Panther Balls

So this week we had Frosh Week, which is like Freshers except only 4 days and the events are all dry. This way of doing things has two main advantages: 1) your liver doesn't hate you and 2) you have a sporting chance of remembering some of the names of the people you meet. The first thing that happened was some kind of cheer off, kind of like football chants but less offensive, most of my house didn't turn up and we didn't do that well, unsurprising the all girls residence was pretty good. Every house here has some kind of name, and mine is the Panthers, also we like to call ourselves Smith Haus, not sure why because last time I checked Germany wasn't infested with panthers but who knows, times change. The Dalympics were pretty cool, collection of challenges for points, probably the highlight of my day was putting in a cross that someone headed in, in 3-legged football, or soccer as they like to call it here. A close second was the fact that we got points for having lunch. Also saw this guy called Survivorman, he pretty much seems to be like Bear Grylls without the staying in hotels, he was pretty talented on a harmonica and had a band, so played songs in between answering questions. We had a pretty relaxed house social where we watched The Goon, which is set here in Halifax.

I have been and met the research group that I will be joining, they all seem pretty cool. Had lunch with them in the pub on campus, the fish and chips wasn't bad at all, and pretty cheap as well. Is also pretty cool to have my own desk in an office, will hopefully also have a computer soon and then I can start working properly. Have already got an account on an academic cluster, and so far as I can work out this means that you can basically use some pretty full on computing power. Basically it what I think I shall be doing is looking at how binding different amino acids to iron in a porphyrin ring affects the binding of oxygen, which is basically what happens in haemoglobin.

Had my first few lectures. Doing a course on Quantum Mech with the Professor from my research group looks pretty interesting, unfortunately that way they organise lectures here means I have that at 8.35 every Mon, Weds and Fri. I'm also doing a class on transition metals which is a mixture of final years and grad students, looks pretty interesting but unfortunately it now means that I need to know the Periodic table up to Radon, which for non chemists is basically all of it apart from the little bit on its own at the bottom. Then I am taking a organic, which should just help me to remember some stuff and keep my in a lab so I don't return even worse at practicals than before. One awesome thing about my timetbale is that I have nothing on tues and thurs, although that will probably be taken up with my project and athletics.

I met up with my training group yesterday for some testing, we went across the harbour into dartmouth, where they have a 400m track, they have an indoor track here but it has 16 sides and is 260m, I mean that seems pretty random to me, but there you go. So did some speed tests and some jumping tests. Went to one of the athletes houses in the evening, was a really nice place, but the nicest part was her three dogs. The oldest was a 1 year old husky coyote cross, had a 9 month cross, but by far the cutest was a 16 week husky chihuahua cross.

Right I have now pretty much decided that I am going to attempt to write this every Sunday, so if you want to check around this time each week there will hopefully be more stuff up, and yeah just follow me or something.