Greetings from Michigan

[Editor's note: I drafted this months ago, but have been remiss in posting! This is beginning to feel like the entries in my old diary: "Dear Diary, I'm sooooooooooooooooooo sorry it's been such a loooooooooooooooooong time since I've written..." LOL]

After my graduation, my parents and I spent about a week traveling around Michigan. Since we graduate so early, a lot of stuff was not open yet, but we were able to see a good amount of things. Many photos are on my parents' computer, so I have not included them here. Maybe if I get around to it, I can post some better ones from this trip in a future entry.

We began in Detroit at the Ford estate. John came with us for this day, despite feeling under-the-weather. He was a real trooper and I'm glad he was able to come!

Ford had a whole generator on his estate that powered everything, and ironically, on the day he died, the river powering the generator flooded and knocked the power out on the entire estate. So he died without power, the same way he came into the world. He had built this tunnel underground connecting the generator/garage with the house.

He also had a bowling alley in the house:


I loved this room -- I think it was the living room. There was this huge fireplace and then a large room with wood floors, but my favorite part were the glass doors that opened out onto a large porch.
This was the dining room.

A pretty hallway leading down to what used to be the indoor pool!


The next day, my parents and I headed out of town. We ended up staying at this bed and breakfast outside of Battle Creek. It was modeled after a French chateau, and it was beautiful. We were the only people there besides one woman who we got to talk with over breakfast the next morning. This was the view from my room.

The chateau:


One thing we ended up doing a lot of on this trip was walking around historic districts of various Michigan towns. This was the town of Marshall, MI with its National Historic Landmark District of 19th century houses. It was a cute little town that is also the home of the American Museum of Magic and Turkeyville, USA! :-) Since most places were closed or you needed to call ahead to schedule a tour, we just walked around the neighborhood and ate lunch at the local restaurant called Schuler's. Schuler's has been there for 98 years and has mostly German-type food.

This was one of my favorite houses we saw:


We thought this sign was funny:

The downtown street (it seems that all of Michigan's towns have this kind of downtown area, which I love):


This is their most famous historic house, the Honolulu House. It was built for the town Judge who had served as U.S. consul in the Hawaiian Islands. It apparently has some cute features to it, like pineapples everywhere, but we did not get to go inside.

Next, we headed over to St. Joseph's on the coast of Lake Michigan and stayed there overnight. The next day, we headed up to the little town of Saugatuck on Kalamazoo Lake. Unfortunately, most things were not open yet, but you could tell that it was an adorable place to be over the summer. We drove over to the shore and took a few pics. You can see that it wasn't exactly warm out!


Then we headed to Holland, MI. I ended up coming back to Holland a few weeks later with John, so there are more pictures of this town to come in another post.

My parents and I decided to stop at this tulip farm. They had thousands of beautiful tulips! They also had a wooden shoe and Delft "factory", which was really just a few little workshops that you could see through open windows along the back wall of their store.

Mom on the recreated Dutch bridge leading to the tulips:

Me on the same bridge!







We took about a billion photos of the tulips, but some of the better ones were on my Dad's camera.

I liked this photo so much, I fooled around with it a bit on Picasa (see photo below this one).


We made our way further up to Ludington, which used to be the big lumber town in Michigan. They would send the lumber down the river to Grand Rapids where they would use the lumber to make furniture. (Grand Rapids was the furniture capital of Michigan.) There was an interesting story about a town near Ludington called Singapore. According to legend, when all the trees had been cut down, everyone vacated Singapore which had been a booming lumber town. Because the trees were no longer there to block the wind, enough sand was blown over time to bury the town! (A different version of the story says the townspeople broke down the buildings and took them with them when they left, so there is no actual town underneath the sand.)

Anyway, we watched a beautiful sunset on the beach.




There were these little piles of sand where the sand around them had been blown away by the wind. They looked like little rocks, but they were just sand.

The next day we stopped by Historic White Pine Village on the outskirts of Ludington. It's basically like a little Greenfield Village, where they brought in historic buildings from around the area.

This is a photo of PO Boxes in the historic post office:

A historic trapper's cabin...and a historic trapper! Ha ha - just kidding. :-)

Some old ice cream topping jars in the soda shop.


Liam's new baby carriage! Ha ha. It was actually funny how similar this carriage is to Liam's stroller.

Okay, so when I was little, we used to go to Bob's Big Boy. Then, they closed all the restaurants around here. So when I saw one in Ann Arbor, I was planning on going before I left. Well, there was one on our trip! Hence, the photo. :-) The burger was great! Better than a Big Mac.

