Ready for Texas

It's been a long week! I'm counting down the days until my time off when I head back to good ol' Texas. In addition to seeing family and friends, I'm looking forward to some good food. On the list:

1) Chuy's

2) Salt Lick

3) Ann's Kitchen Cakes Chocolate Cake

4) Kerbey Queso and pumpkin pancakes if they have them

5) Chik-Fil-A fries or Sonic tater tots and slushie

Yum! Who's going to be in Austin between Dec 19 - 30? If so, let me know - would love to see you!

The Blind Side

OK, I know I'm long overdue for a post, but I saw The Blind Side and it is such a good movie! Go see it - it's inspiring. So inspiring that I'm going to read the book. It looks like the movie exaggerates some parts but all in all, the heart is there. So go see it!

First Months in Cali

I'm starting to get a little more settled into the new city. It's been nice to have a variety of friends around so that I can try new things. Some highlights have included
1) AVP tournament in the city - I walked right by Keri Walsh - she's super tall!
2) Giants game - random work perk, I got to sit right behind the 1st base dugout
3) Killer's concert - my friend had work tickets for a VIP box at the concert, super fun
4) Yosemite - I did the famed Half Dome hike even though I had no real idea what it was about...

5) Not in the Bay area - but I went to a wedding in Newport, RI for HBS friends, Kate and Neil. It was a gorgeous wedding on a beautiful weekend

Some photos:

The Journey

Here are some pics from our trip along the way including
1) The Road
2) The Mission outside of Tuscon
3) Lolo's Chicken and Waffles in Phoenix
4) Windmill farm outside of L.A.
5) Coffee & Dinner with L.A. friends
6) Ricotta Blueberry Pancakes & Spanish Chorizo and Homefries @ BLD
7) Walking around the Hollywood Walk of Stars (I think that's what it's called?)
8) The New Room

Moved in?

Ok after a trip to IKEA, one to Wal-Mart, and multiple trips to Target I think I'm finally settled in. It's such a relief to have unpacked and found some place to square away my random stuff. Surprisingly, the whole move process has kept me pretty occupied this past week. Since Christina was so kind to make the drive to Cali with me, the weekend and first half of the week flew by. We were blessed with meeting up with friends along the way - thanks to Jasmine and Norm who let us stay with them in Phoenix, as well as my B-school friend a place to stay in L.A. Plus, it was nice to see a lot of old friends over coffee in L.A. One highlight for me was chasing down a place I saw on the Food Network. BLD was quoted in an episode of the best thing I ever ate. We ordered the featured blueberry ricotta pancakes along with a side of Spanish chorizo homefries, and I thought it was pretty awesome and delicious. So good! The second half of the week was also busy with visitors. I happened to have multiple friends come into town for random reasons and was able to meet up with them between the unpacking/building furniture process.

Hopefully this second week will go by as nicely. On the docket for the week - getting a Cali driver's license and registering my car. Not THAT much. So I'm hoping to squeeze in a trip to In n' Out too. Yes, I know I'm being extremely ambitious but hopefully it will work out ;)

Soon to be Californian

Friday morning I begin the road trip to Cali. In 4 days I'll arrive and begin my new residence in the Bay Area. Please pray for our trip - for safety, for no mishaps, and for a fun time!

Still need a new name for the blog...

Running out of vacation :(

It's coming close - the time when I'll actually have to work. I'm looking forward to having an income again, but not as excited about re-entering the real world. I must admit, this has been nice. No more naps in the middle of the day and leisure reading; now it's time to be a productive member of society. That does get me a little excited; hopefully the job will turn out to be what I hoped/signed up for and it'll be a good learning experience. Also, I hope that I'll have a good time in Cali, adjusting to me new life!

Halong Bay

Whoops I've been slacking in the posting. The move out of Boston was a bit hectic plus I've been a pretty lazy since arriving in Austin - deciding between driving and shipping my car to Cali... oh decisions.

Anyway, here are some pics from Halong Bay. This is in Northern Vietnam. It's where the royalty used to go and vacation. Like many tourists, we booked a boat tour, where they drive you out into the bay and then you stay overnight on the boat. They're made to look like the traditional junk boats, even though most of them are pretty modern. My friend freaked out when she first read our itinerary and found that our boat was called the Bai Tho Junk, but then I assured her all of them were called junk. Fortunately, we even got upgraded. Our boat was brand new and very nice. Only downside is the A/C was not as strong as I like at times, but overall great boat. The second downside was they kept on trying to make our meals fancy French or Franco-inspired, but they didn't quite have it down. Some of it was pretty hard to enjoy eating.

It's gorgeous out there... there are limestone rocks jutting out and it's all around very scenic.

Elephants

When we were in Chiang Mai, we signed up for a trek that included a visit to a local village, a hike through rice paddies to a waterfall, lunch, an elephant ride, and a bamboo raft ride. All of this for the bargain price of 650 baht, or about $19. I love Thailand.

