Brrr

It snowed for a bit here on Saturday. It was so pretty outside, but cold. Since then, it actually feels like winter outside rather than fall.

Over Thanksgiving I went home. I had decided before then that I was not going to take the bus because 1) it was expensive and 2) it takes around 10 hours to get there. I was going to try to carpool with someone who's going in the same direction. A friend had told me about a mailing list she was on where people post rides once in a ride. I had banked on that for my ride back... but it backfired. There weren't as many people as I had thought who would offer rides to Boston for the break. Luckily, a few days before the break I found out that someone else in the Structures program lived in Natick and I was able to catch a ride with him.

It was really nice meeting up with friends and seeing family again. One of the things I missed while here in Ithaca was just being able to sit down and talk about random things and knowing that the other person well enough to do just that. I especially miss having dinner parties. It's one of the things that had made my senior year at MIT so enjoyable.

While I was in Boston, I finally played Pandemic which Jeff and Will were always talking about and which they can never seem to win. But, we did win in our game :-)

On Saturday, I went to the Museum of Science with mostly ballroom people. Vikram was visiting too that weekend. It was really nice seeing him again. The main reason why we went to the MoS was for the Harry Potter exhibit. However, I wasn't able to get in because we were too late in picking up the tickets (the tickets were for a certain time). Personally, I wasn't too disappointed because I am not a huge fan of Harry Potter and from the reviews I receive from those who did see the exhibit. I did go to the main museum though.

It was during this visit that I realized that I had about 3 more weeks of school left. Coming back, I had a week before the end of classes (in my case, 4 days since I don't have classes on Friday), but there were still a lot of assignments to do and finals to study for... I had on my plate 1 take-home exam, 3 psets, 3 projects, and 2 finals. I believe that they do have a policy where professors aren't allowed to hand out assignments due after a certain date, but it's not as enforced as it is at MIT (at least, I think they have such a policy).

This past Friday was happy hour again for CEE. I went, but was perhaps an hour late so there wasn't much food left. After socializing for about an hour or so, I went back to the office to get some work done. Later that evening, I went and hanged out with some people in the MEng program. As it turned out, I was the only girl in the group. When I met up with them, they were playing darts. I joined in, but was pretty bad at it. After darts and dinner, we went to the Chapter House, a bar near the bottom of the hill, until it closed. It was pretty crowded there. We weren't able to get a seat for at least 15 minutes.

On Sunday, a professor invited his students over to his house. It was nice of him to do that. I was planning on going but decided to go because quite a few people were going. It was about 20 minutes away from campus. It's a bit in the middle of nowhere, but the view is really nice.