Thursday, July 23, 2015

Almost Done!

The program is finally coming to an end, and I have made so many good memories. I still have tomorrow, but for some reason, today feels like my last day here. Since there's only 2 days left, the cohort and I decided to just go for it and eat some crepes for breakfast. We went to Pari Cafe Crepe at around 7:45 AM, which was definitely way too early for me. When we got there, we found out the that the owner had just arrived, so we ended up waiting for 15 minutes before we were able to order. The cafe was supposed to be open at 8 AM, but at least he was friendly to us and took care of our orders quickly. 

During breakfast, Eli ran into us, and he joined us for a nice conversation. Unfortunately, it was almost 8:50 AM, so Rudy and I had to go to class and leave the conversation early. Instead of a lecture today, our class toured around some of the labs and buildings for the science department. We split off into groups, and we ended up looking at research labs that deal with nanotechnology, a balloon that would carry a telescope into space, as well as other interesting experiments. During the tour, I heard from both Grad students and professors about what they had been researching, and they were all so passionate about their work. I want to one day be able to find something that I could be that passionate about.

Laboratory for the development of nanotechnology 











After the tours, we all met up back into our classroom and we had a guest speaker, Mark Trodden, talk more about the universe and how it's made up of things such as dark matter and dark energy. It was actually really interesting, even though he sort of mentioned the same things that one of the guest speakers had presented about before. I actually understood most of what he was discussing about, and that was amazing to me considering how complex his topic was.

During the lab
Once we finished, we went on to lunch at the Houston Market as usual. I still have a lot of money left over from my card, so I ended up just spending it on snacks that I would be able to eat later. Right when we got back from lunch, we went straight to our interest groups. Since we were finished with the recording of data yesterday, everyone just worked on different parts of the presentation. Sema, Leesa, and I are in charge of data analysis, so I hope we don't mess up tomorrow!

After lab was over, we went back to the Quad, and at around 4:40 PM, I realized that there was an activity where we could make our own ice cream, so I went down to the Mobo Lounge to see what was happening. I saw Leesa and Charlotte there and they were making their own ice cream by putting a Ziploc bag of milk inside another bag of ice and salt and just shaking it around until it was frozen. This was actually a really fun and tasty activity, but my hands were so frozen by the end of it all.

Messy Ice Cream making
I went back into my room and just laid in my bed for a while. At around 6 PM, I met up with Jun, Joanne, Chiamaka, and Elexis to go to Center City with a few RCs and just walk around. They basically gave us the freedom to walk around a certain area, and we met up at around 7:30 PM. The time was definitely too short to go exploring, but at least we were able to go out.

When we came back, we just bought some food at a food truck, and we ended up just eating in the lounge in Jun's building. Originally, our plan was to go to karaoke night, but we eventually got lazy and just stayed in the lounge to listen to music and dance a little bit. The program's almost over, so I say why not try to enjoy the little time I have left here in Philly. I'm not ready to come back home, but at least I'll be able to see my family again!

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