Good night and good morning

I did, eventually, find the phone book. It's hidden in the closet. And why not?

After a long, hot, and much-needed shower, I lounged around for a while, then fell asleep. the beds here are nice - king-sized, with nice heavy down pillows and warm down comforters. There's a wool thing that I suppose I could put on top of the comforter if I felt cold, but I didn't. The alarm clock woke me up shortly after seven in the morning.

A bit of an aside about the alarm clock. It looks like a hand-wound kind, and has hand-turned things to adjust the time and the alarm time... but it's battery powered. It also has a couple thumbscrews on the back, which I tried to "wind" with little success before figuring this out. After that, I thought it must surely be decorative, until I realized the time was changing...

Anyway, I awoke feeling a little dried out (the relative humidity here is about 40-60 percent compared to probably 80-90 at home) but not so bad, since I'm somewhat accustomed to single-digit humidity on Mauna Kea. The air pollution is also noticeable, but not as smelly overall as New Delhi was, so I think I'll survive as long as I eat well and get enough sleep. The 2,200-meter elevation, though, doesn't bother me at all, since I spend so much time at 2,800 and 4,200 meters.

I pondered food for most of the morning, before finally heading downstairs and trying out the buffet. Granola - probably made on the premises, with pumpkin seeds and dried berries and lots of other good stuff in it - with yogurt, a hard-boiled egg, fresh pineapple, strawberries, and fresh grapefruit juice. Why is it that countries as diverse as France and Mexico can treat fresh grapefruit juice as a basic human right, but it's almost impossible to get in the States?

I wandered up to the 5th floor deck by the pool to see whether there were any good skyline photos to be had, and decided that there weren't really (here's the best I could find for now), but did stumble across my Dutch teammate, who had just arrived and was waiting there while her room was readied. I've since found out that numerous other teammates and our Director have also arrived. So... more later.