Adventures of The Peninsula

I woke up this morning quite nervous. Our project was due today and I wasn't entirely sure if all the t's were crossed and i's dotted. I headed to class a few minutes early so I would have time to look over my work one last time before submitting it and presenting.

Our entire class planned for today solely for presentations. Everyone had been working very hard on their projects, and it showed. Though the original time limit was 8 minutes speaking and 2 minutes for questions, many if not most of the presentations went over this limit, especially the ones before our lunch break. By the time we had made it to lunch we hadn't made it through even 10 presenters.

My favorite presentation was made by a classmate named Jared, which is also coincidentally my brother's name. Jared's presentation focused on relating brown dwarfs, red dwarfs and gas giants to each other. That was not the part that made the presentation great. What made it great was that he couldn't find what he wanted in order to calculate the relationship he was hoping for. All the data was hiding in different locations and he couldn't fit it all together correctly, so this ended up with a lot of failures in finding out an accurate sample for the relationship he wanted expressed.

Goodbye Kersten 311

But even more than the presentation, people started to be looser in their failures after that, most notes about failure to find what they wanted being responded to with a few laughs from the group.

My presentation ended up going as well as I could've hoped, I knew and understood what was on my slides, and even got a compliment from Professor Kron on my project, and information on the question that I didn't have to time to figure out: is there reddening in the Crab Nebula? Though not a part of my original research idea, this question arose by the time I had found the luminosity of the Crab Pulsar(which was my project idea).

We were done with presentations before the class period ended, so we spoke of logistics of getting to Yerkes Observatory, where we're staying next week, and said goodbye to our classroom which we wouldn't be returning to.

After class and dinner, Michelle, Kara, Jahnvi, and I headed downtown to do a bit of shopping and also find things necessary for Jahnvi and I to dye our hair. We decided to dye our hair yesterday after an offhanded comment about Olivia dying Michelle's hair. Only a few minutes later we already had a plan as to how we were going to acquire certain products. Today I decided what dye I needed and that I wanted my hair to be tinted purple as opposed to legitimately purple. Jahnvi went for ombré hair from brown to red. The adventure started with Jahnvi and I running off to Sally Beauty to get my hair dye before they closed and heading back to H&M where we split off from Michelle and Kara. 

We ended up crossing paths with Michelle and Kara as they  headed down to Saks and Jahnvi and I were interested in the sale at H&M. We found cute matching outfits, which was both funny and cool. After this we trekked to a nearby Walgreens in the hopes of finding Kool-Aid mix which Jahnvi could use to dye her hair. After no luck at the very busy Walgreens, we looked for Forever 21 with no luck  and returned to H&M to buy the clothes we had found  earlier. 

It was just starting to drizzle when Jahnvi and I walked into the H&M and not 15 minutes later was it pouring. The gutters were flooded and the rain was pounding the sidewalk powerfully. We stood with a group of people just inside the H&M trying to figure out how we would find our friends. After a few phone calls it was decided that Jahnvi and I should run to the Peninsula, a swanky hotel that Kara and Michelle were hanging out inside until we could get back to campus. The reasoning behind this was 1) Slightly cheaper Uber ride and 2) Kara has a friend from her Econ class who, though originally was in the dorms, now is staying at that hotel for 3 weeks, named Felipe.

Picture Kara snapped on the way back to the dorms

I had the benefit of having a hood while Jahnvi didn't, so we ran the 3 blocks down quite quickly and found Michelle and Kara inside the Peninsula. Here's where Kara knowing Felipe came in handy and we decided that he is legitimately the sweetest. He woke up and came down from his room to give Kara the $60 it would cost to get an Uber back to the dorms. In the worst case Michelle or I would've just bitten the bullet and covered it until getting reimbursed, but Felipe apparently doesn't let people pay him back for anything. It was pretty great.

Though I had my hair dye, Jahnvi didn't have her Kool-Aid. Upon return to campus, Jahnvi and I grabbed umbrellas and headed to Target. There was a slight problem though. My phone's location hadn't reloaded yet so it was giving me the hours for the Target that was where we were downtown. The Target by campus was already closed. We were able to pop into CVS and find her hair dye instead of Kool-Aid.

Now both of us have dyed hair. I won't really know what mine looks like until it's dry and in daylight, but Jahnvi's red is already easy to see.