Marta, the butcher

"Marta, the butcher!" Are you curious about this title?

Last Tuesday, the day after my arrival back from LA, a classmate of mine told me she was gonna drive down to Santa Barbara the following weekend and she asked me if I wanted to go with her and ask Pedro to pick me up there.  It sounded like a great plan.  Pedro was supposed to have a team meeting on Sunday afternoon but it was canceled.  So, it seemed that Pedro and I had managed to find a way to spend another weekend together.

On Friday, I woke up early as usual and packed before going to the only class I had.  That class is taught by Professor Moehle, who I have already mentioned before as the concrete buildings superstar.  Are you wondering why am I talking about concrete buildings and the title of this post is "Marta, the butcher"?  Haha.  After class, Professor Moehle told me he accepted being my thesis supervisor here in Berkeley.  Oh yeah!  That's really, really good news.

The bad news about the good news was that, when I was outside of I-House waiting for my friend to pick me up around 12:30 pm, I realized I had received an e-mail from Professor Moehle.  His e-mail said that now that we were going to work together, it would be good for me to meet most of the people who do research with him.  They were all going to his house on Saturday (the following day) for a barbecue and he wanted to invite me as well.

After getting really nervous, talking to my parents and Pedro and crying a lot, I decided to stay in Berkeley for the weekend.  It was a really tough decision, specially after spending the week dreaming about another romantic weekend in LA.  It was worth it though.  As my parents said, a few years from now, the first good impression Professor Moehle had of me will have a bigger impact in my life than not spending one weekend with Pedro.  We'll have tons of them to spend together throughout our life.  And if I were Professor Moehle and my brand new advisee would refuse my invitation to my house because she was going to spend the weekend in LA, I would think she was more a party girl than a hard worker.

The barbecue was today and it was actually lots of fun!  The invitation said:

Please join us for a barbecue featuring goat and other fare. We plan to get the festivities started around 3pm with main meal around 5pm, but we will provide beer to anyone who shows up extra early to help rotate the spit.

If you would like to bring something, let us know. Otherwise, we will provide all.

How many cultural disparities can we find in this invitation?  Festivities starting at 3 pm but not for lunch, for dinner!!!  "If you would like to bring something, let us know."  How was I supposed to know what to take?  At exactly what time should I arrive?  I ended up arriving at 3:20 and I brought some chocolates with me, which means I behaved as the Portuguese girl I am.

Dinner consisted of many, many appetizers, goat barbecue, many salads and nice deserts.  It was the first time that everyone saw or heard of a goat barbecue.  No one really knew how to check if the goat was already cooked so a greek guy that also works with Professor Moehle had to call his mom.  When we decided it was cooked, no one knew how to carve it.  And this is how I became "Marta, the butcher!"  I volunteered to start cutting it and everyone thanked me for that.

It was nice to get to spend some informal time with my future supervisor and to meet many people I'm going to deal with in the following year.  Professor Moehle works with such a multicultural group of people!  Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Vietnam, Chile, Columbia, the USA, Serbia, Portugal and a few more countries were (very well) represented in the barbecue.