I guess first a little background. German has some extra vowel and consonant sounds and let’s just say that I did not exactly take to them. At first I couldn’t really even hear the difference between ö and ü and ä. Turns out these are kind of key differences so I’ve put some effort into differentiating them and might even say that I have mastered ä and ü. Ö is still a crapshoot.
In July I moved to a new apartment with a long street name containing (you guessed it) the dreaded ö. Looking back, I probably should have considered this as an exclusionary factor. What followed is a string of phone and in person conversations where I seemed incapable of making the person on the other end understand where I live. It doesn’t help that it is just as unclear what letter I am pronouncing when I attempt to spell it.
I was eating burritos the other week with a few friends and decided to relate the latest tale of confusion, which involved me trying to open a reward account at my favorite mountain sports store, fielding strange looks from the sales clerk, and finally ended with me finally going around behind the counter and typing in my address myself. A Swiss friend said, “well, tell me your street name and I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong.” Turns out I was (of course) mispronouncing the ö sound yet again, but in such a way that made my street sound like the part of a man’s anatomy that I would prefer not to be volunteering as my street name. This guy was in tears, seriously.
Anyway, today I presented something in German and afterwards was pointed to this video which is a lifesaver for another of my old nemeses and agents of confusion, the “ch” noise. Which as you will see below is actually about five different specific noises depending on the vowel before it, 500 exceptions, and the position of the moon. They have so many good other videos for all my pronunciation needs!! I would like to pass it along to anyone else attempting to climb the German tower:
So when did this happen? August has flown by like a lovely sunsoaked afternoon on my balcony.
In an effort to remember what on earth it is I have been doing for the past month, here is the August highlights reel, in no particular order.
Changed my first bike flat tire! I felt quite accomplished. It happened while at a small lake with two very cycle happy friends, luckily, and they had the kit to patch ‘er up. Did you know that there is an inner tube inside your tire? And that you have to make it blow bubbles to figure out where the hole is? (or holes in my case) And that every single person walking by will stop to put in their 2 cents about the most optimal repair methods and wax nostalgic about the flat tires of their youth? Yeah.
Am completely dunzo with the first paper on the study I was running the first 1.5 years of my PhD. Whoop. Approved the final proofs last week and am I happy to see that sucker out the door!
Discovered the added adrenaline thrill of Via Ferrata. Via Ferratas date back to the WWI era in the Dolomites between Italy and Austria, where they were used to help everyday soldiers scramble over passes that normally only expert climbers could scale. The essence of them is that there are a bunch of steel pegs or ladders stuck in crucial places, along with a steel cable in segments that you can attach your climbing harness to to avoid plummeting to your death. DO NOT fall though, this is not like normal climbing where you have a partner to catch you painlessly. This is gonna be painful. Obviously there’s a whole scale of difficulty here- I’m hoping to graduate to the tough stuff soon!
4. Relatedly, staged a return to indoor climbing and bouldering! I finally found some new partners who are around my level, and am slowly building up my strength. Nice to do something other than running.
5. Discovering my inner OCD…for better or for worse. I’m loving having my own place, and as I’ve gotten settled over the past month have realized that I LOVE cleaning. But only when I’m cleaning my own stuff. I love coming home to a spotless apartment 🙂
I’m sure there’s more, but for now I am done with my workday and off to IKEA. This is the last time. I swear.
Most days I really love my job, but this past week was a particular highlight. It combined three of my most favorite things: traveling, smart people, and cool science. Even the sad world news of late can’t kill my happy buzz completely.
To back up a step: a few months ago I applied to be University of Zürich’s representative to the LERU Summer School in the Netherlands. Basically, it’s a “league of 21 leading European research universities” that have met certain criteria, and they put on a different summer training at one of the member schools every summer.
I was super interested because this year’s theme was Data Stewardship. I’ve been working with a really novel data source in my latest research, and am really increasingly working with “Big Data,” another buzz word that I won’t torture you by unpacking now. But it suffices to say that I find myself working closely with specialists from all fields, from computer scientists to statisticians to ethicists to psychologists to other epidemiologists, and I am increasingly convinced that this type of interdisciplinary collaboration on data analyses is the future of science. And I feel like I’m making a lot of stuff up as I go along, which I guess is the foundation of science anyway. But it would be nice to at least have a conversation with a bunch of other scientists going through the same stuff with their data.
