Saket Vora

Last Friday my family and I joined my friends and professors at Reynolds Coliseum for our department graduation. It was a nice commencement ceremony where many of my friends and a few professors got to meet my family for the first time. Afterward, we drove to the Park Alumni Building for the Park Scholarships Senior Gala, a get together and commemoration for the achievements that our class of 2007 Park Scholars have had over the last four years. We followed this by going to my friend Mary Elting’s home for dinner. Mary is a Park in my class but graduated in 3 years and went to Stanford on a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship grant. I went to her wedding to Matt Elting last summer and visited her and Matt in February when I was in Palo Alto for a conference. Their family is unbelievably gracious and wonderful. They have a wood fired pizza oven they imported from Italy which is simply divine. I got to meet Caitlin’s family for the first time as well and caught up with Jessica.

On Saturday I joined the family and went to my sisters’ department graduation at Chapel Hill. There were a lot more graduates than I thought. We were going to go around the campus and shoot photographs by the iconic Old Well, but it started to rain so we cut it short. Later that evening I went to a post-graduation get together at Caitlin’s home in Raleigh. Many of my good friends were there and their home is inspiring.

During this time, my uncle and his family were touring the country. They visited Disneyworld, then flew to Chicago and then saw Niagara Falls. They visited a friend in Washington, D.C. and on Monday the rest of my family drove up to meet them then continue up to New York City. I stayed by myself in Cary. I had a meeting at RTI International, where I will be working in July-August, and had some errands to run in town. On Tuesday I joined my friends for a portion of the Hillsborough Hike, where you walk along the length of Hillsborough and have a beer at every establishment you can. They started at 12pm but I joined them around 5:30pm. We left the final place at around 10pm.

Tomorrow the whole group (my family + uncle’s family) are leaving for a weeklong trip to Las Vegas & the Grand Canyon. The last time I was in Las Vegas it was 1992 or 1994, so both the city and I have changed a lot. My cousin Anup is also meeting us there, so we are going to have a great time.

On June 2nd, my friend Naman and my sisters will leave for a month long road trip across America. But more on that later.