dinner

only in business school do you go to dinner with a bollywood actress, marine, entrepreneur in the education space in china, singaporean government economic policy maker, nigerian portfolio manager and a banker

green

quote of the day from finance class:

"the money that money makes makes more money" - ben franklin

ready, set, go!

tomorrow the experience officially begins!  i have my first preterm class tomorrow morning.  nothing quite like finance at 9am on a saturday to get you back into school mode.

i spent the past couple days unpacking boxes, napping and walking around philly.

i am excited!  in true olympic mode - let the games begin!

philly!

well, we made it.  after 4 days of running around like chickens with our heads cut off - i mean tourists having an amazing time, daniel helped me get all my stuff from yonkers to philadelphia and in exchange he got to tour part of the east coast.  (btw - huge thanks to aud for use of her car)

let me explain what i mean by crazy tourists...

day 1: nyc express tour (including, but not limited to: ground zero, wall street, charging bull, grand central, top of empire state building at night, times square, midtown, murray hill, etc).  keep in mind we arrived at 2am that morning from la

day 2: hamptons, sag harbor, coney island

day 3: pack up van in yonkers, drive to philly, unload all my stuff, trips to target, costco (twice), radio shack, etc

day 4: tour philly (liberty bell, independence hall, the mint, fed reserve, rocky statue, wharton, cheesesteaks at genos), valley forge, drop daniel at philly airport, drive to teaneck to drop off car, take train back to philly

sorry i didnt post more pics - daniel has most of them on his camera.  will post them eventually.

tomato, tomato

so these tomatoes were growing in my parents backyard and i had some fun with my camera.  love summertime fruits and veggies.

up!

i spent the last couple days up in napa valley with my cousin. while up in napa, we went to a couple wineries - how could you not?  below are some photos from mumm (winery).  they had a nice terrace with a view of part of their vineyard.  additionally, mumm had many different flavors of bubbly - my favorite.  i think my last job definitely had some influence on that preference.

another highlight of the trip was our hot air balloon ride.  we woke up very early to drive up to sonoma for our hot air balloon adventure.  let me breakdown the limited elements in a hot air balloon:

1. basket - wickerish material
2. balloon - approximately 646lbs of fabric
3. air
4. fire

to get the balloon up and running the pilot first filled the balloon with air from a very strong fan.  next, he used blasts of fire to warm the air which then lifted the balloon up (in comparison to cold air outside).  we all hopped in the basket and after a few more blasts of fire, we were off.  we floated around in the air about 80 minutes and then landed near sonoma airport.  once you are up in the air, there is very little control over the balloon - you can only sorta direct the adventure.  landing at the airport was 100% determined by the winds.

it was beautiful up in the air.  i cant even begin to describe the amazing views.  one interesting thing was that the mountains in the distance would change shapes (at least the peaks) as you looked at them.  we learned that this phenomenon was caused by the light hitting the photons and the height/angle we were viewing from resulting in an optical illusion.

last, we also walked around downtown and oxbow market - very cute.  in addition to some fun stores, a few of the parking spots were labeled with some motivating words.  additionally, there were quite a few installations of public art.  my favorite was a permanent installation which had footprints showing you how to dance the cha cha cha.