Well I just back from Pittsburgh. OK that sounds like the start of an old song or something, but it's true. We (myself and Jenny Pilling, a student in my cohort who was kind enough to give me a ride there and back; thanks again!) drove out to Pittsburgh on Saturday from where she lives (Ardmore, which is right outside of Philadelphia) and got there in under 5 hours. It definitely helps to go on a Saturday, so we avoided all the traffic that way. We were also lucky enough to avoid the traffic on the way back on Wednesday, but more on that below. Now for the sake of not having this post be the equivalent of a lengthy Russian novel (are there short ones?), I'm separating them into different parts. The first segment will cover Saturday and Sunday.
After checking in to my hotel a little after 9 (after a great dinner at this place), I was too exhausted to really accomplish much of anything other than checking e-mail and watching Valley Girl on one of the movie channels before dozing off.
It was fortunate that we didn't have to be on campus until 1 since I had a chance to sleep in a little (though I did get up and 8 and managed to work out at my hotel's gym; it was the last time I was able to do that, but more on that later). What was unfortunate, though, was the hotel's complimentary breakfast. In this case, there was a reason it was complimentary and that's because (for the most part), it was awful! For the rest of my stay, I happily paid a few dollars extra for coffee and breakfast elsewhere. So anyway Jenny (who stayed at the Quality Inn; she told me later that it was half the price, so I think I know where I'm staying in October) came to get me at 11:30 so that we could go to campus to get our IDs. There was no line and we got our IDs within minutes and then we met up with Nicole, another student in our Cohort who came all the way from Qatar! We all went to the Primanti Brothers on Forbes Ave. in Oakland (a neighborhood I'd explore and get to know really well for having been there only 4-5 days), right next to the University, and I'm happy to say that it was great and way, way better than the one I went to 3 years ago in some suburb (the only time I'd been to the Pittsburgh area prior to my trip). So anyway we went to Allen Hall and met some of the other students. Eventually, just about everyone in our cohort arrived and we met Dr. Alman and Dr. Tomer as well. I think we just did some introductions and team-building exercises before having dinner at Lulu's Noodles (a place with seriously GREAT bubble tea and pretty good Chinese food, too), but then again I'm still so wired from the experience that sometimes it's hard to keep what happened on which particular day straight. After dinner, I went back to the hotel to work on my project for LIS 2600. Yes, I did put it off until the last minute, but fortunately it didn't take me long to get through it. That'll be a separate blog post, so stay tuned for that.
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