“Whoa, look at all this fog! We must be at a really high altitude.”

After one week of work, I have sliced six brains and am well on my way to becoming a slicing expert. Yesterday when I was working on brains four, five, and six, I finally figured out to make perfect, perfect slices. I’m not gonna lie, even Jamila said they were beautiful. Now my problem lies in that, I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to identifying the sections of the brain. In fact, I’m really bad at it. Ideally, you’re supposed to have about fifty slides with two slices on each slide for each brain (one hundred slices per brain) and the slices are supposed to be from about sections thirty-six to fifty-seven (I know that means nothing to you all.). My slices are all over the place. I end up starting at section twenty-two and doing thirty slides of useless crap before realizing I’ve just arrived at the section I needed to start at. I don’t know, I guess I didn’t expect it to be easy.

Outside of the slicing, I’ve actually started to kinda make friends with the people in my lab even though they’re all so much older than me. Yesterday happened to be Andrew’s birthday so our entire lab went out to lunch at this bombtastic Thai place (As much as I’m staying true to the east coast, I must say that San Francisco has the best Thai food I’ve ever had. Ever. And if you really know me, you know I love Thai food. Love it.). So I’ll give you a quick run down of the lab:
Andrew – Birthday boy. Hardly a boy, Andrew is post doctorate, is married, and has an almost four-month-old baby.
Allison – Lab supervisor. Every box in the lab has her last name on it and more than half of the articles I’ve read to give me background information for my project were published by her. Just to give you an idea of how important she is.
Helen – Other intern. Cute, small, Burmese, and is currently attending medical school in Michigan.
Louise – Shy and Swedish. Also post doctorate, her boyfriend works on the twelfth floor or something. She’s very nice and I like talking to her a lot. And I really like her accent.
Ivan – After Helen and I, the youngest person in the lab. He’s Russian and is about to turn twenty-four. He might be my favorite person, because he consistantly talks to me like I’m a person and not like I’m nineteen. And he’s funny.
James – Post doctorate. Quite British and quite gay (I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, but really that’s the only way to describe him.). He’s possibly my favorite person to observe in action. He’s absolutely hilarious, in a super British kind of way.
Jamila – My mentor. Post doctorate. Very…blunt. About everything. Her and James are two peas in a pod. They are so entertaining to watch.

And then there’s me. I really do like them all, I think I’ll just start to feel more comfortable when my age stops coming up like, “Wait, you’re only nineteen?! Oh man, we need to watch what we say.”
I left work late and as soon as I got back to the house, Megan whisked me away to go hang out with Emiliano, who’s way up there on my list of favorite Obies. We met up with Emiliano and friends, Ryan and Mickey, at this fast food joint called In N’ Out that only exists in California. The thing about In N’ Out is that it only serves burgers. You all should know my thing about red meat (I don’t eat it). However, Megan has been telling me about In N’ Out since first semester and since I’m all the way in California you’ll never guess what I’ve done. Yes, yes I had an In N’ Out Burger. In fact, last night I had my second In N’ Out burger in two weeks. That’s more red meat than I’ve ever had in the past two years. It’s kind of shocking. I can’t wait to tell my family.
After In N’ Out, we all drove up to this place called The Headlands, which is pretty much this huge cliff that people can drive up on, look out onto the Bay, and see Alcatraz (which I plan on taking a ferry to see), the city and all the subsequent surrounding cities (Berkeley, Oakland, etc.). There was more fog than I’ve ever seen before in my whole life (The fog here is amazing, honestly it’s one of my favorite things about the city. I wish I could describe what it feels like to stand in it.), but in the few minutes where it wasn’t a complete sheet of white, we got a pretty sweet photo.
Standing up there in all the fog really solidified a lot of thoughts I’ve been having for the past few days. I think this is the happiest I’ve been in the past six years. In part, I have my friends to thank for that, new and old. The last year has led me to many really genuine and fantastic people from all over the country, as well, as strengthen my friendships with a few people from home. The other part can be attributed to something I think I’ve found in myself. I feel like I’m finally able to graze with my fingertips the things I want to accomplish and the person I want to be. And it feels good to know that all comes from within; that my success in life is well within reach and the happiness I acquire because of that isn’t attributed to anyone but myself.
For those of you who like sappy teenage girl novels, I’m currently reading Just Listen by Sarah Dessen. If you haven’t read it, you should. One of the main themes of the novel is music, which reminded me that I needed to make a mix tape for my new assistant volleyball coach. While I was going through my music, I came across a song I haven’t heard in a really long time. In the novel, one of the characters mentions that no matter how much life changes songs never will. You’ll always be able to go back and listen to a certain song and have it evoke a certain feeling or memory. It was odd for me to think about a time period that seems so long ago, but I believe I enjoyed it. Try it. (The song was Caring is Creepy by The Shins. If you haven’t heard it, rectify that situation.)
Sorry if I got too deep for you. I’ll try to stay in the kiddie pool next time, children.


just chinwe


post script – I tried to photo document Chinwe vs. Nature. This was as far as I got.

Then my camera died. Which I think is okay because some man was looking at me funny and I was also trying to eat a pear and be on time. I think I give up, but at least you got a little glimpse at what I see when I leave everyday.