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Florida in the Freezing Cold

Posted on Jan 15, 2010 by | 0 comments

January second I flew down to Tampa for the Inter-American Photochemical Society’s Conference. Professor Harbron and Christina went too. Christina is a veteran of the trip and showed me the ropes. We scored an awesome non-stop flight down there. (I remembered how much I am NOT a fan of flying…a lot)

Christina and I, waiting on a plane in Norfolk.

There were people from all over the US and the world there, including a group of students from Germany. The majority of the conference consisted of us listening to various talks. There were some really amazing talks, like the ones about 3-D optical data storage and molecules hula twisting all over the place.

We were glad there were still some paired posterboards left when we checked in. Although, not many so the one we chose was right in front of the projector, it’s possible that Christina might be permanently scarred from standing in it’s path too much.

Mom bought me a beautiful suit for Christmas. Although the conference was pretty casual, I couldn’t give up the opportunity to wear it. (Even if my group was told that we looked like we were from New York, who else goes to IHOP by the beach in a suit right?)

Here is one of me and Harbron, she is the most amazing advisor ever!

Monday, Christina and I made sure to make some time for a nap on the beach. It was chilly while we were there, but the hammocks in the sun in the mid-afternoon were delightful. I’m pretty sure I sat in one of these hammocks everytime I walked by one. They were really great and had little pairs all by the hotel, so Christina and I could lay together, but not too together.

Our last night at the conference there was a banquet at the local museum filled with work by Dali. It’s one thing to write a apaper about a sculpture of a man with drawers in his chest but quite another to see it. It was also fun to kind of hear his life story from our tour guide and see some of the facets of his work that were not surreal. Anyway, there was some miscommunication about the banquet so we split to avoid the lack of food and chairs. We wound up at a nice thai place only a few blocks down. It was much better for my vegetarian travel companions anyway.

Tuesday morning we had the last session. There were some fun talks, but everyone was going over their times like crazy. Harbron and Christina had only planned to miss one talk, they ended up missing two. I also missed the last talk, my aunt Ann picked me up from the hotel and kindly took me to Nana’s house so I could start my real vacation.

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