The first week has come and gone

In the past few days, I have done several interesting things.

1. I mountain biked on a trail in the woods, canoed on a small pond incorrectly titled "Shadow Lake," and did orienteering in the woods for an hour and a half in the pouring rain.
   
2. Conveniently, my sunburn was just beginning to peel in earnest, and the 90-minute soaking turned the peeling skin into a substance the consistency of wet paper, which I subsequently rolled off easily in the shower. This is much better than any other instance of peeling skin I have ever experienced.
   
3. I sustained a situp-related injury to my big toe. You may have thought this would not be possible, but you would be wrong.
   
4. I ran 400 meters in 83 seconds, which is much better than the first 400 I ran last summer, which, at full-out effort, was a struggling 100 seconds, and it took almost all summer to get down to around 83 seconds.
   
5. I got a red circle around a yellowish bite with two teeth marks in it on my arm. I feel about red circles just about the same as I feel about red lines: Get thyself to a doctor immediately. So that is what I did. But the circle, the yellow, the marks, and in fact all evidence of the bite disappeared within a few hours. The problem with never having any medical issues is that I end up being a hypochondriac.
   
6. I passed out from a combination of dehydration and thinking about the potential existence of a tick bite on my arm and Lyme disease in my body.
   
7. I was somewhat embarrassed, except that very few people actually noticed, because I have become quite skilled at passing out in public places over the years.
   
8. I became certified in CPR.
   
9. I became certified in driving a school van.
   
10. I learned that you have to be 21 to drive a school van.

In other news, I anticipate having five wicked awesome advisees, because I have read their files and they appear to be wicked awesome people. They are coming tomorrow, which is also, as you may have guessed, wicked awesome.

Now I have a job

After a month of unemployment, I now have a job. I remembered today that I am going to get paid for this job! I had not remembered to think about that yesterday. I think it will be fun.

The 229 students at the summer school will be over 50% international students, with many from Turkey, Greece, Korea, and other Asian and European countries. Today we heard interesting stories of cultural differences that students from very different countries have experienced at the summer school, which was interesting. For example, if an older Korean child asks a younger Korean child to do something for him, the younger child must do it, and so we have to watch out for young Korean children slaving away for older Korean children at the summer school. Interesting.

There are 35 interns, 7 of whom are alums of the school and 6 of whom are current or just-graduated Williams students (the director is a Williams graduate, and did a lot of recruiting and publicity on campus). There are a lot of athletic interns. Teams composed of interns will probably be very good. We played softball today, and I was not good at it at all, because I cannot hit a ball with a bat very often. However, I only struck out once.

The campus is in a really beautiful location, on the side of a mountain at the end of a half-mile driveway off of a wooded two-lane highway. There are trees and mountains everywhere you look, and the campus itself is brick buildings and grassy lawns. It's also quite hilly; I went running this morning and the flattest part of my run was the part on trails in the woods; running on the grounds of the campus requires going up and down a lot. I have raced on the cross country course twice, and on the track two or three times, so I have some familiarity with the area, but this will certainly increase significantly in the coming weeks.