On Thursday, March 8, 2018, Professor Brenner and I met for about an hour and discussed the operationalization of my variables and different data collection strategies. Dr. Brenner had many interesting ideas about how I could measure levels of external influence which I plan to include in the future of my research.  Dr. Brenner suggested that I could create a mix of trade, tourism, and official dialog to measure my external relations variable. For my next variable, Cuban economic strength, I suggested to Dr. Brenner that I could use GDP, but he suggests that change in GDP could be a more useful data set. When discussing my dependent variable Dr. Brenner suggested that I take into account more variables when measuring levels and acceptance of FDI. At first, I was simply planning on just measuring different business deals and FDI projects, however, Dr. Brenner suggested that I also look into the mentioning of foreign products in the official discourse. These suggestions are all very important for the data collection and analysis portion of my research.