Hi Bhav!

Thought I would write an email since it's tougher for you to get online now. I hope you are holding up to all that travel to reach school. How have you been the past few weeks? Is your mom doing better?

Since we last chatted, I seemed to have full days. Now that the summer is nearing an end, things have become more hectic. Last week itself is an example.

I spent the weekend on Kit's (my summer roomie) farm. It was my first time on a real farm. And I got to meet his parents and his sister. I like this girl, she's very sweet. Helped me out by cleaning my room with me and driving me around when she was at Coe for a week on a camp. I had some good ol' American food. I took a tour of his farm, equipment and the fields. I helped them move the greenhouse they were making. I drove an ATV four wheeler, that was fun! They also have a pond with a paddle boat and a canoe. Its a nice place there and their parents were very friendly. I really had a good time there.

Sunday ended with a raging storm in Cedar Rapids with tornados, 3 of them. It was crazy here, all of us took shelter in the basement of my dorm, ie our floor. Quite a few big trees got uprooted, and some of them broke a few feet above the ground. I saw the mess when I was getting to work. The funny sight was our college President standing out in the quad looking at his precious broken trees sadly. And we also had a fabulous steak dinner thrown to the research students and faculty. I had a huge steak, it was so big that I simply couldnt finish it. Food flows too freely here, dangit! Doesn't help me with loosing weight..lol..

Tuesday, me and Scott had to go to Iowa State University to run some Raman IR tests on some of the glasses that we had made. These glasses absorb water like hell, so we can't work with these in air. We had to work in a Helium glove box preparing pans for the Raman for 3 freaking hours straight! Anyway, the test took only about an hour for 9 samples. Well, although the results that we saw weren't great, we figured that it was a first step towards improving our samples. And then before coming back, we both spent $25 in a Pizzeria! lol..thats about 4 times the normal amount, although the pizza that we ate was huge and very good and this went on Doc's tab because he told us that he would pay for our lunch there! Food yet again, its a change from microwaveble food and peanut butter- jelly sandwiches atleast. And I did drive about 60 miles on the way back from the University. Scott let me drive his car without a licence on the highway, I was so excited to drive a car for the first time here!

Wednesday was the lunch day and we had Thai and Chinese food since the talk was about Anna and the King of Siam. We learnt some very interesting things about this story. First, most of the stuff in the movie didn't happen the way it was potrayed. Secondly, Anna was a liar. And contrary to popular belief, she was not born in England but in India and was the child of a mixed marriage, Indian woman and a British army man apparently. In the evening, me, Sara, Kit, Darbie and some of her friends went to drive-in movies in a town about 75 mins from school. We saw Legally Blonde 2 and T3 for just $6, it was awesome. Just one minor problem was that it got deadly cold by 11 and the movies went up to 1 in the morning on a school night (ok..work night).

Thursday was not a good day in research. Our nitrogen tanks ran out and we hadn't ordered new ones which made Doc mad because it wasted the entire morning. Well, there was only the morning to work today because we were going to a lake nearby to unwind. We splashed about in the water for a while playing frisbee. And then went for a boat ride and played sand volleyball. Its sad that the only thing I can do is serve, I wish I could do the rest of the stuff. I got back quick because my parents wanted to call me since I haven't got to chat with them a lot because the time difference is a bit annoying. And then one on my closest friends called me and told me that she won't be coming back to Coe. Man, that was so depressing because we hung out a lot along with Kristin. Atleast Kristin's coming back and I talk to her often, so I dont miss them a lot. Thank god for email and free phone calls.

But this weekend has been rather slow, apart from talking to Kristin, I did nothing else. I wish you would have come online but I know you are pretty busy, so I understand.

By the way, if this was too much detail, just tell me. I just wanted you to know how my week went. Tell me whats going on there..

Sending you lots of love

Joy

Now that the summer is nearing an end, things have become more hectic. Last week itself is an example.

I spent the weekend on Kit's (my summer roomie) farm. It was my first time on a real farm. And I got to meet his parents and his sister. I like this girl, she's very sweet. Helped me out by cleaning my room with me and driving me around when she was at Coe for a week on a camp. I had some good ol' American food. I took a tour of his farm, equipment and the fields. I helped them move the greenhouse they were making. I drove an ATV four wheeler, that was fun! They also have a pond with a paddle boat and a canoe. Its a nice place there and their parents were very friendly. I really had a good time there.

