Day 1

I woke up this morning feeling awesome, so I headed into work for a few hours. Part of this involved figuring out the bus system, which is (a) not transparent and (b) in Spanish/Basque which compounds the not-transparency.  But I managed it.  The walk from my house to the bus stop is <5 minutes, and the bus ride itself is <10.  Then I have about a 10 minute walk from the bus stop to my office.  In theory, I could make it to work in <30 minutes.  Unfortunately, there are two bus options one runs once an hour and one runs twice an hour.  The good news is that those twice an hour buses actually run every 30 minutes, unlike if they were, say, the CTA where they would run twice an hour two minutes apart.  Basically, I need to budget around an hour to get to work if I have a meeting.  The good news is that I only have a meeting one day a week, and it's at 10.  People seem to be pretty flexible with time as well arriving at the office between 9 (when I got there today) and 11.  The bus ride to work is actually quite beautiful, through some rolling hills, and the walks are also very easy.  Here's hoping I stay so rosy about the transportation in a few weeks (or on a rainy day)!

The place where I work is incredible.  I'm not going to go into a lot of details (e-mail me if you're interested in hearing more), but the people are all very friendly.  I share an office with three others, who all seem very friendly.  Our lab space is gorgeous.  One thing I'm pretty excited about is our great lunch room, which, I know seems stupid.  But people all go there and eat lunch together, have snacks, etc.  There are also dishes to use if you bring food - and a dishwasher.  I didn't bring food today (as I don't have much in my house and have no way of transporting it to the office yet - I've added tupperware of some sort to my list of stuff to buy), but there's a little "cafeteria" (aka - bar) just about a block away from the office, which has decent, inexpensive food to eat in or take out.  Plus drinks in the middle of the day should that become necessary.  There's also a very fancy restaurant in the same building - which is weird because we're in a "technological park" which basically means that it's all companies, so having a Michelin starred restaurant there is a little odd.  After lunch, I tried to do some more work, but was getting exhausted, so I'm home now preparing for a nap.

Tonight I'm meeting a woman who lives nearby who is from Michigan (and around my mom's age).  It'll be nice to get to know some people who don't work at the center, though they all seem really nice.

Overall, I'm feeling much better about everything today.   I came here to do good, interesting work and that's why I made the sacrifice to leave Chicago and a lot of things and people I really care about.  I was really glad to see that I'm going to have a great place to go where people are excited, and I get to do work I'm excited about.  It makes this whole thing seem more worthwhile.