Hola! Okay a bit clichéd but whatever, I just got back from Barcelona! This was the first real vacation I have taken since coming to Caltech where I didn't have my computer or anything to answer lab emails. It was great since after finishing up with my summer work at…

Eight weeks down, two weeks to go. Our time here at CERN is coming to an end and I am rushing to wrap up all of my work and document it. Even when one is piled up with work, exciting opportunities never fail to pop up while at CERN. This…

So this weekend I spent most of my time inside working, especially since there was a torrential downpour in Geneva. I went out to buy a bunch of chocolate early in the morning and planned on traveling around the lake, but then I got caught in the rain and my…

This past Thursday was one spectacularly exciting and eventful day filled with plenty of adventure and heroic feats. It all started when Cedric and I decided to go hiking with two other summer students after work. Seems harmless I know, but little did we know what would come, or really…

It is now the end of the weekend and it did not go quite as planned but was eventful nonetheless. My original plan was to go to Lyon and then go to the beach but our car ran a flat so I spent Saturday morning taking the car to the…

This week has been incredibly productive and we are only half way through the week. We had a typical college student dilemma the other night. We have been staying at CERN untl 9 pm the past few nights, primarily to talk with Caltech people with the time difference. Turns out…

It is Saturday but I am going back into work today at CERN to see if I can fix a few bugs in my code and straighten everything out for the work week. I am trying to finish up some figures for a paper that the group wants to get…

This weekend has been pretty eventful. I made a decent amount of progress on work and got to tour around most of Lake Geneva over the past two days. My roommates and I bought eurail passes just like we did last year. I wasn't planning on traveling that much but…

Welp the weekend is over and honestly, not much happened in terms of wild and crazy adventures.. I had to get a bunch of work done for a presentation I am giving tomorrow and I have two other projects that I need to make some headway on. Today was the…

Hi everyone, This week has been super eventful with tons of work. It was CMS Week so a bunch of meetings and presentations were going on all over the place focusing on the current state of the collaboration in different areas and how things are moving forward. I actually can't…

Hi everyone, We are reaching the end of our second week of work. I completely forgot that today was the 4th of July for Independence Day seeing that the new celebration around here, at least amongst the summer students, is Higgs Day. It was exactly one year ago that the…

Hey guys, The weekend is now winding its way down in France. The weather has been pretty interesting here. By interesting I mean that it has been raining which is quite an experience for someone like myself who grew up in Arizona and San Diego. Saturday I woke up at…

We've touched down in Geneva and have now made it through our first week at CERN. I am living with two other Caltech students this year, Chi Chi and Cedric, who are here for their first times in Geneva. We're actually living in the same place as last year too...…

Hi everyone, my name is Valère and I am a rising senior working with the High Energy Physics group at Caltech. Last summer I wrote about my first experiences at CERN working with the CMS experiment. I have continued working with the HEP group at Caltech and am now on…

Hi all, So I am currently finishing my last night in Bucharest and in Europe in general. Finally after 13 weeks I will be returning to the US. This week I have been attending the European Nuclear Physics Conference here in Bucharest, Romania. It has been pretty cool getting to…

Hi all! Since I left Paris I have been visiting Cambridge, sort of as a college visit and somewhat as just a chance to see the UK. It has been pretty fun getting to walk through all of the historic colleges and see the difference between the American and British…

This weekend I pretty much kept to the same theme of walking through forests and eating, my typical vacation schedule. It's actually pretty entertaining since my family has two Australian Shepherds that my uncle works with for agility training. They just disappear in the woods for a while, then you…

Hello, This was our last weekend here at CERN, therefore we found it fitting to announce the beginning of the end with fireworks! Our house and the people from our team who live in the house down the street from us set up a potluck (kinda) and then set off…