I feel as if this past month has gone by a bit slow. The semester is coming to an end and I'm looking forward to having a couple of days at work to work on a project and do some training before jumping right back into classes for the summer. Just for my own "well-being" and to uphold one of my resolutions to write more this year, I guess this will primarily be about two major things that occured in the past month.

New Haven, CT

I flew up to New Haven, CT to visit a long time friend of mine, William, at Yale University. It was a pleasant time getting to meet his friends that stayed behind for Spring Break in order to catch up/get ahead on course work. Getting the opportunity to be immersed in a community of people from literally opposite sides of the country AND the globe was refreshing. It also provided motivation after discovering what each of them had been involved with during college and what they had planned post-graduation. One day William had planned for us to hike up to the top of East Rock where you can view all of the city of New Haven. The trek from campus to the base of East Rock alone was tiring, nevertheless the ascent up East Rock. Getting to the top though was worth it, even though it was very breezy from the ocean. My last day there was spent walking around NYC since I didn't get to see much when I was previously there for New Years 2008.

Front page of the newspaper

Maybe a week or two after I got back from New Haven, my dad got a surprise visit from a journalist from the local newspaper who found out that the family business was rewarded a $5M military contract to manufacture missile containers, yet it wasn't reported in the news. The following week, a photo of my dad alongside a picture of him and his siblings from when they were younger headlined the newspaper describing the family's story of their climb from poor war refugees to successful citizens fulfilling the American Dream. I think it was a good birthday present for my dad which was the week prior. The article can be found here.