Early End

So...today was the last and fourth round of the preliminary competitions. Steve and Arli had this round, and they KICKED ASS. After the 85 minute round, both Jason and I were like- HOLY CRAP. That was FANTASTIC. They were SOOO good. It was ridiculous. They went against Peking University, who were really aggressive, but they held their own and TOTALLY won the round. The session just went so well, and I was blown away. Everyone in that room were- judges, mediator, coaches, observers, etc.

Steve and Arli as Team Awesome.

Prepping for the session.

With the Chinese team and a really fantastic mediator.

The four of us came back and totally passed out for a bit before venturing out again. We wanted to go to the Musee D'Orsay, but ...it was CLOSED. Monday = CLOSING TIME. No bueno. So we walked around, and by this time, we are extremely comfortable in the part of Paris that encompasses the Louvre-Arc du Triomphe-Eiffel Tower-Champs Elysees area. So instead, we walked from Musee D'Orsay back through Champs Elysee and stopped by a France in Relief museum. It is the COOLEST museum ever, especially for topography/map lovers. These reliefs of all of France were done in the 1800s-now, and they are exact miniatures of these small French towns/cities. It was really neat. We did take some really cool pictures:

The four of us are the ones in the mirror. This is to give a scale of just how big these reliefs are.

They had this photo booth thing...that we couldn't figure out...

We thought they were silhouettes

Until some guy showed us it WASN'T...

I swear we're smart enough for law school...

We went back to our hotel afterwards, and got ready for the reception at Jones Day for the competitors. Um....Jones Day is in a freakin MUSEUM. Not kidding. Will post more pics as I get them from my teammates, but they had this 18th century style French bed, and every single room in there looked like we were walking through the Versailles. Service was impeccable, and wine/champagne/hors d'oeuvres. ....at last, the winners were announced....

Jones Day. One of the rooms. It was just absolutely ridiculous.

So...American has always had a really good showing at this competition, and we even won one year. The competition has evolved a lot in the past couple years, and this year there were 68 schools entered. Only 16 schools advance to the next round. They also give out 'special awards' at this reception, and there are a handful- best mediation plan, best opening, best overall performance, best advocacy, and best improvement. Well, I am proud to say that we won Best Teamwork! We did not advance to the semi-finals rounds, but I am proud we got this special recognition. Our teamwork dynamic is the best in the competition, that's pretty big, and saying something. The 16 schools who advanced were excellent and well-prepared, and we do wish them the best.

Since we weren't part of the 16 teams who had to wake up at 7am the next morning to compete, we stayed at the Jones Day reception and went out to the competition bar afterwards with the rest of the mediators and judges. many were surprised to see that we did not advance, but it is what it is. We all had a great time hanging out with the people from the competition. Meeting all these people from around the world really is something.

Day 2 Competition

Day two of competition today! Location: DLA Piper. Time: 2:15pm. Team: Jason and Kristen.

Jason and I were in charge of the third round today, against Singapore University. They were INTENSE. It was a little unnerving, but I think overall Jason and I held our ground and had our best mediation thus far. It was a little frustrating in the process and the feedback, but otherwise pretty ok. Our tactics and strategies changed, but Jason and I remained civil, diplomatic, and steadfast in our interests. Who knew mediation could be this adversarial!

Second round @ DLA Piper.

It's Tebow-time. Only appropriate in front of room 3.16.

After the mediation, I jetted off to meet up with Duane and DeVere at their hotel. Having family in the same foreign city (especially one like Paris!) is sooo cool. DeVere wasn't feeling well at ALL :( so Duane and I went out according to original plans that DeVere had set out. We had drinks at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which was really nice :), then headed over back to Champs Elysees area for a set-course dinner and a bottle of wine. Afterwards, we totally walked along the street with all the designer houses. The House of Dior stretched almost a block and was AWESOME. I drooled past Chanel...you know. The goods. Duane and I got a little lost and walked around the entire Arc du Triomphe trying to find my hotel. Such good times :)

Some ridiculously good desserts.

Game Face ON

The competition rounds finally came to fruition yesterday (Friday)! For the preliminary rounds, Jason and I have problems 1 + 3, and Steven and Arli have problems 2 + 4. Jason and I were first, and our round started at 8:15am. Let me tell you, that is EARLY. We got to Clifford Chance, who was hosting this, and the law firm is BEAUTIFUL. Across from the Louvre, it's a good spot. Our first round was against Cardozo, and we did well! It was a good round, very very good indeed. Jason and I were EXHAUSTED afterwards. These rounds are 85 minutes each, with time before and after allotted for judges and mediators. We came back, had lunch, and passed out. At 5:00pm, Arli and Steve had their round against a Belgian school, and it went really well too!

