Over the past... nearly 18 hours I haven't left my apartment, and I've barely left my room. Summer undergraduate research funding requests are due in two weeks, and I hadn't started figuring out what I want to do at all until yesterday. Since I started I've been alternately frantically trying to decide what on earth I can do that's worth Pomona giving me part of their quickly shrinking research budget, and frantically doing whatever I can to avoid addressing such a question. Right now it looks like I'm stuck between working on a project with a very cool question behind it but horribly boring bench work, or something that I find intellectually less intriguing but that involves pretty cool techniques. I'm banking on my advisor responding to me with some brilliant insight. We'll see how that goes.
But! Did you see that part about the apartment? I'm in Greece! Up until two weeks ago I'd lived my entire life in suburban America either in my parent's house or a college dorm. But now I'm living in an apartment (with a kitchen!) in busy, crazy Athens, Greece. I'll be here for the next three and a half months (with some exacting travel in between, if all goes well) totally avoiding science, once this proposal gets turned in at least.
I've already been here two weeks, but I'm still just getting settled in. I'm dealing with the problems of living in a new apartment, like trying to figure out how to divide up costs among 4 people who share a kitchen, and dealing with showering when three of the four of us have 8:30 classes on Mondays. I'm dealing with the normal trials and tribulations of starting a new semester, deciding on classes (pretty easy) and extracurriculars (less so). And, you know, figuring out how to live in an entirely new city with an entirely new language and an entirely new alphabet. Quick fun fact-- modern Greek has 5 vowel combinations that all make the sound "ee"!
I'm slowly getting the hang of things. I was finally able to set up this blog because I figured out how to switch the default blogger language from Greek because I found a pulldown menu that said ελληνικά
(Greek!). I've got some extracurriculars lined up and even a potential trip to Istanbul next weekend!I have some stories of unfortunate cultural mishaps and awkward social encounters, but I'll save them for later. For now, I'll end with a picture:
I may not be able to see Russia from my house, but I can see the Acropolis from my school!
