a surprise.....

I waited for two days before posting this news because I had been thinking about the pros and cons of this news. During orientation, I learned that we are only allowed to spend 21 days outside of Spain. Since I will most likely need all of these days for interviewing, I will not be able to go back to China during Christmas and New Year. While this news made me very sad, I thought of the possilibility of my family visiting me in Spain. Moreover, I feel guilty about applying to schools while just beginning to work at a lab and I do feel I owe the professor more of my time..especially the days right before Christmas and the days right after New Year. My greatest wish now is that I could complete a publishable experiment by the end of June 2009 and know where I will be going after that. However, when I met with my advisor at MIT, she told me gently that if a project is not doable in one year, no matter how hard I try, it will still take two years (this is part of the conversation where she was trying to convince me to still do some traveling while in Spain). I was extremely surprised when she supported the idea of travelling, for she is one of most hardworking scientists I have met, but she told me about her experience as a young research in Isreal and how she regretted not being able to travel because she was focusing on research. My original plan was to spend all days in the laboratory and go to the museums and parks when I have free time during the evenings. While I still have not made plans for traveling, I began to feel pessimitic about the possibility of completing a project in one year (or 9 months to be exact). But I will know more when I meet with professor Moratalla on next Monday.

This is also the first time when I find myself not being able to hear the voices of my parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins, so I suspect that I am more prone to being homesick...but now I know this risk...I will try my best to prevent it :).

Again...I am finding myself having difficulty to wait until 2PM to have lunch....faint.....but I won't be able to do so anyway, because I have to move to my new place at 2PM.