) including a mini-fridge and TV. There was still a little go, but after cleaning up more this Saturday afternoon, I was able to get the room organized to satisfied level.

There's amazingly even enough room for a full air mattress. Originally I thought I bought a twin one, but when I opened it up, voila, it was a full. Good thing my room is just big enough to fit it! The bathroom was a little more disappointing. The moment I walked in, I exclaimed, "It's like a cruise ship bathroom." It's so tiny and has very little counter and storage space; so my solution has been to get suction cup bins that I stick on the mirror to hold all my stuff. It's really classy looking. :P

The First Few Days

I'm blessed to have a friend like Sharon who offered to help me move in. Especially since I was feeling apprehensive about the move; with her around the first few days, it felt a lot more like a vacation than moving to a new city.

Day 1: Our first full day, we had a late start but managed to see plenty of sights. We took the T to the Downtown Crossing stop. After walking to the Chinatown area to have a filling meal, we walked back to the Downtown Crossing area. We did a little shopping, and I scored my first deal in Boston at Filene's Basement. It's kind of like Ross but with nicer brands and on a larger scale; even better, they were moving the store's location so there was a store-wide sale. I managed to find some Lucky Brand Jeans capris that were originally $80. After the discount, it came out to $9.99 since they don't have any sales tax on clothes. Isn't that a steal of a deal?

After shopping, we walked over to Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall where we looked at shops and had an extremely overpriced smoothie snack. We then head over the the Hatch Shell Auditorium where we enjoyed a funky free concert. The auditorium is great since it's outdoors in a park along the Charles. I am loving the weather here - it's a great break from the heat.

Afterward, we headed back to Cambridge for a delicious meal at Cafe of India. It was a filling meal and a great end to a full, touristy day. The only downside is we didn't bring a camera so I don't have any photos. :(