Yayy to the long weekend

It's been a long while since I last blogged.  I promise it's not because life wasn't interesting or we had too much homework.  It's been really hot here these past 2 weeks, and I think I got sick from blasting the fan directly to my face and singing during outdoor dance parties.

On the first hot day, CK and I went to Zumba in the park, sponsored by the city of Boston itself!  CK was an awesome zumba dancer, and we plan to recruit more LGOs to come along next time.

 

 Afterwards, I took a much needed cold shower before joining LGOs and my Gillette friends Evelyn and Ramsay at Asgards for 25 cent wings, ice cold beer, and Bruins game (Bruins...sad).

On the second hot day, Julia and I went to bootcamp.  I hadn't seen Julia in 2 weeks, so this was much needed quality time.  She was also going to Mauritius for 2 weeks for a wedding :(  My besties Liz and Julia decided to take vacations at the same time, leaving me in the hot and sweaty Boston.

We had our pictures taken on Wednesday.  This should give you a sense of our personalities :)

Much needed rain also happened on Wednesday, and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to run stairs in the rain....after days of sleeping with fan blowing in my face...clever ploy...

Friday was the annual Cambridge City Dance Party where they closed the Central Square section of Mass Ave down and turned it into a dance party with DJ and lights.  LGO/SDM had a mixer at Meadhall beforehand, went to the Dance Party in style with glow sticks, and had an after party at Fort Awesome.  It was a blast, but of course I woke up not able to speak from all the singing the night before.

 

 This week was great as well.  First of, I got to see Karen, my friend who I haven't seen in a year and a half!  Karen was so amazing, picking me up from my door with a car, taking me to a nice full course meal at Ten Tables (yummy! first try), and considering it a bday gift to me (my bday was over 3 months ago...).  I told Karen that if we were on a date, it would have beeen the best date ever. More importantly, Karen is a beast, having just run her first marathon and running a 50K in Swiss mountains in a few weeks.  We got to talking and ended up signing me up for my first marathon this October, where Karen will run as my pace keeper (a week after her Portland marathon where she hopes to qualify to Boston marathon through)!  Amazing Karen :)  Though now I'm confused about how my training is going to go....I haven't run more than 14 miles before, and I don't think I'll be in as great of a shape as I was a few months ago.  Consider the blog post my commitment to training and running it though!  I figure it's as good of a time as it will ever be, and I'll have Karen with me to do this :)

 

 I know I haven't posted much about the school work portion of LGO.  I guess it's because I don't take pictures of those moments.  Regardless, I think workload is completely balance.  It's challenging but in an interesting way.  I haven't lost sleep over anything.  Some people have not had much sleep, but I think it's more of how you delegate your time.  Just think about this, I do all these activities I write about here and still have time to do all the work and sleep!

Talking about work, here's a picture of our team's work on a problem in system optimization class.  This week was a short 3 day school week, so all the work feels all crumbling up together.  In addition to this system optimization group work, we had a case study and analysis report of a marketing company work processes for our High Velocity Class.  The case report turned out to be almost 20 pages long, and we were definitely lucky to have started early.  John, Alex and I met for about 3 hours to discuss the case, think through our position on the work process and organization restructuring, and dividing up the writeup.  I think we each spent another 3-4 hours on our own for the writeup.  My voice was definitely missing especially on Monday when we did the discussion, and I'm thankful that Alex and John put up with my inability to really talk and stay patient while I tried to pitch in.

 

By the end of Wednesday, the whole class decided to go to an outdoor bar across the street from Sloan.  Evelyn joined us after work too.  And what is the end of the week without burgers? A bunch of us went to Tasty Burger afterwards!

The 4 day weekend is much needed.  I look forward to fireworks at the MIT sailing pavilion with LGO/SDM (best view in the area), my parents visiting, China LGO (our sister program)'s visit, and a lot of relaxing.  Stay tune!