So, this week has been full of events, busy and hectic, and ultimately good.
Of note, on Thursday, I gave my speech to the group of high school counselors and organizers the Fulbright Center had brought together - the group was very small, not more than ten people in total - but the speech went very well, and when it was done, everyone had good questions, and we had an excellent discussion about what I had talked about. One of the people in attendance told me it was an "inspiring, excellent presentation." So I take that as a sign that it went well! I love giving talks like that. Here are the promised photos of the day! Alas, I could not ask someone to film the whole thing - if only I had a tripod, I could have stood the camera on it! But, as it was, I will leave how I spoke to your imagination, and give you these photos as consolation.
My face is really funny in this photo if you look close. I don't remember what I was talking about!
Thursday afternoon, I headed back to Utrecht to exchange some emails (about a Skype chat) with a potential adviser for graduate school, which is very exciting. The adviser is from The University of Colorado, Boulder. If you've never looked at pictures of the school or the area before, I encourage you to do that. My goodness, is it a beautiful place. All brick and stone buildings, nestled right beneath the Rocky Mountains. Breath-taking. And when I think about all the Farmer's Markets, and hiking, and kayaking, and bike-riding, man. I just think it would be the greatest adventure. So, we'll see what happens with that. I'm just so excited that there is even a possibility!
Thursday night, I went to dinner-meeting with my lab. We hosted another lab from Germany on Thursday and Friday, and I missed most of Thursday because of the speech, but I'm glad I got to go to the dinner and meet the German lab group.
At dinner, they had these odd little pipettes with olive oil. Very "modern gustatory"
The tasty bread for the pipette-olive-oil
Sara, the other international student in my lab. She is from Italy.
The German lab side of the table
The NICHE lab side of the table.
I love getting free food, especially good, delicious free food, but the dinner was almost three and a half hours long! It was quite a wait (mostly because we had so many people). I went home and was very happy to just get back and be able to read my book.
Friday I spent with my lab and the German lab, doing neat "group-science-activities" like having round-table discussions about relevant issues in psychology and neuroscience research. It was really great. At the end of the day, we put up the sheets where we had put our ideas about a variety of topics (including things like, "If I had unlimited funding, I would:") and talked about the topics with the most "likes," indicated by little post-it notes.
Then, on Friday afternoon, and pretty much all day on Saturday, I went ice-skating on the canals! I am so glad I bought a pair of ice skates (for a delicious 8 euro) a week or two ago. They proved very useful, and very, very fun! Here are some of my favorite videos and pictures.
The Canal, and the paths cleared for skaters.
The view from the end of the canal, and if you turn around on this spot:
That's the line of houses that my house is in! See how close it was!?
Boats frozen into the canal. So bizarre. Like a skating rink grew up around boats, and houses on the water...
Clement, looking at a suspicious crack in a side-canal.
So excited to skate!
I brought some hot chocolate to share! So tasty, and we had a thermos, so it was boiling hot when we finally brought it out - exactly what you want when it's chiller outside!
And here are some videos! Enjoy!
Sunday has been a good day - trying to get back into my running routine, eating leftovers from the dinner I made with Clement and Mary after skating yesterday (Potato and Carmelized Onion Tart and Little, Hand Pumpkin Pies), and introducing a new potential housemate to the house. Tomorrow, it's back to work, and a school visit on Tuesday, and hopefully recruiting ten and a half million participants and scanning them before May...
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