birthday fun, day 2

today's been a fantastic day.

you know you've picked a good REU seminar speaker when 3 math professors come completely unsolicited just because "when dr. ___ talks, you make a point to be there and listen!". the speaker today was dr. beck. he really is a fantastic teacher... he makes you feel that you really understand the intuition behind what he's explaining, not just a bunch of rules, and he had the REU kids mesmerized for an hour and a half. he did a fantastic job.

after that i was lazy for awhile, and then headed back to campus.

in response to megan (one of my REU kids)'s suggestion yesterday, 17 of them took me out to eat for dinner as a belated birthday present. unlike the grad students yesterday who knew i'd kick them if they made me the center of attention, my REUers covertly got the serving staff to sing to me, and they wished me a "happy 16th" rather than my real age. :P my REUers actually sing with decent harmony. ;)

after that, i had made plans for the first REU social event of the summer (other than the movein day picnic)... we played capture the flag in the dark on campus. by the time the people who went to dinner all got set, and leigh and i detailed the rules, it was 9... by the time we let teams stake out territory and hide their flags, it was 9:15... it was 10:30 before my team won. :) our advantage was that we put our jail in a clever place, and out of the 12 people on their team, we ended up with 6 in jail and none getting rescued. 10 of my team members played offense at some point, i guarded the jailbirds, and luke played gobetween,... keeping track of how the others were doing and helping me corner people. since we captured half of them, and prevented rescues, and since we managed to keep our team free from prison, once we actually figured out where their flag was, it was a clean victory. :)

i didn't have the energy for tons of running around but it was fun to play warden with the jailbirds... the started singing lion king songs for fun, and when i ended up with two of the czech students under my guard in jail they started yelling random things in czech, and offered to translate only if i would tell them where my team's flag was.

we all had a good time... 22 REUers came out for the game out of the 29 living on campus -- that's mighty good turnout! i'm glad these guys all get along so well together. last year it was pointed out that it's hard to make community out of 30 people who don't know each other and so there were lots of cliques and it didn't feel horribly unified... this year, i think they're much differently glued together personality wise.... we have a lot of fun. they're fantastic kids to work with.

summary: 2 days of birthday is fun,... and i LOVE my summer job.

night y'all.