Other than last week’s post about my exile from Facebook, I have not been posting much to this blog lately. Since returning from a month-long trip to South America (detailed in other posts), I have started a new chapter of life as a graduate student at MIT. It would be difficult to summarize the entire experience thus far, as it has been comprised of many smaller stories, but I can say that it has been amazing. My silence on this blog is not for lack of reason to write. In fact, I have started a few drafts of posts, but…
Since the start of 2017, I have gone to great lengths to prevent myself from seeing my Facebook news feed. I have had zero access to Facebook on my phone, and limited functionality from my laptop. I could still send messages, view groups and profiles, and upload things, but couldn’t see what other people were up to unless I actively searched for it.
At first, there was a pretty strong urge to check this stream of information that I had spent a cumulatively ridiculous amount of time absorbing for years. I had become accustomed to filling dead time by mindlessly…
Days 13–15 (June 9–11) | Arequipa
6/9
We woke up for a 9 am breakfast in the hostel, which consisted of bread with butter and jam as well as tea. This was to be our day of exploring central Arequipa, so I picked out some landmarks that looked particularly interesting to visit.
Our first stop was the Saint Catherine Monastery, a walled-off complex in the middle of the city. This was a beautiful site. Many of the buildings, as in much of central Arequipa, were made out off-the white, porous sillar stone, which lends itself well to interesting carvings. Many of the walls in the monastery…
Days 11–13 (June 6–8) | Lima
6/6
We got up at around 3 am for our early flight, which was around 6:30. After getting ready quickly, we took a cab to the La Paz airport. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but this was our last time seeing the enormous amount of political graffiti we had seen in Bolivia. Having neglected to talk about that until now, I will offer a brief description.
Most of the graffiti we saw in Bolivia focused around the contentious election of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of the country. Everywhere we saw the word…
Days 9–11 (June 3–5) | La Paz
6/3
The bus made a few stops on the way to La Paz, so I woke up more frequently than I would have liked. Otherwise, I slept well in my seat, which reclined very far back and was quite comfortable.
We arrived at 5:30 in the morning at a large bus terminal. It was still dark as we exited the bus and gathered our luggage. Almost immediately, we had cab drivers yelling at us, trying to attract our business. We settled on one that appeared to have a sticker on the windshield indicating that it was a registered cab. We…
Days 6–8 (May 31-June 2) | The Atacama Desert
5/31
We woke up early (this really is the only constant thing of the trip) to get to the office for our trek across the desert. We got to the office fine and bought some dry bread to eat. I put some peanut butter on it, which made it more tolerable. Our tour van had a variety of different people on it. There were two Australians, a Swiss girl, a Northern Italian, a German, and another American, and two British girls.
Our next stop was before the border crossing to get our visas checked. It was there that we discovered…
Days 3–5 (May 28–30) | San Pedro de Atacama
5/28
We arrived in San Pedro via a van from the airport at Calama. This drive offered our first exposure to the Atacama desert: very dry, and lots of mountains. We spotted a few volcanoes far off in the distance. The ride was about an hour and a half, and some of us caught some sleep to make up for the early start to the day, which is to say a flight at around 6:30 am. I was happy to just watch the landscape, which was quite fascinating in its variety of geological features. …
Days 1 and 2 (May 26–27)
In the past two days I have been in no fewer than four major cities (Philadelphia, New York, Lima, and Santiago). My epic journey to the southern hemisphere has mostly consisted mostly of long periods of waiting punctuated by frenzied movement through airport terminals. To pass the time I’ve read the science fiction book Dune, watched the snowcapped Andes, and immersed myself in the modern wonder of in-flight entertainment. So far I’ve watched Deadpool and Quentin Tarantino’s latest masterpiece, The Hateful 8.
But all of that is of course derivative to the reasons for my being here. Earlier this afternoon…
It turns out that I am complete garbage at keeping a regularly updated blog. However, it also turns out that I am reasonably good at getting into graduate school programs. I am happy to announce that I recently accepted an offer from the MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences department and will be heading there next year to start my PhD. I was pleasantly surprised to get an interview, let alone an offer, and I am ridiculously excited for next year. I’ve written before about my recently discovered passion for neuroscience, and this is where it has taken me. …
Eli Pollock
MIT graduate student with a diverse array of interests, including but not limited to neuroscience, physics, music, architecture, and technology.