Four of us!

Team Mandeep!

Team Bartolino!

Post-competition celebrations. Liter of Guiness Let's go!

We're in PAREEE!

We made it! My team and I have been in Paris since Thursday morning. We took an overnight flight from Washington Dulles on Wednesday night. I passed out the entire 7 hours, which kind of put me on schedule already without too much bad jet lag. We got into Paris at 1:30pm, a couple hours later than we were supposed to. Customs was a breeze, and I have my first stamp in my new passport. I'm still bummed that I had to give up my last passport since it was about to expire.

We checked into our hotel- and it is AWESOME. There are four of us- Arli, Jason, and Steve, and we have this great two-bedroom suite that has its own bathrooms and doors, a living area (common area), a dining room table, and a kitchen complete with dishwasher and laundry machines! It's a pretty sweet deal, and extremely roomy. Right outside our door, oddly enough, is the Eiffel Tower. I mean, you can see it. This is what I mean:

Our hotel is Hotel Elysees Union. That's how close the Eiffel Tower is! Splendid!

It was really weird. We didn't notice the Eiffel Tower at all when the cab dropped us off initially. When we left the hotel the first time, we were like, oh...look...Eiffel Tower! Weird.

We walked around the first night. We are right off the Arc du Triomphe, and less than a mile walk from the Eiffel Tower. Pretty close! I'm just giving out a warning now- there are going to be PLENTY of pictures of the Eiffel Tower just because we happen to be around it all the time. We had an awesome first team picture:

Team Paris!

Gorgeous!!! This is sooo close to us!

So we pretty much did some exploring with our coach, had some food, and went back to the hotel to pass out. Next day, I got to see Duane and DeVere :) Here they are over breakfast:

Parisian breakfast

Good thing is I'll see them again Sunday night for dinner. After breakfast, I met back with my team and we went to the International Chamber of Commerce.

In front of the ICC!!

Eiffel tower lit up at night is so pretty!

One week til Par-eee!!!

EEEEK!!! I canNOT believe it is one week til Paris! When the new school semester started, I thought, ok...I have some time to prep, pack, run errands, etc., and then I'll leave for Paris + European adventures. SO WRONG. Now I find myself scrambling. My suits haven't been dry-cleaned (oh well), and I have a ton of stuff I have to take care of before I leave...that'll be for this weekend!

I cannot wait to see Kyle in two weeks when he meets me in Paris with Louise and Sam! He's doing extremely well, still loving his job. He's currently coaching a high school mock trial team. Look at that! Look at him go! And to boot, he took a pro bono case doing asylum work, which is very close and dear to my heart, as you know. Eventually, I hope to go back to working in the deportation realm of immigration law, but for now, I'm trying to learn as much as I can from my firm doing visas. School is going really well, and I'm so far enjoying my classes except for Ethics, which is a mandatory class. It's only made bearable by the fact that I have a good friend in that class, and it's in the mornings so I get it over with early in the day.

Next time I blog, it'll be from Paris!!!!

Fall 2011

Kyle and I are sooooo bad at blogging...this is terrible. The entire fall semester went by without us doing A THING about this. I half-heartedly tried to blog a couple times, but...pretty much failed. Anyway! Some of the highlights and a quick summary: I went part-time in school, and was frantically trying to do all I could for my dissertation, but it was stressing me out really badly. So in December, I decided (along with my advisor) that maybe I would hold off the law job search so that I could focus SOLELY on my dissertation after the bar exam (from July-November) and hopefully graduate with the Ph.D. in December 2012. In the meantime, teach a couple of undergrad classes and maybe do some part-time work with a firm I worked at while I was at UB. Law classes in the fall pretty much wiped me out...I chose some awful classes, because I thought I HAD to take them. I should have taken the approach of taking classes that I would enjoy, which I'm doing this semester, THANK GOD. I started this semester back at the business immigration firm, and will be starting back up with the Public Defender's Office. Besides classes, I'm focusing on enjoying my classes and the mediation competition in Paris in February :) Very eventful semester is coming up, with a lot of traveling like last semester, except this semester it'll all be international :)

So- here goes....

