First I should probably discuss the reason for doing this trip in the first place. Both of us are considering going for engineering education PhD's after we finish in Japan next spring. We've been thinking along these lines for a year or so now and it is getting close to the time for applying for fellowships and admissions and the like. Over the past year we've looked at various programs in the field, which is very new and growing very quickly, and found that Purdue's program, the first (temporally speaking) in the field and definitely among the most prominent, influential, well-funded, etc, was definitely going to be a target for application. We also found that the Open House for their PhD program overlapped with a time period when classes were in session at neither of our schools. The travel cost was significant, but for a PhD program it is surely best to go and meet and question potential advisers and graduate students before taking the plunge. We figured it'd be worth it, and now that the trip is over we agree that that assessment was correct. Also, Purdue was good enough to give us some travel grants, which knocked about 15% off the total cost, which was welcome and gracious.
So, the trip was to the Purdue University School of Engineering Education Graduate Open House in West Lafayette, Indiana, and was undoubtedly more exciting and relevant for us than for anybody else who might possibly be reading this. We found the professors and graduate students very forthcoming about what the program does and does not offer, and the kind of people likely to find what they're looking for there. We learned a lot in a very short time period, our understanding of the program did evolve, and we made connections with various professors who we may do research for later. I'm not going to get specific, but I think we both have pretty clear ideas about who we want to work for/with and have meaningful indications that we're not barking up the wrong trees. If things Ana discussed work out, a more perfect fit of research area and funding opportunity for her could hardly have been arranged, and our trip was very lucky indeed in terms of being in the right place at the right time. We'll be doing plenty of follow-up but concrete things will likely not be in place for most of another year, so hard news about plans for the here-after will have to wait.
The time period of the visit to Purdue, which was about two and a half days, was very busy indeed with meetings and scheduled events, but also allowed us to do a little shopping in the US (shoes that fit, for instance) and to feed our faces with Real American Food which was very nice if at times uncivilized as when we ate pints of Ben and Jerry's for dessert with plastic forks because we didn't have any spoons. We found driving in the Lafayette area to be pretty wild and crazy, with a very large number of one way roads and a few very tricky intersections, but started to get the hang of it. Also, it must be noted that there is more jaywalking there than I've ever seen, where dozens of students and professors will just sort of move in herds across major roadways once their numbers are sufficient. I found this much more nerve-wracking as a driver than as a participant.
It should be noted that while we were visiting Purdue was when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, so we heard about it from the American news services and also by having a large number of Skype calls/emails/Facebook messages/etc. asking us if we were all right. It should also be said that even if we'd been in Japan, we'd have heard about it on the news rather than having been affected in the slightest.
After the visit to Purdue wrapped up, we were lucky enough to have friends able to travel to meet up with us. Ana's long-time best friend flew up from Florida with her boyfriend - combining a trip to meet his family who live in the area with meeting up with us. We had lunch together (I had both steak and ribs) and then Ana stayed with them while I returned the rental car to the Indianapolis airport and met up with a friend of ours who'd driven in from Cincinnati to hang out and deliver a ton of stuff we'd bought on the internet and had shipped to him. At this point I confirmed that our flights back to Japan, that were supposed to leave the following day, had been canceled, but the airline was able to rebook to fly us into Osaka instead of Tokyo, with an extra 24 hours on the ground in the United States. We'd miss a day of work, but it didn't seem likely that we'd be blamed for it, especially since we informed them of our situation.
Once the travel problem was resolved, we returned to our original agenda, involving an exploration of restaurants and bars near the airport, until Ana's friend dropped her back off with us (Ana's friend's boyfriend's dad was flying into Indianapolis Airport that night, so this made sense), after which the agenda involved an exploration of bars and restaurants further from the airport. I discovered a couple good bourbons and one English pub had fantastic pizza that I ate entirely too much of.
The next morning we'd originally have been flying out of the Indianapolis Airport, directly next to our hotel. Given the extra time, this was no longer the case. My friend devised an excellent scheme for this time, whereby we spent the extra night at his place in Cincinnati and flew out of their airport. He drove us over there and we walked around the city for a while as it was rather nice out and we'd never been there before, and then, as he already had tickets for himself, we went along with him to the enormous international wine festival that happened to be in Cincinnati that very day. Tickets were not cheap, but neither were the wines being poured for tasting, and there were several hundred more of them than we'd ever have been able to try in a single evening. We mostly tried the wines that had won the highest awards at the show, accompanied by anything else that otherwise somehow caught our eyes. There were a lot of foods to taste test as well, including some prepared by the local culinary institute. Ana may have had a significant portion of a jar's worth of pickles from one gourmet pickles booth. The whole thing was a good way to try a lot of wine you'd never want to pay full bottle price for. After the festival, a friend of my friend picked us up and a group of us went to a restaurant on the city limits, on a hill overlooking Cincinnati. Apparently it was restaurant week in Cincinnati in addition to the wine festival, so there was a very reasonably priced set menu available which was delicious (I had braised lamb over pasta for an entree and it was darn good) and the few pictures we have from the trip are from this part of it. What happened to Japan was not cool at all, but we were presented with an opportunity to spend some time having fun in good company, and we took it, and it was good. The overall trip was short, and jet lag was a major factor both coming and going, but it was important, worth it, and featured bonus activities on the end, making for an overall very good experience. If, perhaps, one not so transfixing to read about.
Flash photography in the restaurant parking lot for the place on the edge of the city
View from inside the restaurant, of Cincinnati
