Georgetown University
Took the transit bus from dupont circle straight to the main uni/hospital. I met AV, who frantically cycled over from her office, at Leavey Centre to give me a short tour. The grounds were really busy because it was GAPP day. This was when the late applications came to uni, enrolled and got orientated. Walked around looking at the old buildings and got a history lesson from AV. She rattled off like she had done this a thousand times. I almost felt like a freshie. Built in 1798, Georgetown is the oldest catholic university in the US. They had nice old buildings like the White-Gravenor Hall and Healy Hall. It had nice hall ways with blue and grey tilings. They even had a sore thumb building like Uni of Edinburgh’s David Hume Building at George street campus. As all the clubs had displays, the one that caught my attention was the grill club. They had a huge BBQ setup and by lunch time, they would have had stacks of juicy burgers. Wish I had stayed on for that. AV gave me a little token and that was really sweet and thoughtful of her.

National Institutes of Health

Made a trip out to the NIH in Bethesda. It was easy to get to as it had its own metro station. They deserved it. The area is huge and much much bigger than Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Their visitors’ centre was under renovation or something, so there was not real point of contact. However, I did ask and gathered information about a post-grad program for international researchers. I would have to look into that. I also passed the national library of medicine and wondered if the pubmed server was sitting right in there?

I feel quite inspired already to continue my post-grad or some sort of “real” work in the US. I thought about what it would be like to study in georgetown or any other US university, or maybe its just my desire to move to a new environment and experience something different. I also flashbacked and played a scenario of “What If…” I had chosen to study at berkely in 2002?