Day Trip to Salem!

Hey all!

As Elizabeth mentioned in her blog post, Adam, Laura, Emma, Alan, and I went on a day trip to Salem, Massachusetts. On the way there, we came across this beautiful scenery and couldn't help but park the car and go run around the beach. I think the name of the beach was something like King's beach, but I might be wrong. We were lucky in that the water had only started coming back in; it seems that the entire beach would get submerged during high tides.

The water was also really clean!

After walking around the beach and getting our feet wet in the refreshing water, we figured pictures would be good. Since there weren't many other people around, we opted for an Oscar-style selfie. 

#selfiezzzzz

When we finally got to Salem, we found a boat (I think it's called the Friendship of Salem) and a nice park area that extended into the shore that discussed the trading business and other boat-related things from the early 1900's. 

After walking around the park area, we went on an adventure to find ice cream at the Salem Screamery, and found a TARDIS on the walk back (unfortunately I don't have the pictures that we took with it). The ice cream was very good (3 large scoops for $4), which was a nice way to end the day trip! When we came back to Cambridge, we went to PARK in Harvard to celebrate Juan's birthday, which was also very nice. :)

Something is not right.

Look guys.  Aujourd'hui, nous avons ouvert le Frigo des Boissons, et voilà, ce que nous avons vu:

and then there was the pots and pans closet:

the drying racks:

and strangest of all:

just don't use the non-breakable bowls guys.  you'd have to move the entire tower to extract one, and it ain't worth the effort.  oh, and better leave mugs out on the table.  putting them back in the cabinet would require rearranging all the mugs on the middle shelf to make a space large enough.  and there are actually multiple cups that stack!  what.

we can't handle how neat the kitchen is. this is not the LMF of years gone by. ;)

in other news:

•  the very fabulous Juan (LMF '12) got here on Friday!  A large number of us went to PARK in Harvard Sq. to celebrate his birthday on Saturday.
• despite my efforts to put up a valiant fight for some integer number of minutes, Adam defeated me in chess.
• a group of cool people (Alan, Sumin, Emma, Laura, and Adam) went on a road trip to Salem, in which yummy cheap ice cream was had by all.
• the twins are celebrating being halfway to 43!
• Adam forgot today was Memorial Day.
• Sumin's hair continues to be fabulous.

happy summer 2014, LMF! 

Transitions!

Well, I guess this will be my last blog of the summer, and my last LMF blog in general barring unforeseen circumstances...

The last bit of my summer has been a very interesting experience on the whole.  There's been a bit of everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

For one thing, I went hiking out on Dungeness Spit, which is over 5 miles long and both very beautiful and quite the workout.  Highlights included chasing seagulls, eating mochi, being unable to see when a bunch of fog rolled in, watching not one, not two, but three cruise ships go by (most likely heading to Alaska), and nearly freezing my feet when I decided to take off my shoes because we were almost back and the tide was coming in.

Oh right, if you hadn't heard, I got a haircut.

More recently, I have moved to Berkeley, CA... or rather, I would consider the moving process close to complete.  My roommate and I only have one piece of furniture so far (and that one thanks to Laura) and there's no internet at the apartment yet, but I think those things are relatively minor.

My parents and I took a nice little road trip down from WA so I didn't have to leave as much of my stuff on their hands and because it was fun and they were kind enough to understand that I really didn't feel like heading off alone to live somewhere new for the, I guess, third time in 4 years?  MIT, Paris, Berkeley, does that sound about right?

We stopped in Portland on the way and had lunch with Emma, which was both fun and delicious!  Unfortunately I did not remember to take any pictures together, so you'll have to take my word for it and maybe Emma will back me up.

When we arrived in Berkeley, the crazy search for an apartment began, and I discovered that my roommate used to live with Adam's brother. *Cue* It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all... OKAY I'll shut up now.

Anyway, the difficulty of finding a place to live led to the next phase: Camping on Daniel's couch.  Daniel, an LMF alum for those who don't know him, was nice enough to let me stay with him for what turned out to be longer than I had hoped; much gratitude is sent from me to him and his roommate.

All turned out well, however, as I now have a very nice, if unfurnished and not terribly cheap, place to live.

The chemistry department here has "orientated" me not only up the wazoo, as the saying goes, but also back down and all around the merry-go-round, while still managing to leave a lot of logistical glitches for me to work through (I really never appreciated just how much MIT spoils you from the standpoint of being organized, taking care of you, and making sure you know who to talk to if you have a question until now).  Classes started Thursday, I start teaching next week, and I'm in the process of finding a research lab to join, so wish me luck!  All in all I'm feeling pretty good about my situation and although I miss you all, I'm looking forward to the next however many years I will spend here.  Here's to the end of one era and the start of a new one!