After Ludington, we drove through the Manistee National Forest. The most interesting part was that they were doing controlled burning throughout the forest. We got to see and talk to the firefighters about it. We walked up to this platform that gave us a great view of the lake, but also a chance to talk to some other people who were up there bird watching and fire watching.


After the fiery forest, we drove up to Sleeping Bear Dunes. It was probably my favorite part of the trip. You can see here that the dunes are between Glen Lake and Lake Michigan. Both lakes were incredibly blue.

Looking out onto the dunes. Sleeping Bear Dunes are the highest sand dunes outside of the Sahara desert, reaching 460 feet!


I think it's a little hard to tell from this photo, but as we walked up the dune, it looked like we were on the edge of a cliff!

You can tell a little more from this photo how high the dunes are when you look at the crests of the waves down below.









There was a designated dune for people to run down, so Mom and I went up and wrote "LOL" in the sand, which are my nephew's initials. I think we also look kind of like aliens!

Only AFTER hiking around the dunes a bit did we see this sign. Who knew this was cougar habitat??

We spent the night in Traverse City, having come much further north than we had originally intended. But I'm glad we went up there because it was immensely beautiful in that part of Michigan. Our next stop on the way back to Ann Arbor was in Grand Rapids. Once again, we walked around their historic district, called Heritage Hill. There was this Frank Lloyd Wright house, called the Meyer May House.
We spent the night in this gorgeous hotel, the Amway Grand Plaza. This was the historic part of the lobby:

The view of Grand Rapids from our room. I really liked this town. It was more of a city than Ann Arbor, and had a cute downtown area.


Our last stop was the Frederick Meijer Sculpture Garden. They had a butterfly exhibit going on. I have been in one butterfly exhibit before and I must say that despite the beauty of the insects, it does freak me out a little bit to know they could land on me at any minute. :-) But we survived and made it out into the sculpture part of the garden.

This is a cast someone did of Leonardo Da Vinci's horse. In 1482, Da Vinci was commissioned to make an equestrian statue. He designed this horse, but was never able to make it. An American sculptor undertook the task and thus stands the 24-foot high bronze "American Horse". It was pretty impressive! That's my mom and dad at the foot (literally) of the statue.



This may look like my mom is holding a giant spade, but it's an optical illusion! ;-)


The Meijer Gardens was our last stop on the way back to Ann Arbor. The week around Michigan was great and I'm glad I got to see more of the state before I left. I just wish it had been warm enough to go to the Upper Peninsula. I have heard that is great. Well, I'll just have to go back!

Graduation, Take Three

On April 25, 2008, I graduated for the third time in my life, this time with a masters in business administration. I always knew I wanted to go back to school and get a masters degree, but I never really imagined it would be in business. I always pictured myself pursuing anything from neuropsychology to archaeology to marine biology. A lot of "ologies". :-) But in the end, this made the most sense for my life and I am absolutely glad I did it. Not only did it position me for the career I want to pursue, but I met a lot of great people and had a multitude of interesting, challenging, and fun experiences over the past two years.

My parents arrived Thursday evening and we grabbed a late dinner at one of my favorite places, Grizzly Peak. I also gave them a tour of the house since they had not been up here to visit yet this year. On Friday we went to a nice reception thrown by the Dean at the business school. All the students and their families were there, and luckily the weather was really nice - sunny and warm. My parents really enjoyed getting to meet some of my classmates and their families. It was catered with what I guess you would call heavy hors d'oeuvres. We were there chatting for a few hours before having to go back home to get ready for the big ceremony.




Unfortunately, Shannon had already left so she was not at graduation. So, it was just me, Mike, Eric, and our families and significant others at the house. John arrived and surprised me with a balloon and some beautiful flowers!

We started putting on our caps and gowns and those pesky hoods that no one could figure out how to put on correctly. Once I put everything on I really felt like a graduate! We probably spent a little too much time taking photos because we rushed out of the house right when we were supposed to be there (sheepish grin). But, luckily, about a few hundred other people were on the same timetable, so there was no problem once we got there. We still had a while to wait.



There were a bunch of people taking photos so that's why we are all looking in different directions in this photo.



All the graduates crowded into the halls of the Crisler Arena, where Michigan has its basketball games. We grouped together in our sections and started taking photos. I found some of my good friends and we all got in line so we could sit next to each other. It was extremely hot in the waiting area - we were all stifling underneath our polyester gowns. We were hoping it would be cooler in the arena itself, but no luck! At least after a while the air came on and it cooled a little bit. Anyway, after waiting in the holding pen, we finally processed into the arena with our sections.







