Boston update
I've been doing that thing where I avoid livejournal because I have all these general things to say, and when I'm too lazy to say them, I don't want to write about any specifics because no one will know what I'm talking about yet.
So a general Cambridge/Boston update for now so I can talk about specifics later.
I'm living in a house that's usually a non-Greek-affiliated sorority with five other girls in the program (355 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA 02139) called WILG (Women's Independent Living Group). The two other girls and two guys in my program are next door in the frat house ADP. We have a full kitchen and I have an almost-private bathroom. Thanks to our weekly $100 food allowance and the campus grocery store, we get to actually USE the kitchen and occasionally cook together. And then use the extra money to raid the bookstore and buy important things like MIT hoodies <3.
The people in the program have been really great so far. There don't seem to be any sub-groups forming within the ten of us - any time someone wants to do something, they just give everyone a shout. Everyone has a personality and a life, which is always key... and also important to me: everyone's eager to explore! We've been on the swan boats in the public gardens, to Chinatown, to the USS Constitution, to Newbury Street, to Quincy Market, to Harvard square, and have wandered around to various other locations, I'm sure.
Ah, and work. I'm working with a postdoc named Gerry on a project involving apoptosis (cell suicide, essentially). The techniques I'm working with are some things that I could have done at Ithaca but haven't (although with cooler technology, apparently), and some things that I don't think I'd have a chance to work with at Ithaca. At first, I couldn't tell what our work dynamic was going to be like, but it seems to be developing really well as I start to get used to the lab and how everything works and all that. So far, every time Gerry's left me to do stuff on my own, it's been... an adventure... (for that, I'm grateful to the other people in the lab, who seem to be generally very kind and patient) but that's apparently part of his sadistic scheme to have me stumble through things and thus figure them out on my own. Problems and all, I've been enjoying it.
Last but not least, the fun stuff. Cambridge is a college town, somewhat like Ithaca. Any environmental hippie-ness that has rubbed off on me from Ithaca has not necessarily gone to waste here ;). But the coolest thing is, of course - FREE STUFF. We are hoping to take advantage of free sailing lessons on the weekend - then we can take boats out for free! Even cooler, although not free, per se, is that the ballroom dance club here is putting on a series of dance lessons for $1 each. They broke the summer up into three groups of three weeks each, during each set of which they're teaching four types of dances. That means twelve different three-week long dance courses this summer! I've already had two weeks of waltz lessons and am planning on taking week two of American rumba tomorrow :D. I skipped out on foxtrot and don't know if I'm going to continue swing (rumba tired me out too much to devote much effort to swing last week).
Okay, given you enough for now. I just pulled two very long days in the lab in a row, so I'm also probably going to pull an early night. More to digest later.
So a general Cambridge/Boston update for now so I can talk about specifics later.
I'm living in a house that's usually a non-Greek-affiliated sorority with five other girls in the program (355 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA 02139) called WILG (Women's Independent Living Group). The two other girls and two guys in my program are next door in the frat house ADP. We have a full kitchen and I have an almost-private bathroom. Thanks to our weekly $100 food allowance and the campus grocery store, we get to actually USE the kitchen and occasionally cook together. And then use the extra money to raid the bookstore and buy important things like MIT hoodies <3.
The people in the program have been really great so far. There don't seem to be any sub-groups forming within the ten of us - any time someone wants to do something, they just give everyone a shout. Everyone has a personality and a life, which is always key... and also important to me: everyone's eager to explore! We've been on the swan boats in the public gardens, to Chinatown, to the USS Constitution, to Newbury Street, to Quincy Market, to Harvard square, and have wandered around to various other locations, I'm sure.
Ah, and work. I'm working with a postdoc named Gerry on a project involving apoptosis (cell suicide, essentially). The techniques I'm working with are some things that I could have done at Ithaca but haven't (although with cooler technology, apparently), and some things that I don't think I'd have a chance to work with at Ithaca. At first, I couldn't tell what our work dynamic was going to be like, but it seems to be developing really well as I start to get used to the lab and how everything works and all that. So far, every time Gerry's left me to do stuff on my own, it's been... an adventure... (for that, I'm grateful to the other people in the lab, who seem to be generally very kind and patient) but that's apparently part of his sadistic scheme to have me stumble through things and thus figure them out on my own. Problems and all, I've been enjoying it.
Last but not least, the fun stuff. Cambridge is a college town, somewhat like Ithaca. Any environmental hippie-ness that has rubbed off on me from Ithaca has not necessarily gone to waste here ;). But the coolest thing is, of course - FREE STUFF. We are hoping to take advantage of free sailing lessons on the weekend - then we can take boats out for free! Even cooler, although not free, per se, is that the ballroom dance club here is putting on a series of dance lessons for $1 each. They broke the summer up into three groups of three weeks each, during each set of which they're teaching four types of dances. That means twelve different three-week long dance courses this summer! I've already had two weeks of waltz lessons and am planning on taking week two of American rumba tomorrow :D. I skipped out on foxtrot and don't know if I'm going to continue swing (rumba tired me out too much to devote much effort to swing last week).
Okay, given you enough for now. I just pulled two very long days in the lab in a row, so I'm also probably going to pull an early night. More to digest later.