July 7th, 2009

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great 4th of July!! My family came up to Mount Pleasant on last Thursday near the end of a 10 day trip they took. I didn’t have to work on Friday July 3rd and so taking advantage of the 3 day weekend we drove to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park near Empire Michigan. It was very beautiful!! The sand dunes were amazing! The scenic drive was very scenic and the short hike we went on was very nice. At one of the stops on the scenic drive, there was a 450 foot dune that went down to Lake Michigan. A bunch of people were walking down, and then back up (the hike up didn’t look fun)! Thanks to some locals we learned that if we walked down the beach about a mile, we would come to a beach and steps over the small dunes there that went to another lake and a parking lot. Mom didn’t want to climb down so she drove over to the lake and picked us up. I enjoyed the climb down and the walk down the beach.


On July 4th we enjoyed the cherry festival downtown Traverse City. Emily and I made little cherry pies. We looked around, tried samples of cherry products, enjoyed lunch and then sat down to watch the air show. I had never seen an air show before and it was amazing (although slow at times). After the air show we took a drive up one of the peninsulas and saw some more nice views. We then headed to the hotel beach and lounged around for awhile. We had a late picnic dinner in a park as we waited for the fireworks to start. It was a very nice display. It was nice seeing my family and I’m glad they came to visit! I can’t believe I only have about 2.5 weeks left! The REU is going really fast!



Now for the math. About awhile ago we all gave midterm reports. Each group made a power point type presentation and gave a 20 minute presentation with their results so far, their conjectures and what they wanted to work on for the rest of the time. I feel like our presentation went well. Our advisor had a few comments but nothing very critical, just details to fix. Of course it could be better and we will work on it more for next time. It took a bunch of work to prepare for the presentation because we had to type up everything in LaTex which took a long time, it was worth it though because everything has to be typed up by the end anyway and this way it will be a lot less overwhelming at the end. After seeing the presentation, I was just reassured that I really am glad I got the project I did. I find it really interesting. We have not had as many results this past week as we did the first few weeks but we are getting into more challenging things now so that is expected. Oh well. We still have a bunch of results and I’m sure we will have more before the project is over. We have about a week left for actual researching. Then we have to prepare our final presentation and give a practice talk. On the last Monday there will be a conference at CMU for all the REU groups in Michigan and we will present to each other. For the last 3 days we will be typing up our final report. Yikes! The time is flying by!

A few other things I’ve done for fun:
- I went to a play with two of my roommates at the CMU summer theater
-Saw fireworks the week before the 4th in Mount Pleasant
-There was a party a professor’s house (each professor in the REU program will be hosting a party at their house between now and the end)
-Went out to lunch a few times
-Several games of Mafia
-Finished reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns”


I know I have not covered nearly everything that has happened in the last 2 weeks so if you have any specific questions, feel free to send me an email!