A blog for us cousins

I had the brilliant idea that we should have a blog for the Advani Cousins.... an easy place to check in on each other and share news. A way to stay better connected since we all live so far apart.

You can post as often or as infrequently as you like - but the more the better! Pictures are good - for the same reason you like reading magazines a lot more than dense journals with nothing but text (or maybe that's just the grad student in me -- i feel like i haven't read anything without two columns of tiny text in ages.)

As for an update from me...

I'm well into my second and final semester of my program. I'm definitely loving it - but change my mind on a daily basis as to whether I'm excited to be done and ready to start working or really sad that I can't just spend my days getting smarter.

Some highlights from my semester thus far:

Mom and Dad came to visit for my birthday. The took some of my friends out to dinner to celebrate. We ate in a restaurant in an old house and sat in a private room. It was a great night! Mom and Dad seemed to have a good time and even went out to a bar with us afterwards. They didn't stay at the bar for more than 5-10 mins -- but I was still impressed that they went at all.

I also celebrated my birthday with my friends here. They surprised me and took to me the Knicks-Celtics game (a fun coincidence that the Knicks played in Boston on my actual birthday if you ask me). Here's a pic from the game. There were 9 of us there - but this pic came out the best.

After the game we ended up heading to a bar in Harvard Sqr to meet some of the others. It was a long night that even included karaoke:

(the girl to my left is Carly - she's my best friend up here - we do lots together - and i'm going to her wedding in Banff this October!)

One last picture highlight - last night I went to the North End in (of?) Boston for the first time. It's Boston's "Little Italy." We had an amazing dinner, got cannolis, and then ended up getting cupcakes from a bakery that was giving away what they had left at the end of the night (in case you've forgotten -- anything free - particularly food is very exciting when you're a student)!

(see, there's carly again to my left. the guy is our friend matt. he's also in our program. the 3 of us agreed that last night was one of the most fun nights we've had since moving here.)

Finally, for those of you interested in the more academic side of what I'm doing up here:

I had to make a personal website for one of my classes. It's really rudimentary - but feel free to check it out. I'm actually no longer taking the Teachers Unions class - I dropped it in favor of doing an Independent Study with my advisor. For the Independent Study I'm working on a research team that's funded by the DOE. It's exploring the use of handheld computers and GPS systems with middle school kids in an "Augmented Realities" curriculum. Check it out: Handheld Augmented Realities Project (HARP).

I'm also on one other research team: EdTags.org. This project is exploring the powers of social bookmarking for educators. For those of you that consider yourself to be educators - feel free to create an account and play around! That project's been keeping me extra busy the last week or so since I'm helping plan a training session for it that's being held later this week. Speaking of things I'm doing this week - I have a ton of reading I should be doing...

I hope you all latch on to this idea and start posting as well!

Love,

Uma