Day 3 - Lost In Translation

Aren't the names of my posts creative?

Yesterday, or my third day here (second full day), involved going to work. I know, exciting. I sat and read papers to catch up on stuff, and began image processing of some test images of tungsten disulfide nanotubes. It was exciting. But no, really!

We walked to Jubilee Place, on campus, for lunch. XiaoMeng, another PhD in my group, warned me that it looked like an airport cafeteria, and she was right. I had some Israeli pizza (kind of a slice-shaped calzone-type deal) and watermelon for dessert. Yum. Afterwards I discovered there is a bank in that building, as well as a book/office supply store owned by OfficeDepot.

After lunch I went to Greta to turn in all my paperwork, asked her all my remaining questions, and then went to the Materials and Interfaces department office to set up my e-mail account. After some more work with the test images, at 5 (or 17!) XiaoMeng took Petro (a new post-doc) and I to the TEM, where we looked at some of her samples. I have to say, the TEM is pretty awesome. The two of us stayed with her for about an hour and a half, then went on our way.

After dropping off my bag in my room, I decided to get some more shekels and make the trek to the grocery store. I was told to exit Weizmann and go right, which I did. After a while, I passed some construction, a McDonalds, and a bowling place, and eventually found it. I was hot and disgusting, and I don't speak Hebrew, so I wandered for about an hour, aimlessly examining the bowls of spices, frozen squid tentacles, and other items before getting it together and grabbing a basket. I grabbed some veggies, pasta, chicken, and a few other basics. As I was looking for rice, a pair of Israeli guys asked me if I knew where to find vinegar. As I had been wandering around for a bit, I had a general idea. One of them asked me how old I was. When I said 22, he said, "Oh, you look 17." Thanks. But he was really nice and together we found the rice. Yay.

So then I had to walk back, uphill. I was so overheated when I got back that I turned on my AC then went and stuck my head in the freezer till my room cooled down. I ate some yogurt as Jonathan attempted to remove one frozen fish from a bag of them without defrosting them. As I ate my yogurt he struggled, sawed, and pried, and eventually dropped the whole thing of frozen fish on the floor. So of course he had to wash it off, which defrosted them and therefore meant he had to cook and eat them all. I witnessed all this because I caved and cooked my newly purchased zucchini.

So we chilled and ate and cooked, and later a bunch of us went out for a beer. Hilarity ensued as the place was very loud, so I ended up repeating things as the people on either side of me attempted to talk to one another. Also, the bench we three were sitting on was along the fence bordering the sidewalk, so throughout the evening whoever was on the end kept squeezing out and walking around until I was in the middle again. Very exciting. I met a bunch of people and a good time was had by all.

No specific pictures happened, so enjoy some flowers from campus!