P.S.  Thank you LMF for being one of the most important reasons I've loved being an MIT student so much, and I will be in touch with you peeps, so watch out :P

Zizz in Deutschland, 2.

This will be my last post for the summer.  Many of you are back on campus, and the pictures I'm seeing of REX things look pretty fantastic.  I can't wait to get back, although at the same time I'm really enjoying life over here so I wouldn't mind staying a little longer.

I arrived in Deutschland last Saturday, the 17th.  I hung out in Hannover a little before taking an afternoon train down to Stuttgart, to visit this very excellent fellow:

in the Schlossgarten Biergarten

On the way to Stuttgart, I was sitting on the train across from some empty seats.  A guy who looked fairly typically German (tallish, blond hair, blue eyes, glasses), got on at one stop and proceeded to ask me "这里有位子吗？" (Is this seat free?) in unaccented Chinese.  I did a double take:

me: Was? (What? This is a relatively impolite way of asking someone what they just said.  I was too surprised to remember how to be polite.)
guy: Ist hier frei? (Is this place free?)
me: Ja, das ist frei. (Yes. [pause]) War das chinesisch? (Was that Chinese?)
guy: 当然了。 你是中国人，看得出来。 (Of course. You're Chinese; one can see it).

Turns out he was a German who studied Chinese in college and then moved to Beijing to work, where he has been for about 5 years now.  We proceeded to have a conversation for the remainder of the train ride in Chinese and German.  I was embarrassed because his Chinese was much better than mine, but it stands to reason.  I thought that was pretty cool.

In Stuttgart I stayed with Juan, and in addition to just catching up on life we went around to some touristy places, including a history museum, an art museum, and some lovely gardens with a lovely castle.  I really enjoyed the visit.  I also got to see my friend Yin, who is working for Bosch in Stuttgart on a MISTI internship.  One night we went to a schnitzel place on Yin's recommendation - she said the schnitzel was as big as her face, and she wasn't kidding:

we split a schnitzel dish.

After Stuttgart I hopped up to Hannover, where I went around being touristy by myself.  They have a walking tour called "Die Rote Farbe" (The Red Thread), which is a self-guided kind of tour where you follow a map from place to place and there's a booklet that tells you about landmarks.  It took me until landmark 13/23 to realize the red line I kept seeing on the ground was one I was supposed to be walking along.  Whoops.  One cool thing I saw were the ruins of a church destroyed in WWII.  It was very surreal to walk inside them - it's just walls and stone floor of a church.  No ceiling.

I learned my camera can do B&W.

I also took a day trip up to Hamburg, where a friend from my last visit to Germany is working.  I went around being touristy during the day, and in the evening I met up with him and had dinner.  That was very nice.  I think one nice thing I saw in Hamburg was the harbor.  Hamburg is a very wealthy city simply because of the trade it gets through its harbor.  Isn't that a funny thing to think about in today's world?

tugboat.

 After a good few days in Hannover, I met up with my friend Meera who flew in on Saturday for the same exchange I'm doing at TUBS, and we took the train out to Braunschweig together.  In the evening we explored Braunschweig, eventually grabbing some döner for dinner and settling down to some live music and dancing and good fun at a Weinfest that happened to be going on.  It reminded me that I really like dancing (I didn't dance but I kind of wanted to, and then I missed it).  I also had some very excellent wine.

On Sunday, Meera, Luke (who is also on our exchange), and I went out to Bremen for the day.  Bremen's main claim to fame is a Grimm brothers' fairy tale called "The Town Musicians of Bremen".  It's a pretty cute story and the town has tons of little knick-knacks related to it for purchase.  It was a really fun day trip.  I don't have any pictures, though, because my camera is too far away to reach.  >.>

the Bremen Stadtmusikanten (Bremen Town Musicians)

One thing realized on this trip:  as much as I like relaxing, too much is no fun.  I went to some pretty small cities because I really don't like big ones all that much, but I think I prefer small cities to live in and big cities for tourism.  Ah well.  I did very much enjoy spending an afternoon reading on the lawn of a gorgeous town hall palace-y thing.

Now I'm in Braunschweig (Brunswick), where four other students and I are doing an exchange with the Technical University of Braunschweig.  Yesterday we were in lab making modifications to a small RC airplane and today we ran some flight tests.  I did not dare pilot for the tests but afterwards I messed around piloting first-person view (FPV) using these pretty cool goggles which have a video link to a camera on the plane.  It's pretty fun. =)

FPV flying w/ the Fat Shark (brand of the goggles)

See you all soon!  Tell our freshmen that I am looking forward to seeing them, too.

Love,
Zizz