Ready to go...

I'm basically all packed up now for my flight to Iowa tomorrow. I basically procrastinated all day from packing, so I'm only done about now. Fortunately my folks were able to help with some things, or I might well be looking at a packing all-nighter.

Now, to wash up and sleep. Hooray for waking up at 5:30 to go to Philly International! My mom will be waking me up, or I'd never manage to get up that early. Now, I am just wondering what in tarnation possessed me to book an 8:50 am flight when I bought my tickets in late March.

Farewell, Swarthmore! Farewell, SWIL! Best of luck to msarcher, aridice, crystalpyramid, rose_garden, sildra, mumbly_joe, nightengalesknd, gerbilicious85, and everyone else. See y'all in August, hopefully!

Arrived in Iowa!

I got into Iowa City not too long ago. All my flights were on time; I guess I'm lucky since the REU director was saying that all the other students who were flying in seemed to be delayed. I hit a little turbulence flying into Chicago but it wasn't too severe. No trouble checking in at PHL or getting through security -- it was less than half an hour between lining up to check in curbside and my sitting down comfortably at the gate.

Now, because of silly UIowa bureaucracy, the REU director can't get me into the summer dorm. So I've left my bags in her office while she picks up more students at the airport. While she does that, I'm going to walk around downtown Iowa City (I'm in the public library right now). The scenery here is very different; relatively flat, lots of wide open space, but Iowa City itself is a nice little college town.

What a day it's been so far. And it's only 1:30 or so CST; will get to move into summer dorm and meet other REU students in a couple of hours.

Settled in to Iowa, kind of

So I'm in my dorm now. It's huge; each of its two sides is as long as both sides of Willets combined. Very long straight halls; pretty much the antithesis of Erdman. Each pair of doubles shares a bathroom and a very nice kitchenette. Throw the AC and free cable into the picture, and these rooms seem palatial compared to Swat dorms.

My roommate seems like a cool guy. We went shopping at one of those super Wal-Marts that have everything, including a supermarket. So now we've got food and cooking equipment.

I'm now dead tired, probably from waking up this morning at 0530. There's a long day ahead for tomorrow, so I should probably sleep. I'll write more tomorrow.