Busy, Busy, Busy / Tan Ocupados

Wow, I just realized it's been over two weeks since our last post! March has definitely felt a like a whirlwind; so many things have been going on this month!
First, the Quirk lab had our annual "winter" retreat the first weekend in March at this beautiful mountain resort called Casa Grande in Utuado, PR. Utuado is about 2 hours southwest of San Juan, tucked away in the beautiful mountains. The purpose of these retreats is to step away from the busy lab and get to know each other better and talk about science on a philosophical level. We read and discussed a chapter out of Karl Popper's book The Logic of Scientific Discovery in addition to some other philosophical readings on science related to the Socratic Method, theory testing, etc. We also had another session on women in science and what that means for the lab and for the future of science in general. Overall, it was a pretty enlightening retreat, and I had a great time. One very interesting thing I learned was that Puerto Ricans do not really care for peace and quiet. The mountain resort we stayed at had a lot of non-Puerto Rican tourists who were there for relaxing, mediating, and doing yoga, and several times our group was asked to be quiet! It was very interesting to see the different cultures from both perspectives: the Puerto Ricans being loud and rambunctious were not doing so to be intentionally rude, but were just having a good time... which lasted into the late hours of the night. On the other hand, the non-native guests were trying to have a peaceful visit and probably seemed onery to the Puerto Rican guests. Greg (my advisor, the professor in charge of the lab) was saying that maybe next year, we should go to a place where there are more locals. But I am not sure if I will be able to handle all that loudness! haha :) Anyway, here are some pictures from the retreat:

Casa Grande Terrace

View of the pool from the terrace

One of the lab members ordering a drink at the cozy bar

The Quirk lab goes for a hike

Beautiful view of while on the hike

A few of us also stopped by a cave on our way home. It was beautiful! You can see the other side of the mountain where Casa Grande was located from this cave. I can't remember the name of the cave, unfortunately :-/

Second, our friends Ben and Leora came to visit us from Rochester last weekend! We were so excited to see them. They also brought their baby Misha and we had such a great time. We took them to the beach, had them try lots of Puerto Rico's tasty foods, and strolled around Condado and Old San Juan. We also cooked a feast of America's Test Kitchen Pulled Pork for them and invited our neighbor over and had some fun late night conversation. Here are some photos from their visit:

Enjoying the day at the Piñones Beach with some agua de coco

Strolling around Old San Juan near the Old Wall. Look at those huge waves!

Cool statue near the Old Wall in Old San Juan... the Three Kings perhaps?

Brunch at Caficultura in Old San Juan. It was delicious!

Our second visit to El Morro. Always a beautiful sight!

Third, I made a trip with some of the lab members to Vieques to teach kids about neuroscience! It was part of Brain Awareness Week, a national event that promotes awareness of the brain, mostly to school kids, but really to anyone who is interested. Our lab actually participated in several events we planned in Puerto Rico. We had some artists come visit our lab who were interested in our research and how we can connect the mind with art. They in turn, invited us to their space and showed us their artwork and what they do. They were a very interesting group that I hope our lab keeps in touch with. One of the undergrads also planned a Brain Awareness Week event at the Río Piedras campus for the psychology department. As you can see, we love spreading the word about the brain! Anyway, Vieques was so beautiful and I had a great time helping with this event and watching the kids get excited about science. Here are some photos:

My first time on a little plane. There were ten of us. How were we all going to fit on that thing!?

All packed in like sardines... but still smiling!

Getting ready to head to Vieques! The plane ride was only about 5 minutes

Up up and away!

Five minutes later, we are landing...

View of the ocean from the school we visited in Vieques

Teaching kids about the brain

Wild horses roaming around Vieques!

So as you can see, it has been a fun-filled March. We are ready for more! We have some more visitors coming in April and May... hope you are planning a trip here if you haven't already done so! ;)

The World's Best

We did it! We finished our first running race in Puerto Rico.

Yesterday Maria and I ran in the so-called World's Best 10K across the Teodoro Moscoso bridge in San Juan, PR with 7,813+ other people. It was an intense, crowded, and hot introduction to racing in Puerto Rico.

We had been training the past few months in preparation for the race but we were not quite ready when the time came to race, which for me makes it no different than any other race. Our times were respectable and an excellent starting off point for future PR's in PR. Maria finished 1860th overall, 227th out of 3044 women, and 68th out of 688 in the F26-34 group. I finished 1502nd overall, 1326th out of 4838 men, and 300th out of 1009 in the M26-34 group. As you can see Maria did much better than I did even though she finished in 58:54 and I finished in 55:57. We both could have done even better given the amount of time it took to get to the start line and through all of the walkers.

A friend of ours gave us a tip on where to park for the race and to essentially ignore the starting corral system they use to separate the various runners based on expected finish times. However, we arrived a little later than we had planned and by the time we got to the start line all of the corrals were filled. We snuck into corral 2 although we were assigned to corral 3. They had security posted at each entrance but they didn't seem to care much; they were all on their phones and let anyone who wanted into the starting corral, including the kids with backpacks full of something and no race bib anywhere in sight.

Once in the corral we just wanted to get out. It was packed and sweaty and hot. Luckily there was a slight breeze that made it somewhat bearable. We waited for 20 minutes until the start of the race.

Just before the gun went off the crowd started moving forward toward the start line. We really got packed in at that point. After the gun went off, I told Maria to take it slow until we get to the line so we didn't trip and injure ourselves, but once we got there she took off. I had to weave through the crowd to keep up with her. We were both amazed and annoyed that just 30 seconds after we crossed the line (two and a half minutes after the gun went off) we were passing hundreds of walkers. I have no way of ever understanding why someone who is fully intent on walking an event like this would ever want to be in the front, in the way of runners, being pushed out of the way and kicked and stepped on (we did not push or kick any walkers, although I may have stepped on one. Sorry.)

Anyway, we made it through the crowd and settled into our pace. We soon met a bearded man with a strange accent who told us that there are much better races in PR for posting good times. We could see from his shirt that he was a member of the local running club, Borinquen Runners. The group seems interesting and we might join them at some point.

All in all, we had a good time and feel quite accomplished. From an organizational standpoint I think they could have done a much better job, although the event expo held the two days before the race was pretty impressive, in my opinion. I may have even found a job at the expo! We will wait and see...