Another First Blog Post

Hello! This, too, is my first blog post, and next week will mark my first month of living in the D.C. area. So far I'm proud to report that I have successfully moved in, have learned my metro + bus route and have begun to settle in at work. However, by successfully moved in, I only mean that all of my belongings are now in my room...

My happiest surprise is how incredibly nice the people at my office are--from taking me out to a welcome lunch at a delicious Greek restaurant to receiving a ride from a co-worker to my mandatory drug testing that was about a mile away, which would have been a little rough in heels and 95 degree weather without a car--everyone I have encountered has been more welcoming and helpful than I ever could have imagined.

I work in Rockville, MD, at Aeras, a nonprofit product development partnership (PDP) that develops new tuberculosis vaccine candidates. The office has a lot of windows, people keep their doors open as an invitation to ask questions AND there is a vending machine that sells everything for 25 cents. I am also very pleased by the opportunities I have had to learn outside of the office. My first week, my supervisor let me accompany him to an afternoon session of a conference on novel technologies used for diagnosing disease. (The talks referred frequently to mass spectrometry, and afterward, I begrudgingly had to admit that organic chemistry may have a purpose aside from causing bite marks in pencils...) The next week, I attended a panel on vaccines hosted by the Global Health Council, Research!America and PATH on Capital Hill, where my supervisor served as a panelist.

Besides work, I am also learning how to be wise with spending. It is especially satisfying to see my grocery store savings add up at the end of a receipt: 5 for $10? Two for one? Cha-ching!

My only pressing complaint is that the McDonald's by my apartment building is not a Wendy's. Frosties >> McFlurries. Also, random fact learned by attending D.C.'s Fourth of July fireworks celebration: Steve Martin is amazing on the banjo.

Thanks for reading my snippets!

(This blog was not sponsored by Wendy's.)