Gainesville

We spent two nights in Gainesville prior to arriving in Miami to visit with a few of our friends that live there and are grad students at University of Florida. I really love the UF campus -- the library is amazing, there are lots of natural areas, and there are diverse things to see and do there. My favorite place on campus is the Natural History Museum.

The UF Natural History Museum is fantastic and free if you are a student (though I usually donate some money for admission). I especially love the evolution area exhibiting the skeletons of many extinct animals along with artists’ renditions (paintings and sculptures) of these fauna. I have only been there three times, but every time I want to see the butterfly exhibit (a big area where the butterflies fly around freely) and it is raining -- so no butterflies will be flying! One of these days I will see it, but there are plenty of other well-done exhibits to see.

After spending the day seeing the museum and walking the campus, we attended a lecture in the zoology department and after that all of us grad students got together at a local hang-out called Top. This was a quintessential graduate student bar/restaurant which was really cool and reminded me of places around UW in Seattle. I ate some delicious (though weird-sounding) creamed-corn fritters there -- apparently they are a Top specialty.

After our stay, Carlos and I traveled the few hours south to Miami and settled into office living until we found our apartment. We are still contending with reverse culture-shock, but we are getting settled in and working hard. I had a really fun and adventurous Christmas vacation this year!