My research supervisor and my labmates are totally awesome. They
listened to me freak out about impending doom and told me that I can
figure things out somehow. =)

Or, well, rather, I've finished almost all the toast, and all the
cream cheese in the lab fridge. Which is half-okay because I brought
the cream cheese anyway, but I'm lucky my research supervisor's okay
with my eating his flax bread when I need to nibble on something. I
promise to buy flax bread for the lab sometime. =)

My lab is wonderful.

Calum put up pictures of one of our lab meetings. I'm the leftmost girl in pictures 2 and 3. You can tell because in what most Canadians would consider pleasantly warm weather, I'm wearing a sweater.

Friday afternoon at the lab. It's so quiet I can hear the water
rumbling in the walls. I have a birthday cake in the refrigerator and
no one to share it with. That, my dear friends, is culture shock.

Many people think of culture shock as just encountering cultures and
customs different from their own, but culture shock is about far more
than costumes or traditions. My form of culture shock is having to
deal with the shift from a close-knit group of friends to an
environment where I don't really know a lot of people yet.

Fortunately, the universe sensed I was about to get depressed, and it
intervened. Melanie walked in and asked if I was still around. I
brought the cake out of the refrigerator and _that_ brought Alvin out
of his cubicle. Alvin and Melanie even sang Happy Birthday. =) We had
more of that wonderfully chocolatey cake.

Now we're down to two decently-sized slices, which I can share with my
roommate later. =)