Howdy Reader!
It's been a few days since I've had reliable enough to wifi, the time, and the energy to sit down and write a blog post, but here I finally am. Obviously a lot has happened, visited the Max Planck Experimental lab at the Albert Einstein Institute in Hanover, flew to Dubai, and now here I am in Seoul. I don't think I'll be able to cover everything, but let's shoot for the highlights. I'm also going to have to ask your forgiveness when it comes to event times, my internal calender is a little shot, as you might imagine, and I'm having a hard time establishing on what day of the week these things occurred, or even whether something happened 'yesterday' or 'this morning', so let's nix the calender and just do events in sequence.
The day after I posted all those pictures we (myself and the other IREU students) set off to the Max Planck Experimental Institute, where they have a wicked cool laser lab, as well as a 10m prototype interferometer under construction. The lovely 'employees' (I use this term to describe the various academics who work there, a medley of post and pre docs, as well as full professors and people who's academic ranking I never clearly established) gave us a great tour of their various projects, some of which went over my head, all were amazing. They also used a real live Roomba to keep the big workspace clean. Robots of the future! See the pictures in the next post for visuals (not of the Roomba unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to take one.)
After a traditional German dinner of various meats, potatoes, melty cheese stuffs, and plenty of asparagus. Apparently a traditional regional staple asparagus is wildly popular in the late spring in Hanover. It's not the little green things though, they grow it differently and as such it's maybe about a foot long, half an inch thick, and white. It was actually pretty delicious, especially drenched in the traditional cheesy-cream sauce thing. Literally served in every meal.
The next day we all finished our presentations, then me and three other students peeled off and took a train back to Dusseldorf, where we spent the night before splitting up for our various flights out the next morning. The plane ride was (as one would hope) completely uneventful. We flew Emirates airline, and if you ever have to take a trans-continental flight let me recommend them wholeheartedly. The little televisions in the backs of all the seats had literally enough entertainment to keep one busy for pretty much eternity. Season 3 of Downton Abbey was basically my painkiller of choice, and so I basically zoned for about 6 hours until Dubai, lost in a world too proper to exist. Dubai International Airport was massive and glitzy and it was 1am when we touched down and 3:30am when we left and that's all I really have to say about that. A ton of pricey duty free stuff and a place called the "Shake Shack" which a decent portobello burger and served a frozen custard treat called a "concrete".
Several more hours of smoldering politeness and British anger later and we landed in Seoul. Then an hour and half bus ride, another 5 minutes in a local bus, a quick drive up a hillside, and a trek up some stone stairs later, and I was at my summer abodements. Corey and I are pretty much living in the side of a mountain, about a 10 minute walk from the campus proper, or really anybody else. It's kind of amazing, I can look out my little terrace and see this beautiful mountainous backdrop, and then ten minutes later and I'm back in civilization. Photos of my apartment will also follow for those who find my narration a bit unglued from focused description.
Tomorrow morning I get to meet up with my colleagues and get a look at the project proper. Wish me luck!
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