My section was front and center! I was literally three rows from the stage, which was so nice compared to my undergrad ceremony. I always envied those graduate students who sat in the front! We had some time once we got in there to look around as everyone else filed in. I found my parents and John sitting in the stands.

We had several speakers and hundreds of students to go through, but the ceremony actually went by very quickly. Our speakers included the dean, our keynote speaker John Denniston from Kleiner Perkins, and several grad and undergrad student award winners. Overall, the speeches were very good, especially when compared to my undergrad keynote speaker. I don't know if any of you WM grads remember that speech, but it was SO boring! Mr. Denniston spoke about the greentech industry. I felt like the theme of most of the speeches was basically: be businesspeople with heart and passion. Don't just do something for the money, and have a life in addition to work. So all in all, a good message. I think my favorite speech was from one of the undergrads who wrote a cute Dr. Seuss-esque poem.

After all the speeches, they started calling each student by name to walk across the stage. It was run like a military operation! I guess those Operations professors made their money on that day since it was so efficient! After the PhD students, the evening MBAs, the executive MBAs, and the Global MBAs, they started calling the full-time MBAs. We went section by section, and so eventually they came around to my section, Section 4, and my row. I handed the notecard with my name on it to my friend Aaron and he called my name. Off I went across the stage, shook the dean's hand, and received a decorative Ross School of Business tile instead of the actual diploma. They shuffled us through a staged photo just off stage, and then back to our seats ("keep moving, keep moving!"). It went by so quickly! I guess it was pretty representative of the past two years in that way.

After hearing the rest of the MBAs and all the undergrads get called, the ceremony was over. I met up with my parents and John to take a bunch of photos and afterwards, the four of us went to a late dinner at the Chop House, the nicest restaurant in town in my opinion.

Here are some photos for your enjoyment!

The cameraman for the jumbo tron. I think I may have made it on there because he was pointing the camera right at me during the national anthem.

People processing into the stadium

The program and notecard that we wrote our names on for the announcers.

I spotted my parents and John in the stands. Sorry for the grainy image.

The hoods.

The dean

My friend Sach, giving his speech.

We had these weird long things under our regular sleeves that showed we were getting a masters degree.

Disorientation Week: Gladiators, Ready!

Yet another DiSorieNtatIon week activity: Gladiator Joust! This one was organized by my roommate Mike and took place on the lawn of the Hill House. The Hill House is basically the business school frat house, although both women and men live there. It's always occupied by business school students and is the site of at least a few big parties every year.

So I don't know if you have ever watched the show, American Gladiators (if not, you should tune in this Monday because it is very funny to watch), but this is an event they do on that show.

This is Mike and another MBA2 who I don't know jousting. Mike was definitely the champion except when he went up against my friend Chris Wilson, and then it was a pretty even tie.

Here I am getting dominated. I think I was afraid to hit too hard.

And me getting dominated again. :-)



Me having fun bouncing on the bouncy floor. You can't quite tell by this photo, but I am actually in the air.

Now was my time to shine! I went up against Shannon, who was more afraid to use force than I was and who was a much more even match.

I thought this was hilarious: this guy Dan was just laying out on the edge of the bouncy pen while all this jousting action was going on around him. He almost got knocked off a couple times.

Another view. Mike and Kevin were jousting off of the podiums while Dan was peacefully laying there.


Now Evan came and he was the first one to use the head gear. I thought it looked really funny.

Canoeing in Action

I forgot to post this canoeing video on the canoe trip post!

Disorientation Week: Mystere

Another one of the events I went to during DisOriEntaTioN week was a dance called "Mystere", modeled after a Cirque du Soleil show, I think. It was a TON of fun! Our house had a pre-party to which about 60 people showed up. We got all dressed up, which is always nice. They had buses as usual to take us to the venue, a nearby country club.

Here are some photos from our pre-party:

John in his new suit :-)

Me, Annie, Aaron, and Shannon. Aaron did not originally intend to go to the dance, so he was dressed very casually. But he ended up going to the dance after all!

Annie, Aaron, Mike, and John

A view of the crowd in our dining room

Dan (we went to elementary school together), Falguni, Eric, and me

Me, Max, Evan, and Tiffany

Mike and Katie (Katie used to live in my current room)

Me and Shashi, an old section mate

Me, Eric, and John (and Eric's head is not actually touching John's shoulder although it looks like it and we had fun laughing about it)

Me, Amer, Vidhya, and Falguni. Amer and Vidhya met during last year and are now married!

