Settling in and new friends

I officially completed my first week of work and I have to say, I finished exhausted! Working 9 hours without caffeine is tiresome! I capped it off with a great weekend; I did some grocery shopping (took 3 trips to the store, not on purpose), lots of writing for my post-doc application, moved my bedroom around, and did laundry. I treated myself to an array of guacamole and 2 salsas, yum! Laundry was a bit different for me. We have a washing machine but it only fits about 1 sheet at a time - literally, I washed one sheet and one towel for my first load. Also, there is no dryer. Typically you put your clothes outside to dry but because its so cold things sometimes don't dry and I needed sheets to sleep on so I draped them over things in my room and turned on my space heater. Things dried before bed but because my pajamas and sheets were just washed I was overwhelmed with the smell of my cheap soap. I'm also seriously re-thinking the cheap sheets I bought. They are only about 225 thread count and feel like sandpaper. I just hate the idea of spending money on things I can't bring back with me but not sure I can sleep on these things forever. Hopefully they will soften up.

Today was another great day of work/existence. I woke up to an unexpected Google Hangout (similar to a Skype) with Brendan and got to finally catch up on things. It was nice to hear from him. Because I stayed with him right before I left, and then he came with me, we went from being spending every day and hour together to not speaking for over a week.

When I came home one of my roommates, Katrina, was making tacos and invited me to join her, her boyfriend (Sebastian, also my roommate), and his friend (Josh). We ended up talking for several hours and had a lot of fun. We spent a good amount of time discussing LOST, which really just made me feel at home. Among other things, we talked about national holidays and they would really like to celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving with me. They are very curious about the history of both and, like most Americans, would enjoy an excuse to dress up. They were also super excited to hear that I helped create and was in a zombie movie. I hope we can pull something together for the holidays, that would be so fun!

ps. I'm working on a picture for this one, I know it makes the read that much more enjoyable :)