Culture

So just another boring post... it will almost be like a journal entry. So, one thing that I absolutely love about science is that sooo many people are involved from different countries and cultures. I would venture to say that it is one of the most diverse fields out there! In the small building where I am working, in the small group that I am working with I have one German, three Russians, two Japanese, two Chinese, and one Wisconsinite as mentors and part of our team. Again, that is just my small group. We also have in the building people from Korea, Czech Republic, Lithuania, and probably more. I haven't met everyone there so who knows. In my down time I have learned some basic structures of Chinese, and furthered my understanding of Japanese (I have long remembered one sentence from my Sixth grade class). Also I reviewed the few words I know in Russian (thanks Svetlana! I have not forgotten!) I wish I could spend all of my time with these people learning more and more. Who knows maybe I will go into linguistics some day...or anthropology, where I have long had a passion.

A personal boasting moment: I was speaking with the Grad Student that I am working with, TengMing, about where everyone was from the other day and he stopped me when I mentioned that I was right in my guesses about where our Aisian teammembers were from. He said, "You can tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese?" with quite the shocked tone. I told him that yes, usually I am correct because there are quite a few not-so-subtle differences in appearence and demeanor. He then said that he can't even tell the difference! Of course I am not correct 100 percent of the time, but still this made me feel proud of my efforts to pay attention to details!

Oops...I forgot to give props to my program team. There are 13 of us including an Egyptian, Frenchman, Puerto Rican, Nicaragan, Cuban, and some really crazy home-bred Americans of all shades.

God Bless America