In August, Alison came from England to stay with me for two weeks. She was doing a clinical rotation in Bethesda, so it was pretty perfect! We crammed in a lot of things in the time she was here, since I was working full-time at the firm, and she had her schedule as well. One night, we went spelunking through the Monuments at night, and if you've never been down there at night, DO IT. It is beautiful when it's lit up. Alison managed to rope in some Secret Service men to hang out with us in front of the White House, as only she can haha.

Alison and I in front of the Washington Monument

September: Our good friend Bianca came down to DC to visit, and stayed with me over Labor Day weekend, which was really nice and fun. It was still hot in DC, and we got to check out the MLK memorial. A couple weeks later, Kyle and I flew out to Chicago for Hillary and Michael's wedding! It was BEAUTIFUL. Very unique, quirky, cute, creative, and had so many individual touches on it that you KNEW it was their wedding. Here's a picture of their sendoff, which tells you immediately that it was a very special wedding indeed:

Radio Flyer Wagon :) Big-people version

SUCH a fun wedding. We had a blast, and we got to go to a White Sox game after the wedding (GREAT seats), and just spent a really good long weekend in Chicago. Love the city.

White Sox game with Kyle's parents!

October: October was a pretty eventful month as well. I went up to Buffalo once, and we got to see the Lion King musical. I was scared that it was going to be awful, because...come on, how are animals going to be portrayed onstage? But it was pretty awesome, and they did a job well done. The week before, I flew out to San Francisco (home!) to run the Nike Women's Half Marathon. Robin met me out there, and we survived. Barely. I don't think I have EVER EVER EVER been in so much pain my entire life. I don't think it was the 13.1 miles, but rather the extreme hills from miles 6-10. My friend Raymond was tracking us to estimate when to pick us up, and from miles 1-6, we were trekking along pretty steadily, but from 6-10 it was BAD. The hills were pretty much 90 degree angles, both up and down. From 11-13 it was steady, but the hills took a toll. Regardless, Robin and I finished, and we got our Tiffany necklaces as our finishing medal...from a San Francisco fireman :)

Firemen of San Francisco giving us that little blue box.

What a fun weekend with Robin!

As you can see, that was a real highlight (the necklace, not the running). It was also really nice to be home. I hadn't been in San Francisco since our wedding (June 2010), so it was good to see a lot of great friends :) October is also the month of Halloween!!!! :) Kyle came down for Halloween weekend, and I had a BLAST dressing him up. People have been telling me off-hand that Kyle reminds them of "that guy" from Glee...aka BLAINE WARBLER. Hey, I'm ok with that. Blaine is good looking, Kyle is good-looking..it works. SO. I made Kyle the Warbler Academy blazer, and some really nice mom sent me the Dalton Academy patch, and I dressed as Lea Michelle. Come to think of it, I probably should have gone as a female warbler, but oh well. It worked out pretty well. Here is a great pic of us:

Kyle kinda looks like Blaine. It's a little eerie.

It was awesome. Bahahhaha. Kyle is such a good sport about all this too :)

November: November got pretty dicey. I peaked out for a good two weeks to go to San Antonio for Lanie's wedding/Thanksgiving with Kyle's family. We actually hadn't been to San Antonio since Christmas 2009, almost two years, so it was really nice to be back in town and with ALL the family in one place at one time (yes, all 6 Pozza kids were in!). Also great? We got to stay with Stacy (Kyle's sister) Haley, and Gracie and Stacy got engaged!!! CanNOT wait for that wedding!!!!!

ALL SIX Pozza kids together in one spot :)

But first, Lanie's wedding...it was SUCH a beautiful wedding. I was a bridesmaid, and the theme was very vintagey-50's-Hill Country Texas-ish. It was amazing. The whole thing was at Barr Mansion, so we drove into Austin for the weekend, and had SUCH a blast. Love love love the girl :) Not to mention she made a GORGEOUS bride.

MVC REUNION. Robin is the last of us to be married!!!

We then drove back to San Antonio, where we were for a good week and a half for Thanksgiving festivities. Played a couple rounds of golf, went to Andrew's movie premiere for Supernatural Activity, and generally just had a wonderful time with the nieces (Addie and Haley) and all the siblings, plus cousins and aunts. It was really good TLC, and Kyle and I certainly enjoyed being in town. Of course, reality set in, and we had to go back to our respective cold places- Buffalo and DC :)

