You can't even belive how much of a good time I'm having...

Good morning, folks!  I told you I'd have a new update for you soon.  Seriously, you can't even believe how great of a time I'm having.  My days go a little bit like this: Wake up around 6:30, exercise (NOT hard), eat breakfast at the cafeteria with my new friends, go to interesting and amazing seminars all morning, eat lunch with my new friends (really good lunch, too), hang out on the balcony in the sunshine until the afternoon sessions get going again, go to interesting workshops, journal reviews, and more seminars in the afternoon.  Work a little bit with my group on our project, and then eat dinner and drink beer for the rest of the night.

The speakers have been amazing thus far.  They are thinking about biology questions in such new and creative and clever ways.  They also come sit with you at lunch an chat.  Yesterday I had lunch with 2 great researchers from Los Alamos national labs and the day before I had lunch with a guy from UCSD.  We talk science and it is SO fun. 

The food here is amazing!!  It is so awesome to just show up, have some great meal, and then have none of the prep, thinking about it, getting stuff at the store, cleanup etc... 

The scenery is unbelievable.  School is ringed by mountains, wildflowers everywhere, cool and refreshing in the mornings and evenings, warm and sunny during the day. 

The people are SO nice!!  I LOVE the people that are at the school.  They make everything so much fun.  I want to take them all back to NYC with me.  Everybody is so friendly and knows different things.

Lastly, I've learned how to do things here that I never thought little old me would be able to do.  It's opened up this whole world of biology I was really only on the fringe of and made me change what I think I want out of science as a career.  It's excited me to have new big challenges and also given me confidence that I can be one of the people who actually does the stuff I thought only other, really smart people could do. 

It's freaking awesome. 

This evening we are going in to town to eat enchiladas at this place called Maria's.  Tomorrow we're going to go hike Baldy as a big group.  It will be a 14 mile hike round trip.  Starts at 10,000 feet and ends at something like 13,000.  After that, there is a beer crawl in downtown Santa Fe that some of us will go on.  Then on Sunday, we are all headed up in the direction of Taos to go to the hot springs. 

Please nobody wake me up!  :-)

Peace,

J