So here's the deal. I went up to Boston for a training seminar and had a total blast. It was a whirlwind trip...barely three days, only two nights, and during that time i had two full day MATLAB training sessions to attend. Thank God for Hoda! She picked me up from the airport, and we went and got dinner at a little Brazilian cafe. Then we went to her place where I had the opportunity to fix my laptop (which I dropped in Logan when my bag broke) and get online. Unfortunately, by the time the MIT network set up my account, it was time for me to leave and check into my hotel. Driving there wasn't too bad.
The next day was day 1 of my training seminar. I was the only girl in the room (no big surprise there...what's with the constant underrepresentation of women in science??), and definitely the youngest by a good 10 years. When we had to introduce ourselves and state what we hoped to accomplish with what we learned, I was the only one in the room thinking "graduation". I parked myself in the back row, just off center. Luckily, the random guy I sat beside ended up being really interesting. We had lunch together...he was a medical physicist, which it turns out isn't that different from BME (just significantly better paid). Later that night we went out to dinner, and then ended up driving into the city. We met up with Hoda in Cambridge and got drinks at a bar called The Miracle of Science, appropriately named given its proximity to MIT. After a surprisingly bizarre conversation with Hoda on the perils of dating Greek men, we called it a night.
My last day in Boston was the craziest. I grew the balls to kick ass in the seminar. I got stuck in some seriously crazy traffic in Natick, after leaving the seminar. And then I had a hell of a time at the Natick mall finding a bag under $100 that could adequately hold my laptop for the trip home. After I found my awesome new backpack and picked up Hoda, she took me on a driving tour of Boston. That was my only chance to see the city. Boston seems like an interesting place...its definitely a big city, but yet it doesn't seem like it would be that bad to bike around (except for the cold). I think it would be a fun place to live one day...its now on my list, just below NYC.
