Stanford!

I am finally here at Stanford University, for the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute. I arrived in California on Wednesday, and I stayed for three nights at a hotel in Menlo Park, the town just north of here, to try to recover from jet lag. But today I moved down to the university, to my new home-for-one-month, in the graduate student housing. I got my computer connected, bought the books I'll need for the courses which start tomorrow, and rented a bicycle!

In the past three days, I've done a lot of walking,various places in Menlo Park and from there down to the university and around downtown Palo Alto, maybe 5 or 6 miles each day. That was fun--I enjoyed looking at all the gorgeous flowers everywhere--but being on a bicycle is much better! On one of the days when we don't have classes (maybe July 4th?), I plan to ride down to the wetlands/nature preserve areas down by San Francisco Bay. I don't think I'll ride it to class--the distances between the buildings we'll be using are not really that far--but it will be very good for exercise and just general joy.

I know that things will get very busy soon, but I think that I'll try to keep up with this blog, after telling my friends and family about it. (I thought it was linked to my home page, but I realized just now that it is not. I'll have to try to change that. I'll have a lot to say, but because I foolishly decided not to bring my camera, I won't have many good pictures. I thought the camera would be heavy (especially since I'll be bringing back books) and a hassle at the airport, and that if I really wanted to take a picture, I could use the camera on my cell phone. HA! The picture above is the only decent one out of many, many attempts yesterday, a closeup of a cool cactus in the Arizona cactus garden on campus. But maybe if I keep trying, I'll get better at using that camera.

Well, check back for updates, and maybe for photos.