little dreams and big dreamers

I've never been very good at remembering my dreams. And with the exception of recurring dreams and those others which i've recently dreamed, within the last week I've found my dreaming patterns to be quite opposite! Last night I had a dream that I found atleast 4 delightfully furry cats! The night before, I dreamt that I had found a 'KMart' in Bulgaria- at which point I ran in to buy PowerBars and instant brown rice. ???? If its true that your dreams are trying to tell you something from your inner concious...then how funny is it that my biggest wants are brown rice, cats, and powerbars!? food for thought...

this post will continue as more of a brag than an update;

The Vanderbilt Commodores UPSET #16 Georgia last night in last-play field goal. This victory ended some 11 years of losses to the Bulldogs....go 'Dores!

In other Vanderbilt news, we're nearly a top 50 university...internationally!! I recently agreed to do alumni interviewing for Vandy here in Bulgaria, and I was shocked at how high the admissions standards are today. Mom & Dad- good think i was born in 1982 and not 1986/7! I never wouldn't have made it to college! haha. But anyway, its nice to see Vanderbilt getting some of the respect it deserves. As one of the few top 20 universities in the states which has never heard alligations of professors handing out top marks (our current chancellor is said to have left Brown in part because he thought professors gave too many high marks), its sometimes hard to fight your way to the top, but we're getting there!

as a dabbler in Economics and social policy, I've always been nothing but facsinated, intrigued and flat out in love with the Grameen Bank. This weekend, an esteemed Vandy alum -whose believe in giving even the poorest people a chance at living a decent life- was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Yunus has flat out changed the lives of millions of impoverished people through the micro-credit lending system of the Grameen bank. Is this kind of belief and this kind of daring that makes me want to keep giving to society in any way that I can. This is not a success story of several people or of one man, it is the success of more than 6.5 million people- and counting. In Spring 2005, Dr. Yunus spoke at Vanderbilt and it was an amazing experience for me. I still sharply remember the day, where I was sitting in Wilson 101...

speaking about his idea, he says;

"So I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked. Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programmes, and I could see it was not billions of dollars people needed right away. They needed a tiny amount of money. That was in 1976."

okay, so i was going to brag a lot about other stupid stuff, but i am just so impressed and ecouraged by someone like Dr. Yunas that with that last quote in mind I say, "here's to the ones who challenge the status quo."

http://www.grameen-info.org/