I spent a nice Fall break with Kindel's family in Northern California. Besides finally winning a hand of cards against the family and playing mafia with the extended family, we had a good deal of time to catch up. Two questions were frequently asked of me - how do you like Mountain View? And, how's Stanford going? Here are the answers:

Kindel and I both generally like living in the Bay area. From all of our exploring of the hills around valley, I think we most enjoyed Portola Redwood State Park. It was close to home, yet off of the beaten path, and contained some beautiful wountains (large hills) and valleys filled with giant redwood trees. Monteray Bay seemed like a really cool place, too. So, what we like most of our new home town is all of the extra stuff around to visit and experience. We've also come across some nice parks around the area, which help lessen fast paced mood of the Penninsula. We're not fond of the rat race which tends to drive much of Bay area life, nor do we like how expensive housing and food is. However, we have a great apartment and God has kept excellent food on our plates (through Kindel's excellent cooking).

I think my last post indicated that I was starting a new research project and classes, and so much of what I think about Stanford comes directly from these endevors. All in all, Stanford has been relaxed and fairly low-pressure. My research project has provided results that confirm our intial hypotheses. The results came at just the right time to present them at a conference in New Orleans. There seems little pressure from my advisor to latch onto a thesis project, though, and so I'm working on over coming the inertia of laziness and distractions to think about the next round of experiments that I'd like pursue.

My classes have been excellent in content and work load. I took the advice of other students and took two courses this quarter - environmental microbiology and physical hydrogeology. It has been one of those quarters/semesters in which I feel as though I've learned a whole lot of cool stuff. While I've had plenty of busy work, homework has been very doable, leaving plenty of time for research.

All in all, I really like the school. The profs are excited to teach and work with students, there is a ton of money available for whatever, we have a high intensity X-ray light source on campus, there are always interesting lectures to attend, and if I tried, I could probably find free food any day of the week (coffee and donuts on Monday, brown bag seminars w/ lunch provided, etc.)

Well, there you have it. Questions, comments, suggestions?