Its hard to believe that four weeks have passed, and our summer is nearly halfway over. While our responsibility and understanding in the lab have grown, we have also grown much closer as a group. In the first blog post Mia remarked on how amazing it was how quickly our group grew together, and the sentiment certainly still applies. I always find it surprising that I’ve known these people for just four weeks.
My siblings always spoke highly of their REU experiences, how they never had time to miss being home for the summer because they were always busy having fun with their peers, and I could not agree more. Those of us who work in the same part of campus meet up for lunch every day, and the entire group meets up to eat dinner every night. When we aren’t in lab, we can often be found playing cards in the lounge, watching “The Bachelorette,” in somebody’s room, or trying to decide how we want to spend our evening.
Not all of our adventures are contained within our residence hall. Recently a small group of us (myself included) ventured out to Bass Concert hall to catch one of the last showings of Hamilton before the company left Austin, and then took a trip to the famous Amy’s Ice Cream.
A yearly tradition of the BME program is to spend a morning kayaking and paddle boarding.
Deciding to embrace the cohesiveness of our group that Dr. Suggs had commented on, we took a trip to a local thrift store after dinner and all purchased Hawaiian shirts to wear while we were on the water.
We arrived at the boat rental at 9:00 and were greeted by Margo, who presented us with breakfast tacos to eat before we departed. As a North Easterner, I had never heard of a breakfast taco before coming to Austin, and while I was skeptical at first, I have fully embraced them as a breakfast staple. When we first left the docks, some of us were slightly unstable and fell off our paddle boards, but before long, we were cruising around the river. After some time paddling and swimming, we encountered a rope swing, and all took turns swinging into the river before paddling back to the docks. After stopping for lunch on the way back, we parted ways to nap and recuperate before taking a late-night trip to Kerby Lane for pancakes.
After all this time, I’m still amazed that we never run out of stuff to talk about and can’t wait for everything we have planned for the next several weeks, from a Mamma Mia movie night to a square-dancing trip.
-Simon Blanchard, Villanova University.
