She's home

We're done with the college visits, and thank goodness because it was exhausting.

We brought Sena back home with us from DC, and she'll be here for a little while :)

This is a bakery called Tatte, which Sena introduced us to and Aiyana and I went to both in Boston and DC. It's really good.

Aiyana with her french look fits right in.

in front of our Airbnb in DC.

Ed, putting together a cardboard model of the inlet cone for the wind tunnel, before passing the design on to the machinist.

peace

Sena's coming home!

Sena's internship with Senator Blumenthal is ending and we're going to pick her up in DC at the end of the week. She'll be home hopefully until at least the end of August, depending on when she finds an apartment and job in DC. I'm so happy that she'll be back here for a while.

In other news, the wind tunnel that Ed and I are making for my aerospace class is coming along. Everyone is very excited about it. It is now with a machinist who's doing some work on it.

And our Europe trip is coming up soon. Here's a little peak:

And a few pictures of Aiyana, my flowers, books and cats. 

Peace

Boston, again

Yesterday, Aiyana and I visited Boston College and Boston University. We liked BU the most.

This is around BU

and here is BC

And the obligatory café stop.

Last day in Montreal

Aiyana really liked Montreal, especially McGill.

Both

How does it feel being a tourist in your own city?

The beauty of living in multiple places is that you can experience them both as a local and as a tourist. Today, I am enjoying Montreal as both.

In Montreal

I'm a little bit toured out. We've seen 4 universities so far in Toronto and Ottawa.

 Tomorrow Ed and Aiyana are visiting one more university in Ottawa, but I am taking a break. I am going to hang out and do some school work in one of my favorites cafés in Montreal, where I used to work a long time ago, Café Castel, nextdoor to McGill University!!! Looking forward to that for sure.

On Friday, we'll be touring McGill and Concordia, and on Saturday we'll be heading back home.

Next week, Aiyana and I are visiting a couple more schools in Boston.

Then, we're all going to DC, and Sena's coming home with us for the month of August, and the 4 of us will be going to Romania and Turkey. So it's a full summer.

I must say that all this college touring is pretty overwhelming, but it's also kind of interesting, and definitely good to have a wider context based on which to make a decision.

My mom's garden:

Impromptu stop at Niagara falls, Canadian side, and then on to Toronto

Second and third weeks of summer vacation

Aiyana and I have been continuing to visit universities. We visited Northeastern University in Boston earlier this week. That was very impressive. And the pricetag was very impressive as well, but not in a good way, at around 70k per year! Some pictures are below.

Yesterday, we visited University of Rhode Island. Not impressed with it. I don't think Aiyana will apply. The University itself is not academically that impressive, and the surrounding area is dead. It would've been a wasted trip, were it not for Aiyana's excellent play list, which we listened to on our ride, and for the fact that we always find a way to make our trip fun even when we're in the middle of nowhere, as we were yesterday.

Tomorrow, Ed, Aiyana and I are driving to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal for a week. We'll be visiting a bunch of schools there, and we're looking forward to that, plus the change of scenery.

Here are some pictures from this week.

Next time you're in Boston, try Life Alive. Excellent café.

My beautiful Aiyana. I'll miss her so much if she goes away to college. Just like I miss Sena.

Peace

First week of summer vacation

This is my first time since I was a school student having the summer off. I must say it feels weird, but also good, like I'm a little kid again. Remember that feeling when the last day of school arrived and you had the whole summer ahead of you?

So here are some of the things I'm doing this summer:

Spending time with Aiyana, and as much of it as possible! We go on little outings around here, like for example Elizabeth park and West Hartford last week, which I'll post some pictures from.

We're also taking lots of college tours: Aiyana has already visited Washington DC colleges on her own, and Ed and I will also go with her again in July, when Sena's internship ends. 

Aiyana and I are also going to Boston to visit colleges in the next couple of weeks, and then we'll be going to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal in mid July with Ed.

In August, we're taking family trip, all 4 of us, to Romania and Turkey. We'll be in Bucharest, and in the mountains and the seaside, and we're also visiting Istanbul.

Other than that, I'm still going to school for a few hours each day, working on my aerospace class, which I'll be teaching in September. And, Ed and I are working on building a wind tunnel, also for that class.

We all miss Sena a lot, but the one thing that makes it easier is that she seems happy there.

The slow return

As children, though we don't try, we are masters at The Joy of Being.

As we grow up, we lose that and we start trying. We try hard to achieve. We have goals that we think, once achieved, will bring us happiness. But that happiness is ever elusive. As soon as we achieve a goal, it slips away from us, and now we pin our happiness on a new goal or achievement.

Eventually, with time, we come to recognize that what we are looking for is what we once had, that simple joy of being, which is available to anyone at any moment, though it takes a certain state of being to be able to feel it.

Life is practice in cultivating that state of being.

One year ago today

One year ago today I went to the emergency room for my gallbladder. Although it all ended well, it was a really scary time, and it took over my whole summer. Today, I am so grateful to be here, feeling well and able to enjoy the many blessings (sorry for the cliche, but it's quite true) of every ordinary day.

School is almost over and I feel really good about how this year went. My first year full time teaching!!!

I am also excited about a grant I received recently from our school, to build a wind tunnel for my aerospace class next year. 

Ed is helping me build it, or should I say that he is building it, and I am helping him design it.

In other news, Sena is doing well, working in the Senate building in DC. I miss her and still worry a lot, but I'm also happy and proud of her.

Aiyana is going to visit her soon, and she'll also visit a couple of universities she's interested in at the same time.

The farm is going well due to our amazing farm manager, Dan, without whom there would be no farm right now.

I'm just about done reading War and Peace. It is truly amazing and even better than anything I ever heard about it. Hemingway said that to read the Russians is like opening a great treasure, and he is right. Opening a great treasure that will stay with you forever. That's been my experience with Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. I got a bunch more Tolstoy from the library to treat myself over the summer.

Thank you for reading my blog and for being interested. I am grateful to be here to share.

Peace