Labour Day Weekend

So yesterday was Labour Day, here. We pretty much celebrated the good ol' US grad student way - we laboured. We mostly worked on thesis stuff, but we also finished up some of our settling-in shopping (and yes, shopping is work for us).

But we did manage to squeeze in a little bit of fun. Friday night was a departmental barbeque. They cooked up burgers, sausages, mushrooms, prawns (yes, we had "shrimp on the barbie," even though no one calls them shrimp here - that was just for a US ad campaign). It was great to get to know some of the people in other labs, too. The people in the pic below are some of Ben's lab-mates: Anne, Sam, Ben (hopefully you still recognize him), and Julie.


Then on Saturday, Julie invited us over for dinner - even Ani got to come! Julie is from MA, and she's part of a program where she does 1/2 her PhD here and 1/2 in MA. She prepared this great Greek dinner for us - grilled lamb skewers, spanakopita, baba ghanouj, even really good ice cream. She's just a great person, and we were there until 1 AM talking (a pretty late night for us old fogies!).