My conference (the 16th European White Dwarf Workshop) started on Monday. I've been in talks most all day long, as well as catching up with people. It's been a lot of fun to see people I haven't seen in awhile, particularly my adviser. :) (No really...for those of you that don't know, my adviser lives 1500 miles away. Yes, he's still my adviser. It's a long story.) Today (Thursday) we took the official conference photo. They posted it on the website. Here are the people I've been spending 9 hours with every day this week. I'm on the third to last row, 4 or 5 in from the left. (P.S. A few people didn't make it, including my friend Fergal who I think was confused about what was going on.)
Monday night the conference organizers arranged a trip for all of us to visit the Observatorio Fabra; that's the observatory in Barcelona, up on one of the nearby mountaintops. Although it was at one time a more functioning observatory, today it functions mostly as a museum and place for public viewing nights.
The views of the city were amazing!
This wasn't the observatory's main telescope. That one was upstairs in a darker room.
On an adjacent mountain was this building. It's beautiful, though I'm not sure what it is. I thought it was a church of some kind, but then why is there a ferris wheel in front of it? As Mike suggested, "Maybe it's a fun church!"
I gave my talk on Tuesday. I was glad that it was early enough in the week that I could get it over with early. It was a 20 minute presentation (plus 5 minutes for questions from the audience) about my current research. I reported on the progress of my dissertation work, as well as mentioning some work a fellow grad student has done (work I've been involved with) because he couldn't be there and our adviser wanted to make sure it was presented. Anyway, the talk went pretty well, despite the fact that I was up late finishing it. (Lest you think me a total slacker, that's pretty normal. Well, maybe I am a slacker, but then so is everyone else.)This week Julia and I went on a bus tour of Barcelona. It was one of those hop on/hop off tours that takes you all around the city, letting you get off (and then you can catch the bus again at your leisure) at whichever stop you want; included are headphones that plug into the seat in front of you so you can be educated on what you're actually seeing. (I learned a long time ago that there's nothing worse than seeing amazing buildings and sites without knowing why they're amazing.) Here are some pictures from it.
Starting the tour. Yay!
Me intently studying the map on the bus.
One of my favorite things about Europe...all the pastry shops and bakeries!
Julia and I with Palau Nacional in the background.
We stopped at one point to get lunch. I got pesto on four cheese tortellini. Yum!!
We made it the ocean! Too bad I forgot my swim suit...well, not that we had time to swim anyway. Alas.
Me eating swiss chocolate ice cream near the beach. Yum!!
Me on the bus as we neared the ocean.
That's the cathedral in the far background.
La Sagrada Familia. Fergal asked, "Is that the building that looks like it's melting?"
I got sunburned. Ack!
Today at the conference, people were giving me a hard time about not being there yesterday, teasing me that I skipped talks to go to the beach! I saw the ocean, but I didn't get in. :) (But don't worry; my adviser didn't know I skipped because he skipped too!)I have a bunch of other random pictures. I'll post them later. I might take a nap right now before dinner. :)
1 comment:
Looks like so much fun!! The ocean is awesome.
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