Panchi merch!
This week consisted of the perfect balance between testing participants and taking advantage of my free time. I was able to test 8 participants across 4 days, which brings me to a total of 21 participants! I experienced some technical difficulties with one of the participants, so half of the session’s data didn’t save, unfortunately. Between all the technical difficulties that the group of us have dealt with over the past 1.5 months, it was naturally my turn to experience computer issues and pay my fair share of technology tax. 💻 Fear not because I now have a new way of running the tasks to prevent that specific error from happening again – so far everything has gone smoothly with this in place. This upcoming week I have 8 participants scheduled, which is great news, but that means I fall 1 participant short of 30. Regardless, I am still happy that I was able to test this many people given how slowly recruitment went our first month here.
Jin joined Rachel and I for our weekly salsa classes, and he absolutely killed it. During the live music portion of the night, Rachel and I choreographed our own salsa routine, and Jin acted as our tripod and recorded it for us. We also danced with our friends that we met during class, and I think it was one of the most fun salsa nights I’ve gone to so far. On Wednesday, the university was closed for the holiday, so we obviously had to go to Panchi and the beach. After I made myself a latte, we all got to meet Jeni’s dog Noah, who is so sweet and cute. Jeni then drove us to the beach, where we got poured on and saw the sun for about 2 minutes 🌨️ – nonetheless, it was still a fun day at the beach.
Saying goodbye to Jamie 🙁
The saddest part of this week was saying goodbye to Jamie – she has to go to Florida for work this upcoming week, so Friday was our last day with her. We started our morning off early by buying donuts at the local bakery for her, and then we spent the rest of the morning hanging out before we had to leave for our participants. I may have shed a tear or 5 saying goodbye to her, but I will hopefully see her again sometime soon if I can secure a plane ticket over winter break. The only thing that made this day a little better was receiving Panchi merch, which lifted by spirits temporarily. Later that night the 2nd saddest thing from this week happened: I made the rookie mistake of falling asleep on the couch. The following morning I woke up to some lovely pictures that Jasmine took of me and the horror story of how I kept on moving in my sleep. I now know to never make this mistake again.
Over the weekend, us girls had a beach day, which was nice and sunny and the water was perfect as well. On our way back home, Jin coincidentally got on the same bus as us after an afternoon of adventures, and we ended up all going home together. Another fun coincidence happened on Sunday, when Rachel and I hung out with some students from Penn State at the beach! One of my participants mentioned that she went to Penn State, which was in and of itself exciting, but then she invited me to the beach, where I got to meet some of her friends who all attend Penn State. We are hoping to meet up again this week, and I’m super thrilled that I got to make a connection with someone here who I will see at school as well – that Penn State alumni network is already being put to good use. 🦁
On to week 8!!