Some people have been asking me how I’m doing, as I haven’t written anything recently. The thing is that nothing that exciting has been going on :) Just the normal semester with doing math, reading books, and meeting friends.
One cool thing is that with a few friends we started a “Student Colloquium” here at our department at Purdue. The idea is to give expository and fun talks about our areas (by grad students for grad students). So far it’s been going quite well, usually with an audience of around 20 – and with quite a lot of people interested in speaking as well. You can check the abstracts here.
The weather is gradually getting cold and uglier, but beforehand, I’ve been riding quite a lot around on my bike. I found a wonderful sand beach at a small, clean river nearby and spent half a day sunbathing there (in October! that would be unimaginable in CR). The area around is amazing, I’m really looking forward to spring when I’ll be able to go there some more! Another day, we went canoeing on the river with a Chinese friend, that was great as well.
And I’ve noticed some funny things about how languages work in my head. Although I’m thinking almost entirely in English most of the time, there are some particular things that I still express in Czech. For example reading numbers (especially page numbers when looking something up in an index in a book) or some mathematical symbols (eg the implication sign). And at least one more good example I can’t remember now :)
And I’m going to Colorado in two weeks. For a Fulbright seminar, but also for a bit of travelling before. First I was thinking about backpacking in the Rockies, but it seems there will already quite a lot of snow up there, so probably it’s not such a great idea.
We’re also organizing elections of the new board of our Purdue Fulbright Association, so it’s a bit tricky finding candidates – anyone interested? :)
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