Day 11 - "Oooo Trendy"

This morning was another early one. When my alarm went off I felt very fuzzy, even after my shower and a bowl of cereal. I got into the lab before 8:30, which was not really necessary as it turns out because I was the first one there and I don't have a key yet. I waited for other people to open doors for me, packed up my freshlly dry TEM samples, and headed over to the microscopy building.

I arrived at 3 minutes past 9 to meet Talmon, the TEM expert who I will be watching as he acquires images from my samples. We worked our way through my 5 samples, three of which I had made yesterday, over the 4-hour period. Sitting in the dark was really not good for my continued sleepiness, but luckily (or by pharmaceutical design) I did not drift off. It was a close thing, though.

At 1 pm we stopped, I thanked him and left. I went back to my dorm to grab a flash drive, stopped for a quick bite, and returned to work. I processed more images from last week until around 2:30, when I returned to Talmon's office to retrieve the files from today. I won't have to do this again once I have a folder on the server, but that won't happen for a day or two.

Once I returned to work, things were tough. It was really warm in our office, and no one else was at their desks. I was having an incredibly hard time staying awake. Since I got in at 8:30 and stayed late yesterday, I felt it wasn't so bad to leave at 4:30. By some miracle I made it back to my room and collapsed, also somehow managing to set an alarm so I wouldn't sleep until night and wake up at 4 am.

After my alarm woke me I made some pasta for dinner. I made a brief stop at the grocery store for yogurt and laundry detergent, just in case I ever locate the person from whom I need to buy laundry tokens, then came back to the dorms. I decided to chill out tonight instead of going salsa dancing; I was still very tired. Stephen, Joel, Ari and I talked and eventually watched a few episodes of The Office ("Product Recall" and "Safety Training," for anyone interested). Then I finished this entry and maybe I'll study some Hebrew before bed.

Oh and before I forget. The best thing anyone has ever said to me about carbon nanotubes, or materials science, or science in general, occurred last Friday as we were eating at the hummus-only establishment in Tel Aviv. We were introducing ourselves still, and talking about what we were working on this summer. I said I was in materials science and working with carbon nanotubes, and Stephen, who is in organic chemistry, goes, "Ooooh. Trendy." I don't know if the hilarity comes across in text, but I seriously love a group where CNTs can be considered "cool."

Enjoy some random pictures from last Friday in Tel Aviv, since today was very photographically uninteresting. The last one is the tallest building in Israel!