First semester of grad school is over! My Evolution final was at 8 am today, and was designed to last an hour, so it went pretty quickly. Hopefully I'll get to GSI (TA) the class next fall. Johanna comes to visit this weekend, and I go home to Los Gatos for Christmas after that, so I have a few days to finish some reading I had planned to do during the semester.

There is a series of holiday parties going on, bringing to mind the bōnenkai (literally, "forgetting the year parties") that I went to in Japan a year ago. Unlike the bōnenkai, which cost anywhere between $30-60 for students, the Berkeley parties are free! There was one for the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management last Friday, one for the College of Natural Resources yesterday, and one for the Division of Insect Biology tomorrow. The food at the CNR party was absolutely fantastic: couscous, fruit, cheese, olives, and guacamole and salsa (and other stuff that had eggs in it). I worry that they won't have enough excess money next year...

My giant water bug (the other one died) has made a cameo appearance on Dan Grin's blog (December 10).