Farmer's Market

Today the Charlottesville Farmer's Market has finally returned. For me, this marks the official beginning of spring.

Fresh free-range farm eggs, cheese tastings and the wonderful smells followed by a stroll in the historic downtown mall sipping an iced- mocca on a warm sunny day.

No better way to start the weekend.

Building Goodness in April

Building Goodness in April, or BGIA as it is known here is something that attracted my interest since before I came to Darden, when I was deciding between schools and was reading about it on the Dean's blog. It is an amazing thing when contractors, students and local shops all partner together with the Building Goodness Foundation and volunteer to renovate around 10 homes of low income and/or disabled families in the Charlottesville/Albemarle community. It is a genuine gesture of giving, and it is extremely rewarding.

A lot of planning is required in order to accomplish so much in just one day and it is student led.
It starts with the inspection of homes finding the best candidates for projects. It is followed by a fundraiser where we all auction all sorts of stuff from golf lessons and 5 course meals through hotel rooms or a cabin in Vermont to pole dancing lessons or a self affirming evening with two students accompanied by a keg.

This year we collected $45,000. Local businesses donate goods, cash and services as well.
We targeted 10 homes and built 2 playgrounds.
Each house is assigned 3 house captains (yours truely was one) that oversee the planning of the work to be done on the house, the interaction with the residents, coordination of the professional workers, purchasing and collecting the materials, driving 16-24 ft. trucks and organizing volunteers.

On build day, 165 Darden students and 100 contractors charge the houses and do their thing.

It's a reall challenge, but we've had some amazing accomplishments on build day. We have given back to the community that is hosting us for these two years and there is nothing that can compare to the feeling we got seeing the expression of our home's residents come back to their new home.








I have had the opportunity to work with great people this build day - the contractors and my classmates who did the most amazing job and accomplished incredible things.



TV news coverage: http://www.charlottesvillenewsplex.tv/home/headlines/42476527.html

Last year GMAC visited us during Build Day:
http://www.gmac.com/teammba/Misc/TeamMBAVideo.htm

U2 Brutus

I love college towns. I wanted to do my MBA in a college town and Charlottesville is possibly the finest of them. Ranked as the best place to live in the US in 2004, C-Ville has a population fourty something thousand people or 120,000 with the surrounding Albemarle county. C-Ville offers historical sites attractions such as Monticello and some of the university buildings that are declared as world heritage sites, Shenandoah National Park,  the Downtown Mall,  as well as 3 movie theaters, a crazy ratio of restaurants per capita and lots of places to go out to.

Above all that, C'Ville has some festivals and a lot of artists and bands, that come to perform here. This time it's U2. 

Tomorrow, students would be able to buy tickets before it opens up to the general public. There are two issues:

1. these tickets would run out fast and 

2. we have class when the e-box office opens

3. each student can buy only 4 tickets

Therefore, a special forces squad composed of brave volunteers who will not be in class at the time and to whom I will be forever thankful, will buy the tickets.

I've never been to a U2 concert before, and I'm really excited about it.

The best professors in the world - Sing it with me

Yesterday I found out that there are still a few gems in C'Ville I haven't had the pleasure of drinking in as the Dardenite TNDC crowd crammed up the Bel-Rio - Bar, live music and more important: food after 22:00! Having Fridays as reading days this Q makes TNDC much more attractive when examining the go no-go decision tree. The jewel in the crown last night was the faculty band (featuring students as well). 

Check out the link to see my strategy professor can do more than talk. 

Knee Deep

We have received the news of a possible day off last night due to extreme weather conditions with mixed feelings (Joy for the day off and fear that the university may claim Friday as a school day).  Warnings of procedures in case of heavy snow and ice were sent all around. We were excited about the possibility to finally see snow in Charlottesville, with the ice around the Jefferson fountain almost gone.

 

The white snow wanabee we saw this morning was really disappointing on so many levels. I admit, the road was a bit slippery to the point that I had actually considered holding the hand rail going down the stairs. I didn’t dare get my hands out of my pockets, since my gloves were in my backpack and was too lazy to take them out.

 

It was a school day alright. The Charlottesville community, however, decided that actions must be taken to protect itself from this white stuff (again, calling it snow would be like calling the UVa lawn a big sand dune). When I got to school, I was looking for chalk marking on the stairs due to the yellow tape surrounding the front stairs of Saunders hall, but they must have been washed off by the rain.

 

We couldn’t deposit our loan check (we’re rich again) since our bank decided to close early “because of the weather”. Lives were saved today as learning teams cancelled their meetings and avoided the slippery roads. Oh and I almost forgot about Interviews being cancelled.

 

So much excitement! With global warming, I just hope we’ll be prepared that well for the hot summer days.