The week totally blew away my expectations. There were so many prestigious speakers, from an IBM scientist working on Watson to legal experts on licensing in Open Science in the EU. And the editor of Nature Genetics (Nature is like the bible of scientists, for those who aren’t familiar) took the time to spend an ENTIRE week just hanging out with us and even coaching us along on a publication when one started to take shape by the end of the week, which totally blew my mind. I somehow ended up taking the lead on said publication, and spent quite a chunk of today setting up an Open Science Framework open source project so we can all collaborate on said publication in the upcoming weeks. Fingers crossed, it would be amazing have something concrete to show for our discussions, and I think it’s important to widen this discussion to all scientists.
The best part, though, was meeting so many brilliant and passionate people from all over the world. The organizer is so passionate about the topic that he rented a room in our hotel one night just so he could stay late and continue discussing the many issues that had come up that day in the hotel bar. The other PhDs were smart, but also incredibly fun and outgoing. I went running with a new Finnish friend. There were many, many science talks over a good Belgian (or occasionally Dutch) beer. One night we went from a canal boat ride to late night Happy Meals, and just couldn’t stop laughing. Another night I stayed up till 4am talking about life, the universe, and everything with a new Dutch friend. (On another note, this week did not feature much sleep, as seems to be my life these days).
And that’s not even touching on all the cool things I learned about the Dutch. I really love the country. It’s on the short list of potential countries I would consider for my postdoc, so I came with a particularly critical eye. I do think I would have some troubles adjusting to the chilly temps, but everything else I just LOVED, from the active culture to the water everywhere to the handsome men towering tall into the sky. AHEM.
I have a feeling this is not my last brush with the Netherlands.
This has been a pretty good month in the history of me. To top off all the happenings from previous blog post, my first manuscript on my dissertation topic was accepted provisionally for publication on Friday. Woohoo! One step closer to adding more letters to the end of my name.
phd retreat walk
And man does it feels good to be back in Switzerland in the summertime, grilling on balconies and drinking prosecco and watching the daylight stretch out past 10pm. I had a tinge of melancholia after my return from the US- it’s just that there are a whole lot of lovely people there and I wish I could blink and transport them to a cozy flat nearby, but it’s hard to stay sad when Switzerland is so beautiful.
view from a jog during the phd retreat
Moving went really well! Hardly any stress at all this time compared with the traumatic suddenness of last year’s move, despite the fact that this year’s move was a much bigger one. Much of which can be attributed to my excellent moving buddy, Michel, who not only rented and drove a giant van to move all my stuff and his couch, but also wrote out a precise moving time schedule complete with deadlines that made me nostalgic for Switzerland while in the middle of laid back Cali.
midway through the chaos
Weird fact: driving in Mexico was great fun, while the idea of driving in Switzerland gives me heart palpitations. I think it has something to do with the comparative flexibility of rules in the two places.
welcome to my new view!
The apartment solo life is going great. After getting back from our PhD retreat in a small Swiss town and perhaps doing a bit too much partying at Züri Fäscht,* I started IKEA assembling and unboxing away. But what I was REALLY looking forward to was starting my mini balcony seed garden, which for some reason has been a growing obsession of mine. I planted some basil, mint, parsley, pepper, and thyme seeds in mini greenhouses. We shall see how my newfound attempt at a green thumb progresses. The only setback on moving in was the discovery that the previous owner had the strangest taste in toilet seats ever. As in BARBED WIRE IN PLASTIC. Cue pronto return trip to IKEA.
In totally unlike me form, I’m attempting to get in some solid work this weekend as I’ve got a jam packed week ahead of me before heading out of town yet again. At least I’ve got pistachios and my own sunny balcony to do it on. So cheers to all the Sunday afternoon enjoyment out there! Oh, and happy Fourth of July!
*a major festival in Zürich that happens only every three years that is on this weekend. Something like 2 million people descend on a city of 300,000. It’s sort of like a combination of fair and an outdoor nightclub with every type of music and ambience you can imagine. Side note: riding fair rides after drinking does interesting things to one’s stomach.
not even gonna mention at what time this photo was taken
Last night I stayed out rather later than planned at a friend’s 30th birthday party, and in a spontaneous (perhaps prosecco fueled) decision, decided to walk all the way home rather than waiting for the night train. It’s funny how our brains work sometimes- it ended up being a pretty interesting thinking session about this new decade that I have apparently entered. Sometimes I think that I need to let myself slow down and become bored more often.
