First things first: I got a bike this week from fellow Olin student Morgan Boes. It's sweet and ancient and depicted to the left. When I took it to a bike shop to buy a lock for it, the lady behind the counter commented that I wouldn't need to worry too much about it getting stolen (because it's so old), but it rides quite well, and I look forward to getting a lot of mileage out of it this summer.With that out of the way, I'll proceed in a more orderly fashion.
Work
I'm working in the solar energy lab, and the two graduate students I am assigned to focus on using solar energy to produce hydrogen fuel. Last week, I read journal articles in their field and observed/participated as they carried out experiments in their areas of research: biomass gasification and zinc hydrolysis. It consists of a lot of turning knobs, operating flow controllers, tightening nuts and bolts, and interpreting data. I'll update further once I figure out what I will be focusing on. It's been kind of overwhelming, the amount of information I've taken in. I'm looking forward to actually working with it, as opposed to stuffing my head full of even more stuff.
Non-Work
My job is more or less a 9 to 5 deal, so I have quite a bit of time to spare. I spent a lot of it last week buying things like toothpaste and figuring out where things were, but this week should be more restful. Minneapolis has so many great places to run/bike, especially along the Mississippi River, which is beautiful in the morning. Other than that, I've been watching movies, playing games (I learned Settlers of Catan yesterday), and reading. It's really, really nice not to have work to do at night. After being in school all year, it's so liberating to be able to put some physical distance between myself and work.
Weekend
The REU students went to the Mall of America, which is like any other mall in the world, except that it is unusually enormous. Most of you know that I don't really enjoy this sort of thing that much, and my purchases - shampoo and detergent at the dollar store - represent pretty well how I feel about shopping in general. To me it's something necessary, but it's not something I can revel in. On Sunday, I went to three different churches because I want to minimize the time I spend finding a church home this summer. If you pray, please pray for me, that I may find a church that places Jesus at the center of everything it does and teaches from the Bible, not its own imagination. I don't think I found a church to call home yet, but I'll keep looking.
Adios
2 comments:
Work: Sounds awesome. Being stuffed with overwhelming amounts of information isn't exactly new to us, right? :P
Non-Work: Don't you love 9-5 jobs? Biking along the Mississippi sounds pretty awesome. Are you getting time to do any reading? I'm following a 10 pm - 5 am schedule now...I'm hoping to do that during the semester, because I study a lot better in the morning. Let's see if I have any friends left at the end of it.
Weekend: After going to a few malls in Dubai and a few malls in India, I've begun to really get bored of the malls in the US. US malls don't set any sort of standard aside from size.
And have all three of the churches you went to been teaching from their imagination? Good luck man, I know you'll choose wisely.
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