more on first work day

Hello all, I just thought I'd give a little update on my first day
here. I sleep well last night and feel a bit better than yesterday.
I'm still sad about not being in Mexico; everything is different here,
as is to be expected, and it constantly reminds me I'm not in Mexico
anymore. But I know the feelings are normal and I'm sure by the end of
this week or the next I'm going to be loving it here. The girls I'm
living with are nice. I think we're going to be changing housing
around a bit right now because we girls are really squashed together.

I met my two advisers today and they both seem friendly, though two
different characters. One seems more on top of things than the other
and is easier to understand, though they're both foriegners. One is
from Armenia and grew up in Syria, or at least I think those are the right countries (he's the one I can understand
better) and the other's from Wales, I think. The second one talks
quietly and that combined with his accent makes him a bit difficult to
understand.

All the Puerto Rican workers I've met so far seem really nice. The
cooks were explaining to me about the different kinds of beans they
have here. They have a different name than in Mexico, though now I've
forgotten it again. I'm sure since rice, beans, and chicken are the
stapel foods here I'll quickly learn the name. The human resources
woman was really impressed with my Spanish, which was nice. The gaurd
that drove me here last night is probably my favorite adult here so
far. He was super talkative and just really open and helpful. He even
called this afternoon to check in on me. :) Basically I'm speaking
Spanish with the people who know it, which are basically the Puerto
Rican staff members. The official language of the observatory is
English, so that's how I talk to professors and the other students.
Also, most of them don't seem to really speak a lot of Spanish. A
bunch of the professors are foreign and speak other languages besides
English. For example, today we had a talk about coordinate and time
systems from a guy from Sweden. He kept pronouncing "calendar" like
ca-LAN-dar instead of CA-len-dar.

So far I feel a bit lost about my project and a bit overwhelmed by the
reading my professor gave me, but I know that's perfectly normal. No
one else had any clue what they were doing when they arrived either
and now they're all going strong on their projects (I'm the second
last to arrive). I'm sure once we get started I'll have specific
questions and will be on my way to learning how to do everything.

It's neat to be here in the jungle to do science. The animals, mostly
bugs and frogs, are louder at night than during the day. It's nice to
be out of the city and really hear the nature around us. A lot of
people apparently had trouble sleeping the first couple nights. I
didn't have any problem though. All the noise help drown out the sound
of the sand blasting their doing as a part of the huge painting job
they're doing on the telescope right now.

Well, I should go get a start on the reading. One of the girls in the
group has her birthday tomorrow and apparently we're going to have
cake and ice cream at midnight to celebrate. I'd like to at least do a
little bit of work before that.