Greetings From The North Pole!

First of all, thank you Panera Bread for your fabulous free wireless internet.

Oh, and by north pole I mean Ann Arbor. And it's actually like 85 degrees outside. I guess it gets warm here in the summer like everywhere else. Anyway, I found crazy cheap plane tickets so I'm up here today through Thursday. I got in today and went over to the School of Public Health. It's so amazingly cool. Both of the buildings are just awesome, and I even got to talk to a couple of faculty members who were suprisingly awesome as well. Though if I got a virtually free source of labor to conduct my research I suppose I'd be thrilled too. Anyway, it's all good. And they're building what I can best describe as an architectural shrine to health sciences research. And the best part is that it will actually be done at some point while I'm up here. So in summary- the school rocks.

I'm going to visit the central campus tomorrow. That's pretty much the "real" campus. Just north of campus is where the medical center (where the SPH is located) is. The engineering students go to the North campus (not to be confused with just north of campus), which is like 3/4 mile away from the northern part of the medical center. Man, I take back everytime I bitched about walking to and from the stadium at Rice, that was child's play. Anyway, I'll check out this ginormous stadium tomorrow (true fact- ginormous is the number one word not in the dictionary) when I get my tour of the campus. It'll have a lot to do if I end up getting season tickets or not, though I'm like 90% sure I'm going to do it anyway. I hear the games are CRAY-Z (my little brother's new favorite IM lingo), especially v. Ohio State. Then again, I might do my own tour tomorrow. I wouldn't want to be accidentally mistaken for an undergrad. I'm practicing my disdain towards all undergrads, or at least the UM ones. I've got to get into grad student mode.

The other plan is to check out apartments so I have somewhere to live. That would be nice. For all those who don't know I am indeed going to be living with Dan Phalen, from Baker. This means very little as no one here knows him.

Anyway, from the insane amount of walking around I've been doing I have to say this city rocks. It's seriously got like the best part of every city rolled into one. It actually reminds me a lot of Austin. And man, can I say how much I appreciate cities with good public transportation? I mean it makes life so easy. Though I think I might walk more tomorrow just so I can kind of go sightseeing. As long as it doesn't start raining like it's supposed to. Like any good tacky tourist I have like a freaking itinerary superimposed on a map I printed out. I don't know if I'm going to make it. I have taken it upon myself to visit gyms, bars, apartments, like all of UM, coffee shops, stores, and malls. And anything else cool I may see in between. It's like I'm worried Ann Arbor will disappear if I don't see it ALL tomorrow. Good thing I'll be here for the next god knows how many years. As I write this, I suppose it would have made more sense to write this after seeing everything, but I'll just update it later I guess. (Expect a sentence that's like, it was all cool) So in short, I love Ann Arbor. My parents will ask what I've done and I'll probably be like- eh. You know, looked at some stuff.

I may reference this blog for irony after I'm cursing this place in a few months. As I sit in the library by myself on Thanksgiving, unable to leave because I have 14 more pages to write in a paper, tests to grade, and a car that has been covered in 6 feet of snow, I'll look back on this and laugh.