COMICS
I've read up to Ultimate Spider-Man volume 8 (that is I read 5,6,7,8). They have been great, the way they introduced Venom was great and I really like any arcs that have the Kingpin, the writer deals with those stories very well. This comic is great and I am glad I gave it a shot. On the fifth volume, there is a wonderful panel between Peter and Mary Jane, it was just a beautiful drawing and it explained everything with words not being necessary.
Thor by JMS. I had heard great reviews about this, so I was expecing more than I got, but it was still a great read. I'll definitely buy the second trade when it comes out (about 4 months from now).
Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan. This is a wonderful graphic novel. Vaughan is my favorite author in comics and once again he delivers a wonderful book. It is a story about four lions walking in Baghdad after the American bombing in 2003 released the animals form the zoo (not on purpose), it is based on a true story, but of course any dialog between animals is made up. It is a very heart warming book with beautiful art.

MOVIES
Twelve Monkeys I saw this movie with Yuliia and Roma. This movie is one of my favorites, I've seen it about ten times and I enjoy it every single time. We watched it on the math department to take advantage of the big screen projectors. I keep enjoying the connections to other movies (i.e Vertigo). One different thing this time was that after watching Ledger's Joker, Pitt's acting doesn't impress me as much as before.
Pineapple Express I went to watch this movie with Sid, it was very funny, I think he laughed almost every second of the movie. I don't know if I would recommend it as I think a big part of the laughing experience was watching it with Sid who also laughs a lot, it is hard to judge how good some comedies are as I believe they greatly rely on how one feels at the moment.

SALSA
I went salsa dancing on Thursday and on Saturday and I had a lot of fun. Thursday was the usual Thursday Night Salsa fun experience, while Saturday was a bit different as it is only every second Saturday of the month when Gusanoz (mexican restaurant) has salsa. Sid filmed Yuliia and me dancing a couple of songs and it was very fun to see me dance with her on a video, it is nice to see how happy we are when dancing and to see how good I look dancing, I definitely have a lot of style.

BOSTON
On Friday, Yuliia, Roma and I went to Boston. Yuliia and I went to get her the visa for her trip to Mexico and then we walked around Boston together. We saw the public library, the Trinity church, the Christian Science Church (which I think is a beautiful building and has a really beautiful pool outside), walked the Harvard bridge and walked around Cambridge. I had a wonderful day with Yuliia, my best time in Boston.
Met with Sid at night and he joined us on the trip back to the Upper Valley. Sid stayed in my house for a couple of nights (Friday, Saturday).

HIKING & SWIMMING
Sid and I went to Stowe to meet up with Greg and Kristin and we went to hike Pinnacle in Stowe. the hike was fun 1.6 miles, it has some pretty steep parts. The view from the top is wonderful and it also had a very pleasant breeze. On the way down, we all ran and at some point Greg and I were going extremely fast, it was dangerous but it was so fun. Another cool thing about the hike was that there were no mosquitoes.
We went to Huntington gorge one of the stops planned on the Swimming hole tour but we couldn't do it. Here there was a nice little jump. I jumped a couple of times and dived once (it wasn't that big a jump and it was super deep, so no risk). The water was very refreshing. The problem with the place was that it was very slippery and walking around I fell four times (or five). There was some mini rapids that Sid accidentally rode for a bit and since it looked fun, Greg and I did them in their entirety and it was super fun, albeit a bit scary. There was another set of rapids, much more powerful and scary and we inflated a raft to ride them. Once we were there nobody wanted to do it as it looked super dangerous, but I rode it and almost fell. There's a wonderful picture which I plan to post someday which illustrates just how close from falling out of the raft in the middle of intense rapids I was. After seeing me survive, Greg did it himself and he rode it in a much more intelligent manner (putting his weight in front instead of on the back) and it looked easy and safe. It was extremely fun to raft on those rapids.

DINNER
Yesterday I had dinner with Yuliia and her hosts Tim and Janet. It was Janet's birthday recently and Yullia and I had bought an ice cream cake to celebrate so we had dinner. The dinner was delicious, corn, pasta and a lot of tasty vegetables that they grow on the farm (zucchini, tomatoes, onions, mescaline, spinach, lettuce). It was really really tasty. It was also interesting to get to know more of Tim and Janet, how they started the farm and stuff. I had a wonderful time.

IN LOVE
I usually don't like to write about personal relationships on my livejournal, but in this case, I just feel too happy and too much in love to not put in the livejournal. I have been having the best time of my life with Yuliia, traveling with her, dancing with her and just spending time together. I am really excited about our upcoming trip to Mexico that starts Wednesday morning.

My uncle picked me up in the morning and the plan was to go to Cornish, NH. The GPS directed us to a dead end so then we headed back to White River Junction. There we ate at Tip Top Cafe which had been recommended to me several times. I had a very tasty sandwich. It was very fresh. I guess people recommended this to me for dinner and not for lunch, but it was even good for lunch.

We went to Mt. Ascutney which is in Vermont, quite close to Hanover. We drove up the mount and then hiked the last 0.7 miles to the observation tower and from there we got to see the beautiful view of the Upper Valley. The Green Mountains in the background to the West, the Connecticut River at the East, the White Mountains to the North. It was just beautiful.

Later we had a light dinner at the Canoe Club. I had a nice soup. It was fun spending time with my uncle. We planned to hike the next day at the White Mountains. My uncle lent me his rental car and then I drove back to their hotel and then I went to a math party.

One of the faculty at the school has a very cool house with a pool table, darts, roulette, videogames and lots of chessboards in the basement. Literally a place to hold this sort of thing. Since it was the end of the quarter he hosted a party and a lot of us went. I played some darts (three times, I won twice), some pool (I lost) but most importantly watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica in a projector. Not only was the episode awesome, but there was discussion right afterwards. I had a lot of fun.