Sunday ended with a raging storm in Cedar Rapids with tornados, 3 of them. It was crazy here, all of us took shelter in the basement of my dorm, ie our floor. Quite a few big trees got uprooted, and some of them broke a few feet above the ground. I saw the mess when I was getting to work. The funny sight was our college President standing out in the quad looking at his precious broken trees sadly. And we also had a fabulous steak dinner thrown to the research students and faculty. I had a huge steak, it was so big that I simply couldnt finish it. Food flows too freely here, dangit! Doesn't help me with loosing weight..lol..

Tuesday, me and Scott had to go to Iowa State University to run some Raman IR tests on some of the glasses that we had made. These glasses absorb water like hell, so we can't work with these in air. We had to work in a Helium glove box preparing pans for the Raman for 3 freaking hours straight! Anyway, the test took only about an hour for 9 samples. Well, although the results that we saw weren't great, we figured that it was a first step towards improving our samples. And then before coming back, we both spent $25 in a Pizzeria! lol..thats about 4 times the normal amount, although the pizza that we ate was huge and very good and this went on Doc's tab because he told us that he would pay for our lunch there! Food yet again, its a change from microwaveble food and peanut butter- jelly sandwiches atleast. And I did drive about 60 miles on the way back from the University. Scott let me drive his car without a licence on the highway, I was so excited to drive a car for the first time here!

Wednesday was the lunch day and we had Thai and Chinese food since the talk was about Anna and the King of Siam. We learnt some very interesting things about this story. First, most of the stuff in the movie didn't happen the way it was potrayed. Secondly, Anna was a liar. And contrary to popular belief, she was not born in England but in India and was the child of a mixed marriage, Indian woman and a British army man apparently. In the evening, me, Sara, Kit, Darbie and some of her friends went to drive-in movies in a town about 75 mins from school. We saw Legally Blonde 2 and T3 for just $6, it was awesome. Just one minor problem was that it got deadly cold by 11 and the movies went up to 1 in the morning on a school night (ok..work night).

Thursday was not a good day in research. Our nitrogen tanks ran out and we hadn't ordered new ones which made Doc mad because it wasted the entire morning. Well, there was only the morning to work today because we were going to a lake nearby to unwind. We splashed about in the water for a while playing frisbee. And then went for a boat ride and played sand volleyball. Its sad that the only thing I can do is serve, I wish I could do the rest of the stuff. I got back quick because my parents wanted to call me since I haven't got to chat with them a lot because the time difference is a bit annoying. And then one on my closest friends called me and told me that she won't be coming back to Coe. Man, that was so depressing because we hung out a lot along with Kristin. Atleast Kristin's coming back and I talk to her often, so I dont miss them a lot. Thank god for email and free phone calls. And I think I set a personal record on the phone, 3 hours with Kristin!

Another night in Dad's office scanning photos and also wondering as to the method of transfering the pictures from this computer to anything else. To give you a picture of the computer I am using, its a PII machine with 128 MB RAM. All this has is a floppy drive which is practically useless in this case because I have to do about 80 MB of transfer atleast. I then decided that the internet was my best option. So I tried Yahoo!'s Briefcase but it seems too slow and it won't accept most of the filenames because they are too long. So, that venture was a failure. And then experimented by sending these pictures two at a time using my father's office mail which was fortunately open. So, far its working. *crossing fingers and praying*.

Right now, I am sitting in my father's office scanning photos of my childhood. I plan to get some of these printed and most of them will be going online in my photo album too.

*The damn firewall in the office blocks all messengers! Even at home, it blocks AIM while it lets the rest of them to work, I dont know what's up with that. I thought I'd chat as well and scan. Doesnt seem like it now. I simply can't figure out why it doesnt work even with the proxy input. I give up!*

This time the trip home has certainly not been a cakewalk. Got to the airport and then found out that Air France and Delta had different baggage policies. I had to pay 110 bucks to carry the cycle along with me, I was soo pissed. They are both members of the Skyteam, some team members. I really dont feel like flying Air France anymore, I have seriously had enough, over priced tickets and sub par services. Anyway, flight to Paris was 8 and a half hours long because the plane had to circle and land in the airport from the other side due to cross winds. That ate 30 minutes of my 2 hour transit here. And then after landing it took the bus 45 minutes to pick us up. ie 15 minutes left for me to get to board which included taking a bus and passing security checks. I barely made it to the flight only to find out that the flight would be 1.5 hours late due to a cargo door part malfunction. What luck! But I was glad that I got to Lagos at last and with all my baggage! Thank God that Papa also arrived the same evening, thats the only reason that I was picked up too, because they had me slated in to come tomorrow. Got to the guesthouse and set out for home at 5.30 in the morning. great! to top off the armed robberies,we now have a fuel strike. This country is going to the dogs, wait, its already gone to the dogs...