Work and Play

Hello my dear readers! Apologies for the delay in this post, I've been learning all sorts of things here at CERN and trying to get my bearings. I've been to five hours of meetings already, which took place over two days, so I've been taking in all kinds of information and my brain is a bit fried at the moment...not to mention something was wrong with the cache in my web browser so I couldn't even log in and post if I wanted. Luckily, I've figured that out!

Now, how to summarize the last few days...I met my supervisors, Irene and Ana, on Monday and they both seem very helpful. I will be working on corrupted data from the Tile Calorimeter, which is one component of the ATLAS detector - I will be trying to figure out how to fix some of the things going wrong with the reconstruction of the proton-proton collsions (also called events), or at least try to make some headway in fixing them. It is very different from the work I did last summer at Fermilab (which was analysis in the search for the Higgs boson, aka the "God Particle") - it is much more technical I think. It is very important to the analyses taking place within ATLAS, but I will not personally be doing any analysis. I think it will be just as interesting as my work last summer though!

The first 2.5 hour meeting took place on Monday afternoon, and as I was suffering from some serious jetlag, I was struggling to stay awake. The subject matter was interesting, but since I didn't really understand any of it yet, it was even harder to stay awake. Luckily, Irene took me aside afterwards to explain some things that were discussed. There was just enough time for me to stop back at my room before I had to meet the U of M  REU group for dinner. We were all treated to a wonderful dinner at a pizzeria in/near downtown Geneva. I had a glass of wine with my tomato/mozzarella/basil thin-crust pizza, with tiramisu for dessert. Needless to say, I probably should have joined the group that walked back to CERN instead of taking the tram...

I must say, I love how the Europeans think about work. It is normal to go in to work around 10am or so, and leave around 5:30 or 6pm. They don't care what hours you work, as long as you get your work done. For a night-owl like me, this is perfect! So on Tuesday morning I rolled out of bed around 9am, getting to work around 10am (by the way, work is less than a football field away from my room...). I finally got my office and let me tell you, it is fantastic. I am in a different building then the aforementioned "work," so from hereon out, "work" is now my office in the new building, which is on the opposite side of the hostel from the old "work." I am in an office with three or four Michigan State graduate students. That's right, even though I am halfway across the world, I still get to work somewhere decked out in all kinds of MSU stuff. Needless to say, I am excited about it! Not to mention the view is incredible:

Around 6:30 that evening, I met up with most of the other interns, and we took a leisurely walk into France for some groceries. Switzerland is pretty expensive, whether you're buying a meal at a restaurant or groceries at the store, but France is considerably cheaper. They also use Euros there, so all those Swiss Francs I had were no good, meaning extra charges to my debit card for conversions. The supermarket we went to is called Carrefour and has pretty much anything you would want. Including Nutella. So I bought some. Why is that stuff so good? 

Wednesday was relatively uneventful, aside for the fact that I finally got a phone. And get this: it is cheaper to call the US from Switzerland than it is to call anywhere else in Europe. It's cheaper than calling the US from the US for that matter. How crazy is that? I guess they have cooler settings for prepaid phones than I thought. 

Well I guess I will wrap it up here for now. I always have more to say, but that will have to wait for another post. Until next time, my friends!