Book 1: Settling into Life Day 10 (June 16, 2015)

Today was just a really off day. Almost took a wrong turn on the way to the train station, the train was stalled for at least 10 minutes (it happened on the way home from work yesterday too). In the lab, I messed up a few experiments, and most notable was having to remake a gel 3 times because the first time, I forgot to add gel stain, and the second time, I forgot to add water to make up for the lost water after microwaving. On top of that, there is a music event at NIH that I wanted to watch and I thought it was today, so I told my mentor, and that's why I got all my experiments done in the morning. I walk to Building 10, reread the email, only to find that it's tomorrow. So I spent about 40 minutes walking to and from Building 10, and it was 96 degrees and you could feel the heat pulsing up from the sidewalk.

But at work, I got to meet Adam, who has worked here but is leaving July 10-ish, and I got to talk to Alicia during lunch, so I did get to meet more people!

After work, Jon and I had arranged to play tennis, and so we walked a few blocks, found this small park surrounded by lots and lots of trees, grass, and green, in this quiet neighborhood, and there were two tennis courts, both empty, and also a board! I'm definitely just going to go and hit against the wall by myself when I have no one to play with, because I need a lot of practice.

Anyways, playing with Jon was good. I have gotten really really bad after not playing really at all since the season ended. It's slowly coming back to me, but it's an excruciatingly slow process. More board time will help, I think. I hope the tennis courts will be empty more often, because I will definitely be coming back.

We played from 6:30pm-7:30pm. Walking back to NIH, I had to walk all the way around the NIH campus because as a summer intern, I don't have afterhours access, which means after 7pm, I can't enter the NIH campus. Surrounding NIH is a jogging path and there's lots of trees and grass. There, walking to the tennis courts, even walking alongside the street to get to the Metro (it took me 30 minutes to walk to the metro since I couldn't get into NIH, as opposed to a 15 minute walk had I been able to enter the campus), I found Bethesda almost reminiscent of home.

If I squint hard enough, if the sun shines at a certain angle and the sky is a familiar blue with well-known cloud patterns, if the streets were a little smaller, less busier, it looks like home. And to an extent, definitely more so than DC, Bethesda feels like home. There's a little more breathing space, a little more green, a little more quietness. Though it was definitely longer of a walk, I needed that experience to explore and find places that I want to return to, places that feel familiar.

And now, here's a picture of some mirrors that I saw while wandering the halls of Building 10.