The PENNthouse

I was able to sleep in a bit this morning, as check-in to the program was at 11. After I woke up, I had some time to pack and relax. We left the hotel around 10:30. While my bag was fairly light, it did not have wheels. We had to walk a fair distance carrying our bags. If I do this again I will definitely bring a bag with wheels. After we reached the area of the campus where the program is based, we got several papers, keys, and a card. You can swipe the card to get into a variety of places. We brought our bags to our rooms and settled in.

My room

My room was on the very top floor of the Franklin building. The heat rose to the top and made the air muggy and awful. Inside my room it was no better. There was an air conditioner, but it was controlled from the main office and hadn't been turned on. The ILC cohort headed out for a last lunch before the classes began. We went to a barbecue place. I had some hush puppies: fried cornbread. We then walked back to the dorms. Of course, since this was the first time I didn't have my rain jacket in my backpack, due to the heat, it began to rain. Given the heat of the day, the rain actually felt pretty nice. Inside the dorm, it was still hot and muggy. As I got higher up in the building the heat increased further. Luckily, the air conditioner in my room was on. I got settled into my room, and began writing up the room description for Don. I soon ran into a problem: I couldn't connect to the internet. The ethernet port didn't work, and the wifi required a Pennkey to log in. I did have my Pennkey... stored in my email. Given that I didn't have my email synced with my computer or phone, I had to go down to the office to get on to the internet. After waiting for almost an hour in line, I finally gained access to the internet. In the future, I will store my Pennkey on my flashdrive before getting to the campus.

Another view of my room.

After returning to my room, I returned to settling in. I wrote up the day's blog so far, sent in the room description, and called my parents. I am extremely glad they give you so much time to settle in on the first day. We all met in the quad at 5:00, for dinner. We grouped by floor. I had some spaghetti for dinner. Over dinner, I talked to two people, Oscar and Elliot. Elliot was from Fremont, and Oscar was from Majorca, Spain. He was quite excited because there is a soccer game between Brazil and Spain. He also told us about how he wants to run the bulls sometime. During the running of the bulls, some bulls are let loose to chase people down a street. At the end, the bulls are typically killed. While I can understand that this event must be extremely exciting to watch, it seems needlessly dangerous. I also dislike that the bulls are killed. At school, they have classes from about 9:00 until 2:45. This shorter school day is offset by more homework. I prefer having a longer school day and less homework. Spending time in school can be valuable because there is a teacher you can ask questions to.

Looking towards the door of my room

After dinner, everybody who is doing a Penn program through Summer Discovery went to a lecture hall for orientation. The rules can be summed up as such: don't do anything illegal, stay within a certain area of the city, and be back before it's late. We also got a bit of information. There are about 300 students in the program. Only 36 of them are in physics with me. They come from numerous countries. They told us a more information about Penn and Summer Discovery, none of it particularly noteworthy. We then met with our RCs, or Resident Counselors. They gave us a bit more information: times to be at breakfast, class, or in the dorms. They showed us where to sign in (the method of making sure we are in the quad by 11:00). Tomorrow we'll meet in the quad at 8:30 for our classes, and breakfast starts at 8. I have met several people in physics. I'm looking forward to it.