Near the Pacific Ocean

I arrived in Seattle last night and hung out with Lucas, who I'm staying with. He has yet to awaken but we will have some hangouts before I leave for the airport since my flight to Oakland isn't until 7:15pm.

It's been fun to hang out and it's been GREAT to have non-ridiculous phone service. I got charged some ridiculous fees for having to use my data plan in Germany...

Anyway tomorrow night it looks like I'll be staying in San Francisco with Kendra Ryan and Josh, and then heading up to Santa Rosa to see my mom and get back to Arcata!

Yay for Norcal!

But to be entirely honest, it will be nice when I finally get back to Santa Cruz...

Heidelberg, nearing the end

So I'll be leaving Heidelberg tomorrow morning. I got an e-mail from the consulate only yesterday saying they had received my passport, and I could make an appointment to pick it up; predictably there were no appointment slots left but I was able to request an emergency appointment and the request was granted this afternoon, so I should be able to stop by quickly and pick it up no problem. Then I'll be straight back to the USA, which will be a big relief for me I think.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, and I'm looking forward to getting home and getting things back to normal. I'm tired of all this traveling around.

Heidelberg

So I managed to make it to Heidelberg at long last, on Wednesday evening. I attended a couple days of lectures and slept long nights, and only now have had the time to get on to the internet for some blogging.

The main reason I haven't been on is that there is no wireless at my hotel! It's terrible! There is internet at the conference and the university, but it's a 25 minute walk that I don't like making with my laptop in tow. But I figured it would be worth it to bring you guys an update so here ya go!

I had a bit of trouble following the lectures at the summer school, since it was building on a lot of material I'd missed in the first few days. Hopefully the talks at the conference will be better.

Heidelberg is really hot, almost like there are actually seasons in this part of the world and this one is the hot one. It's not so bad as Florence though, so I think I'll survive.

There's a big old castle in Heidelberg and I went there yesterday with Alex and Yun, a Belgian grad student we met at the summer school.

Overall it's been neat talking to people and hanging out, but I'm hoping to actually learn some real math next week, and I'm looking forward to getting home.