The elephants were so cute! They were trained and were eager to be fed bananas. Our elephant was especially amusing given that he was very hungry AND had an itchy butt. He kept on veering off the path to find more food (which the trainer wasn't too happy about) and stopping to scratch his butt against trees. He would get so much food, that sometimes other elephants would steal food from him. The other highlight was a baby elephant. It was about 3 months old and would stick by its mother. When we crossed a river, he rolled around in the water! So cute :)

The Long Journey

I'm finally back in Boston. It was a long set of flights from Hanoi, Vietnam back to here... A 31 hour itinerary
Hanoi -> Taipei
Taipei -> Los Angeles
Los Angeles -> JFK
a 6 hour layover in JFK from 1am - 7am (oo fun)
JFK -> Boston

So happy to be back, except I'm delirious since I stayed up for all of the first 2 flights and only got some sleep on the LA- JFK flight. We'll see how the jet lag battle goes today. All in all the trip was fun! I'll put up some posts of the travels highlights with photos in the days to come...

Some top picks:
Halong Bay - where the kings and queens used to vacation back in the dynasty days... gorgeous limestone rock jutting out as we stayed on a boat for the night
Chiang Mai - elephants.. need I say more
Hue - amazing tombs of the Nyguen dynasty emperors
Koh Samui - really nice beach resort!

Thailand...

During my month off, I'm traveling to Thailand and Vietnam. After a really long set of flights, we arrived in Chiang Mai Wednesday morning Thai time. We toured around the old city and had some yummy Thai food. I'm a total fan especially of Kao Soi - it's curry with egg noodles - a Northern favorite. The highlight today was riding on elephants! We went on a day trek where we visited some tribal villages, rode elephants, and then went on a bamboo raft. All were cool, but riding on the elephants was by far the best part. We also got to see a baby elephant - only 3 months old, it was so cute!

Last Day

I just finished my last class at HBS - I can't believe 2 years have passed just like that. I remember all of the jitters everyone had at the beginning - trying to figure out how to fit in, who your friends were, whether your last comment was stupid... pretty much like high school just with a competitive edge to it.

My last class today was education reform and our teacher shared why she was so passionate about education. As someone whose grandparents only made it to the 8th grade and whose parents only graduated from high school, she, as a graduate and teacher of HBS, believed in the American dream. But, because she sees that you can look at a zip code today and say that the American dream doesn't apply for some students, she cares passionately about education. She ended with the fact that we didn't have to have her same passion, but ought to have something and to do something about it. I never would have guessed that those would be the last words I heard in a classroom at HBS, but I'm glad that they were.

High Five!

Ok so I know this seems very childish, but I was very giddy after my Education Reform class today. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Kevin Johnson came to class. After starting St. HOPE, he is now the mayor of Sacramento and is still very passionate about education reform. KJ was really dynamic in class - a great guest! Anyway, I got a cold call in class because I voted for moving St. HOPE's model to New York. At the end of class, I went to shake his hand and he told me I had a great comment and then gave me a high five! I was so happy.... haha. I'm childish, I know. :)

Kevin Johnson

I'm excited... tomorrow, Kevin Johnson of the Phoenix Suns will be a guest in my education reform class. He'll be talking about his organization St. HOPE that's running some charter schools. Yay! I totally remember him from the days when I paid attention to the NBA.

Business Plan....

All semester, I've been working on this field study for a business plan contest. It's been pretty interesting, and an overall great experience. This morning we had to present our plans; we didn't make it to the semifinals which is disappointing, but it was a still a positive learning experience. Now I'm just tired... I went out for lunch after the contest and then took a nap. Time to start being productive again...

That's a Shame

Tonight we had a talent show for the business school. For some reason, they decided it would be fun to have a representative from each section compete in a cheeseburger eating contest. They had 4 minutes to see who could eat the most.

No one from our section wanted to compete, so my friend decided to do it. Last minute, he asked me to be his counter. I wasn't really necessary since he only ate 1, but it was fun to see the contest up close. Once the time had expired, my friend and I were just joking around and standing there when the guy next to me turns to me and holds up 7 fingers.

I asked, "Oh, you ate 7?"
He swallowed his last bite, and then asked "No, is that how many I ate?"
With a slight look of distress, I responded "Sorry, I wasn't counting."
"You weren't counting? What? I thought you were counting?"
Pointing to my friend, I said "No, I was counting for him..."
My friend then interceded with "You're supposed to have your own counter"
The random guy suddenly had a very sad, dejected look on his face.

Everyone I talked to afterwards commented that they thought the random guy had eaten a lot and would have won or at least been a finalist. They kept on saying, but he was eating so fast! I felt really bad for the guy. All those wasted calories and robbed a victory.

Hammer Time

Believe it or not, but I just went to a talk by MC Hammer! I brought my camera, but unfortunately, I randomly discovered that it's broken. I wasn't able to get a pic of him but a friend sent me her's.

Anyway, it was interesting to hear from him as he's promoting his new ventures including a social media site called dancejam. He talked a little bit about his childhood in Oakland, and I learned that he's really techie. He's really into Twitter and just created an app for the iPhone. So random! I thought it was kind of funny how much more excited I was about him coming to speak than other people. I guess that shows that I'm still pretty much a child of pop-culture.

Times When I'm Homesick...

22 may not sound bad. But seriously, it feels colder than that. And what is up with 70 degree weather? So jealous!