So in between the two events in my last blog, I stayed with Shawn (my host here in New Haven). In the morning we out for a traditional big old American breakfast which was delicious! Sadly Shawn could only host me for the one evening as he was busy the other night so I booked myself into an AirBnB for tonight. After checking in I went on to meet with the GreenSkills Manager and her team from the Urban Resources Initiative, who run a green jobs program targeting both local high school students and formerly incarcerated adults. Through the program, crewmembers are trained to plant street trees in the fall and spring for New Haven residents who request them. They work in close partnership with the City of New Haven, two local high schools (Common Ground and Sound School), and EMERGE CT (a non-profit that helps prison survivors reintegrate into society). They also shared with me their Environmental Curriculum used with other schools and projects in New Haven.

Later than evening and after my soup dinner, my host invites me to join him and his friends at a local pub quiz and although I am pretty useless at quizzes I thought I would go anyways as I am always keen to meet more people and immerse myself into trying new stuff. What Larry did fail to tell me though is that he and his friends are pretty much geniuses and they are the local quiz champions pretty much winning every week! One of his friends is a Harvard math graduate and also Larry himself has a very interesting background. Turns out he is Larry Noodles… (https://larrynoodles.com/who-is-larry-noodles/) but you can read up on that yourself.