Poh and sham

What's the obvious follow-up to a French grad student happy hour and a UChicago alumni mixer? Easy--a physics department picnic! I just played baseball, for the first time in years, with a couple of Israeli grad students. I only realized I needed to throw the ball when one of them shouted, 'poh, poh!,' a sign that my Hebrew is better than my American. I also spent a while convincing someone from physics that I am American and not French. This of course never happens in the French Department. And finally, I had a reunion with a fellow UChicago alum who's now at NYU, whom I didn't know way back when. I'll attribute this to Chicago being a big school, not to either the school's geekiness or my own.