The roomies: Mike, me, Shannon, and Eric

The roomies being crazy :-)

Another view of the crowd, mixing and mingling like good business students should :-)

Aaron and John: bosom buddies :-) (They get along really well.)

John and me all dressed up

Shannon, Aaron, and Manjari, all my old section mates

So, Aaron almost always sticks out his tongue for photos and I used to do that a lot, so it's kind of a thing when we take photos together.

Norbert, me, Eric, Shannon, and Manjari

Me and my Mill Creek Towne buddy, Dan

I love Eric in the back of this photo :-)
Falguni, me, Manjari, Lara, and Emily

Manjari, Lara, Christian, me, and Tanya

Eric, me, and Emily

Max, me, and John on the bus on the way to the dance

My friend Erin and me at the dance

This is my twin, Vicky. She and I were born at the exact same minute. I mean, don't we look alike?? :-) She was one of the organizers of the dance.

Sach and me

Jess, Ed, Joi, and me. All section mates.

So, at this dance, the DJ was awesome, but they also had a room with gambling and a belly dancer perform. This is a view of the Blackjack table. The girl on the far left is Bridget. She was an intern with me at Toyota. Next to her is my section mate Nate.

A view of the crowd in the gambling room.

Some craziness!

Even more craziness! Well, at least with me. :-)

I think you know these people by now.

Some dancing with the gang. Suzanne is the girl on the far left.

Andy Davis (awesome guy who I drove back to DC with over winter break last year), Suzanne, and me. All DC peeps!

On the bus on the way home after a late but fun night.

And on the walk home from the school.

It was such a fun night, and everyone I know had a great time. :-)

Disorientation Week: Gently Down the Stream

I can canoe. Canoe? :-)

The week leading up to graduation is called DiSoriEntaTioN week and MBA2s plan all sorts of fun activities. I wasn't able to participate in all of them, but I did attend several events, so you will see a few entries for each event I went to.

The first one was a canoe trip down the Huron river, which flows through Ann Arbor. It was a gorgeous day and SO much fun! I shared a canoe with two of my roomies, Mike and Shannon. Somehow I got the middle seat in the bottom of the canoe, but it wasn't so bad. Since I couldn't really steer the canoe, I had less of a job to do, and part way through the journey we gave my paddle to another canoe that had overturned and lost a paddle. So then I didn't have to do ANY work! :-) The trip took a total of about 3 hours or so and about 60 people went.

Me and my friend Sach:

Here we are listening to instructions:


Our royal chariots:
Shannon, Mike, and me, ready to take on the river!

This is the family of a guy from my section named Cory. He is very nice, super smart, and somehow managed to be one of the only people who always did the homework despite having three little girls at home. He used to be a professional beach volleyball player and showed his athletic skills by doing a backflip off the back of the canoe! You can tell his daughters just adore him. His wife Kerri was also very nice whenever I saw her at events. They looked so cute in their canoe, I had to take a photo.


Here is a closer photo of the girls. Unfortunately, the middle daughter Izzy was diagnosed with leukemia last year, so it has been a very trying year for their family. But they have been amazing through it, and Izzy is getting better every day!

I cracked up because their youngest daughter Ryan was laying like this on the bow of the boat the whole time, like a figurehead. :-)


Some fellow canoers:

Looking back at a few of the bridges and other canoes coming down the river:

Me and Mike:
Shannon, our canoe master:

These are two of my classmates, Amer and Chaumanix. They were on the M-Trek (a pre-school trip) with Shannon and apparently had trouble with their canoe and flipped it on a river trip during that. So they were happy to be doing so well on this trip! Paddle High-Five!

At one point, we hooked up with two other canoes and drifted down the river together. This is a girl named Kati and Shannon:

A girl named Elise and my friend Sach:

A view of the river:
Me, Mike, Elise, Sach, and in the way back is a guy named Steve:

Luckily, we made it down the river without incident, although at one point we went through some tiny rapids and almost got caught on a huge rock underneath the surface. But we survived!

Common Grill House Dinner

Going back to a few weeks ago...

The Casa Minerva gang went out to a nice dinner at The Common Grill -- the same place John took me for our Valentine's Day dinner. It was delicious! After dinner, we drove by the Jiffy plant, which is just down the street in Chelsea.