I am now sitting in the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas. The UTSW interviews are tomorrow, and the room they’ve put me up in is SWANK. Probably one of the biggest rooms I’ve stayed in. Ever.

On that note, I want to officially declare the biology grad school interview process to be the most amazing experience that a college grad can go through. It contrasts so strongly to the application processes of other educational programs (law/med/business/etc school) that there is danger of being blinded. After a pretty painless paper application, those applicants who get past the first round are invited to interview at the schools, for which the school pays for airfare and all expenses while the applicant is there. And they throw booze and food at you at every turn.

The interviews themselves are great, since they are more of a conversation about science than anything else. And I love talking about science. The researchers I talked to at Uchicago are doing some really cool things  that were fascinating to hear about, and I expect to hear of many more interesting projects before my interviews are done.

My interview schedule is UChicago (done last week), UTSW (done tomorrow), Duke (next weekend) and WashU (early March). While it’s great to spend this time visiting schools and talking to interesting people who share my nerdiness levels and love for biology, the 4-day work-weeks are problematic. I can’t really get any experiments started, though it’s nice to have some time to catch up on data analysis.

Picture by Jenny Wei.

Corn on a stick, covered with mayo, chese, and chile sauce. Mmmmmm…

First, Mexico’s Indendence Day celebration is at the beginning of next week, and there are all kinds of fiestas and activities throughout the city that we should get to see a bit of on Sunday. Second, our extremely kind housemate Maria, who works for Don Quijote, offered to let us stay in our flat for the extra two days. We would have had to move into a hotel, but apparently no Don Quijote students are moving into the flat this week, so it’s no skin off of anyone’s back if we stay. I’m very appreciative of this gesture; I know it will make our last two days much less stressful.

We went to a nice Italian restaurant here in Guanajuato, called Chao Bella. We had been there the week before with a larger group, but didn’t get much since we’d eaten a giant meal earlier in the day. And it was expensive. Comparitively. So we decided to go for our anniversary and splurge, spending nearly $12 between the two of us on some absolutely fantastic pizza. I think a picture will be much better than words…

And it was even better than it looks. So if you’re in Guanajuato, I highly recommend checking this place out.

We figured that we had already been sick and were likely immune enough to the common food bugs as long as we were careful not to eat anything too crazy. The two food items that we see every day, in the park across the street from our flat, are corn and ice cream.

But this is no regular corn. You can choose if you want it boiled or grilled, and then get it covered with any combination that you wish of lime, mayo, salt, cheese, “cream”, and some sort of sweet chile powder. I put cream in quotes because people here seem to call a lot of different things cream, and I’m not sure what that actually means. Except delicious.

So my first corn attempt was lime, salt, and chile powder (this one wasn’t sweet), which seems to be one of the two standards (I basically just let the Corn Woman do her thing, and that’s what she gave me). Although delicious, this was way too many potent flavors for one food item, and I was left feeling thirsty and with burning lips. I imagine that a little sweetness would have gone a long way in that combination.

Then we went and tried the ice cream. A guy sets up his stand in the park, which consists of 6-10 ice buckets that contain metal containers full of ice cream. I started with vanilla, to get an idea of general quality, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was DELICIOUS. The next one I tried was chocolate, since I figured that was another good standard. It tasted a lot like Mexican hot chocolate, only in ice cream form, with all of the many flavors that you would expect. I was pleased.

So then it was time to try the more interesting stuff. (Note: this tasting took place over several days, not back-to-back!) I had noticed that one was flavored elote and another one queso. Corn and cheese. Hmmm…

I figured I’d go with the corn first, since drinking corn juice in China led me to a deeper appreciation of this vegetable as a dessert item. It was quite good, though the corn-kernal chunks here and there ruined the texture a bit. But still delicious.

Next was queso. I was a bit concerned about this, since cheese does not seem to be something that would go with ice cream, but I was encouraged by two ideas. First, that it was probably similar in spirit to cheesecake, and second that, even if it really was cheese, it would probably be the super-mild Mexican cheese like we had used to make quesadillas a week before. So I tried it and OH MY GODS was it delicious! It was extremely creamy, and I still haven’t decided if it actually tastes like cheese or not. And I don’t care. I’ve had a cup (or two) nearly every day since.

The gf tried some of the fruity flavors, which were also tasty, though less interesting. The mango was very good, since it just tasted like eating a mango blended with ice cream. There were most certainly no artificial flavors in any of these choices.

We have become quite content with our ice cream choices here, and after trying a few flavors I went back to the Corn Woman to try a different setup. I had seen children running around since day one with what looked like corn on a stick covered in coconut, like those Snowball junk-food things. Someone in front of me was getting one this time, so I could hear what the items were and repeat it to the Corn Woman.

I don’t have pictures yet (but I will). Basically, the Woman takes the corn cob out of the boiling water and asks me if it is good enough. I’m always indifferent, so I just say “está bien” (“that’s good”) and leave it at that. She then peels off the foliage, tears out the hairs, and chops of a quarter inch of either end, which is followed up by insertion of a thick, sharp, wooden stick into the pulpy part of the corn. Now it is ready for customization:

- Mayonesa?

- Sí.

- Sal?

- Sí. Y queso y chile.

And now I have my mayo-slathered, shredded-cheese-dipped, salt- and chile-covered, piping hot stick of deliciousness. And oh man is it good. I’ll have to try to reproduce that suite of tastes at home, though I don’t know if I’ll be able to without knowing what kind of cheese was used or what was in the chile powder. But I bet I can get close. I’ll post pictures of this thing later, once I’ve taken some.