A Dean, A Project and An Office.

This morning before Elba arrived at 9:30, I cleaned up the apartment - not that there was much to do. I found beads all over (some things never change) and I will want to do a proper sweep this weekend, but overall it was in good shape.

When she arrived, Elba took me to the grocery store with her.  All she needed was water and some apples.  I ended up with a LOT more than that - but I am, after all, kitting out a kitchen devoid of spices, oil, and fruit.  There's still more to get of course, but one can only carry so much.

Especially since my ankle is hurting like stink, which is usually a sign that rain is on the way.  Which my phone's weather app agrees with but which the locals all scoff at.  We shall see.  The big dark clouds tonight are further indication that the weather might be changing.

We met with the Dean when we got in, and my schedule started to fill in.  Next Wednesday, I'll do a usability evaluation of the current UTP website.  Given my experience with it, we'll find lot of issues. Karla said that there have been many such usability evals, but that no one listened.  We're both hoping that they'll listen to me since I'm from more than 50 miles away and I have a briefcase.

My office, which yesterday was in a corner of an uninhabited room, was officially moved this morning so now I'm sitting with the professors.  Yay!  I want to get a plant to soften it up a bit, but it's just fine for a short stay.

The Dean, Nicolas, wants me to come with him to the Canal and then to lunch at his home in Casco Viejo!  Plus, he's very excited about taking me to the 7 "extension" campuses which has me floating at the thought.  All in all, we had a lovely meeting.

I spent part of the afternoon settling in before a team of Masters students brought their prototype of a "serious game" that measures attention.  Lots of good ideas - both the way it is now and the way it could (should) be if they changed it based on my "test" of their system.  I'm particularly impressed
that a team of 3 guys could work collaboratively together to produce this system.  That's something we need - (young) folks showing how well things work when we collaborate.

Even better than that, I finally met the incredible Karla Arosemena!  And she's gorgeous (which I knew from her photos) and TALL (which I didn't realize)  After so many months on the phone to finally meet in person was a huge gift.  And she's as amazing in person as on the phone.  Thanks, Karla.

In future installments of this blog, I plan to highlight some of the incredible people here at UTP, (like Karla, Elba, and the Dean among others) as well as other folks I meet.  Stay tuned.  I was going to do one tonight in addition to this post, but I'm out of steam.

I'm falling asleep once again and so am off to bed, even though it's only 7:30 pm here (and 5:30 pm PST)

Thanks for coming on the journey!