December: Man, December was rough. FINALS. After finals were over, and my break started (Dec. 12), everything went uphill. I did absolutely nothing and it was amazing. I was in Buffalo for a couple days, hung out with Kyle a lot with his office people, which was fun :) and saw a lot of good Buffalo friends. I jetted to NYC the following Monday for 4 days with Lanie and Doug! We stayed at the New Yorker hotel, which, if you look it up, has AMAZING history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Yorker_Hotel). It's the hotel with the landmark "New Yorker Hotel" sign, and was pretty close to a lot of things. Lanie and I did a bunch of stuff...we went shopping, we walked EVERYWHERE, lunch at the Plaza, the Met, 9/11 memorial, and Serendipity for the frozen hot chocolate. I love New York City, and love it even more with one of my best friends:

Bryant Park

The Met

It was a good 4 days of fun, and I made it back to Buffalo just in time for the holidays. We bought all the necessary presents, packed it up, sent them to San Antonio/San Francisco, and just hung out. Christmas Eve, we went to the Buffalo Bills/Denver Broncos game. I seriously thought it was going to be miserable because of the weather and because the Bills were having an AWFUL second half of the season, but it was unseasonably warm (until the sun dipped behind the stadium...at which point my feet froze), and the Bills CRUSHED the Broncos. It was a GREAT game. We sat behind the opposing bench, and I could just SEE Tebow. ;) Might have focused on that more than the game!

Buffalo Bills game :)

The day after (Christmas!), Kyle and I spent the day together, doing what we love best- being couch potatoes and watching BASKETBALL. You have NO idea how happy I am the NBA is back on and playing. It was depressing the Lakers lost, and seeing Odom in a Mavs jersey was NOT cool, but it is what it is, and hopefully the Lakers can have a good season and stay in the playoffs long enough...The day after Christmas, Kyle and I went to the Sabres game. Since living in Buffalo, I've found that I LOVE hockey. It's exciting, it's fun, and it moves fast.

Sabres game against the Washington Capitals!

The following weekend was New Years Eve, and we went with our good friends Gevork and Ellen to the casino! Rob and Stef met us there, and we had a pretty good time. Kyle won some money (yay!) and we go to play a couple hours' worth of blackjack. It was a really good time. When it came time for midnight to come, Rob was able to lead us to the American Falls, and we were able to count down to the new year at Niagara Falls! It was pretty freakin cool:

Ringing in the new year! Niagara Falls is behind us!

So ringing in the New Year was pretty cool. And the next bit of exciting news----- we're moving into a house!!!! We found a BEAUTIFUL house in Williamsville to rent (well, Snyder really, but border Williamsville), and it's 3 bedrooms, full basement, great front and backyard, and it's been really well taken care of. We're super excited to be living in a house, and we definitely think it's about time for us to move into a house together. It's pretty fitting, considering we'll be living together again starting in May :) I am so looking forward to it.

Our new home :)

Slave to Technology

This past week a lot of things happened, all at once. The first, is that my Macbook Air decided to break again...so I had to take it to the Genius Bar. You know it's bad when the people behind the counter start recognizing you. Anyway, they kept my laptop for two days, and on Friday, I got a phone call saying that they wanted to replace my old Mac Air with the new 11-inch Macbook Air! I was SO HAPPY. You see, I strongly believe that an Apple product lasts for 3 years, and then everything goes kaboom. My Mac Air was nearing the 3 year mark, and I had 1 month left on my Applecare. After graduation, I was planning to buy the 11 inch mac air anyway, so Apple essentially gave me an early graduation present, minus the hefty fee it would have come with! So I am now a proud owner of this computer:

It's so tiny I LOVE IT!!!

Note to self: NEVER buy first generation of anything from Apple!

I am so excited! Also, I went approximately 2 weeks without my phone, and Kyle went ahead and got me a new blackberry torch yesterday. I am so...at peace now :) I need technology to function. I've been carrying around a little $10 flip phone for the talk/text capabilities, and then my iPad for my data/email capabilities. It was getting a little ridiculous, and I feel more connected right now, with a new (FREE!) laptop, and a new (pretty good deal from ATT) Blackberry Torch. Not quite ready to jump into the iPhone bandwagon yet, but maybe in a year and half when the new phone comes out :)

This past week it's been absolutely unbearably hot. On Friday the heat index was 120 degrees!!! It's one thing when it's summer weather, but another when it just plain hurts to breathe outside...this week is supposed to be in the 80s so I'm crossing my fingers. The past two weekends Kyle drove down to DC to see me. He's been doing really well, still loving his job, which I find amazing and awesome and very...jealousy-inducing :) He has already gone to court multiple times, which is great for litigation experience, and he plays a lot of golf with the people at his firm. He finally has his name on the door and his official business cards, so I am SUPER proud of him. Super super super.

Yay!!!!!!!