Departmental retreat at New Hampshire

Just finished my first ever exams in the USA...two midterms on Wed and Thurs, whew. Considering that most of us only started studying the day before I shouldn't complain so much, but just the concern about the exam was weighing upon my head the entire week.

Funny though, I've never felt so unconcerned about an exam, so much so that I was wondering if I SHOULD try and stress up a bit more about them.

Anyways, we had the departmental retreat at New Hampshire last weekend.

It was BEAUTIFUL.








Check out the moon in the centre of the picture. You had to be there.







Everything I imagined the USA would be, in its wonderful outdoors. The resort we were staying in was at the foot of a slope used in the winter for skiiing, and at other times held a great nature trail for hiking. A raging river fronted the resort, and beyond that more mountains to complete our front door view. This was day 1, and we were ready to skip the lectures (well, the whole idea of the retreat is to listen to professors give talks about their work) and go hike all of the next day.







Then on day 2 it rained the ENTIRE day.

Urgh.

Well at least we did manage to spend time together and bond as a class, as well as with the other people in the department. And other activities too...the much dreaded G1s (1st year graduates) vs faculty volleyball game went as badly as we thought it would be, with us losing the first two of a best-of-three series within 10 minutes.

We played indoors as it was raining outside.




















Now who's that dashing young fellow with the ball?

10 minutes of play, final score of 3-15, 1-15. Guess three practice sessions doesn't cut it.

Biolympics with geeky games: Twister but with a twist, had to form a specified DNA sequence the bases of which were printed on the twister sheet; charades of a sort to guess biological terms; guessing what highly magnified pictures of lab equipment were. We revel in our geekiness, seriously...everyone in the class just loves geeky jokes.

Scavenger hunt, didn't do so well in..had to drink a beer every few items, I've never drunk so much beer ever: film a condom ad??; get a professor to sign a body part (my cheek); dress up as ninjas.... and one of my teammates lost his pants.





And just food every few hours (breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and snacks provided in between).




Halloween party. Catholic schoolgirl outfits drew attention.

Cat in the middle isn't just any cat, she's a Schrodinger's cat! Wahahahaha..... will need to think of a suitably geeky costume next year.






And on day 3, first snow.
The mountains up front have become snow-tipped, which was an amazing change from day 1. We just went out and stared.



We smile, but it was incredibly cold. I think it was colder than the coldest I've ever felt in Cambridge, UK (-2 degrees Celcius for me). Fingers freezing.








The resort we stayed in is on the left.



And with the rain finally over, we had to explore just a tiny bit of the place, to take that little hint of a hike we might have been able to take.







Gushing stream,










obviously missing some posers. Check out the next cover of GQ.


















Isn't it just so inviting?



I wanted to know you so much better.

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Going to meet this professor at Massachusetts General Hospital tomorrow, may be interested in joining his lab, fingers crossed! Need to unwind this upcoming weekend.