I celebrated my own birthday last weekend with another friend in just about the Swissest possible way. We rented out a hut about an hour away from Zürich, which was a process in and of itself. The rental contract was 4 pages longer than my last apartment lease in NYC, and the key pickup process was set up such that for every 15 minutes we were late, we were charged 20CHF. Of course, given that my co-organizer was also Swiss, we were over 30 minutes early. No late charges here 😉
It was really a lot of fun. We hosted over 25 of our friends, and Sarah’s whole family drove up from Appenzell to do things like bake 3 types of fresh bread and help us with cooking and clean up. On Saturday we organized a nice apero, a HUGE dinner, and then played party games and Scandinavian (?) lawn games. We stayed overnight at the hut, with the braver among us taking a midnight dip in the frigid lake. We even had the obligatory gate crashers, two party loving guys from the Netherlands who ended up being very nice and also brought us stroopwaffels, which is always a win in my book.
It also made me feel good about the improvement in my German of late, even if I did have one of my more embarrassing phonetic mistakes. I was talking with Sarah’s mother about her grandson’s recent adventures in the outdoors, and she was telling me about his group that was going “night fishing” that evening. Now, the German word for “night” is Nacht, which requires that back of your throat KKKKKK noise that is difficult for me on the fly and I can be quite lazy about. So I am nattering on about night fishing with her mom, and another friend comes up, listens, and then bursts into laughter. I wasn’t exactly saying “night fishing”, but instead “naked fishing” (Nacktfischen). Uhhhh, yeah. The most embarrassing part was her mom just listening to me without even a glimmer of a smile on her face.
It is funny to think about the whole party a bit- I could absolutely never have predicted even a couple years ago that I would be celebrating my 30th in a hut in the Swiss Alps, speaking German and talking about night fishing. But that is the beauty of life, really. In my introspective walk last night I asked myself the big question- am I happy with my life on the eave of a new decade? Have I lived my 20s the way I wanted to? Have I remembered the important things?
On the whole, I found that I answered yes. My 20s were really all about the adventure, and looking back I can say with honesty that I always chose the risk over what was “safe,” and luckily it has worked out for me so far. I think the thing I am most proud of is that I have lived my life with an open heart, and have been always open to connections to new situations, people, and places. Sometimes you get hurt occasionally living life that way, but on the whole I think there is no other way to live. My regrets, the ones that there are, are mostly related to being inauthentic to who I am, or being afraid in the moment to express how I really feel. Something to work on for the future 🙂
Well, anyway, I need to get back to boxing up my entire life and forking over 3700CHF of my hard earned money for the deposit on my new apartment.
…just kidding, I’m going to go rock climbing. Choose the adventure, right?
So many changes lately! It’s in the air. First of all, I’m writing to you from a new decade. Woop woop. The last time I changed decades, I was singing mournfully along to “Teenage Wasteland” and maneuvering my way into bars underage. How things have changed… I have oodles more thoughts on aging that I will spare you for today.
So there’s that, and a ton of other projects I’ve had cooking lately. But the one that had me laughing the most this week is the insane process of apartment hunting here. I’m currently on the hunt for my first EVER solo apartment. I’ve lived with friends, roommates, significant others, but have never lived all on my own. That is all about to change (fingers crossed, the apartment has been offered, but the lease is not yet signed!)
Anyway, the whole thing has been like a particularly competitive form of speed dating. Let me paint the scene of a recent (typical) viewing:
Read about an “official viewing” for a likely looking apartment online. It is a half hour slot at 5pm on a Tuesday afternoon, so must manage work schedule around this one time viewing opportunity. Arrive 5 minutes early to the usual crowd of applicants milling around apprehensively and eyeing the rest of the crowd competitively. I usually try to snag a Swiss friend to come along and prove that at least one local likes me, but today I’m flying solo.
Door of apartment building opens at 5pm on the dot. Friendly older Swiss woman and her daughter begin a stream of rapidfire German describing the apartment and how we are to form ourselves into groups to view said apartment. I do my best to come off as particularly friendly and as not-cavemanlike as possible, given the state of my German. My likelihood of getting this apartment is a function of how “sympatisch” she finds me, along with her tolerance of foreigners.
Quickly scan apartment and decide I like it. Pretend like I am interested in the basement storage unit and bicycle storage situation (this seems to be epically important to everyone except for me). After I have asked enough questions about the basement storage to seem sufficiently sympatisch, I rush back to office.
Now it is time for that ever-present part of Swiss life: the documentation. A successful application includes the following:
Completed rental application that can only be obtained at the viewing, as far as I can tell. This is normal stuff, income, where you’ve lived before, reason for changing, some references from your current apartment and your boss.
Originalbetreibungsauszug (sorry, no translation). This is a document that I had to go to my local Kreisburo (community government building) to obtain. It certifies that I have no outstanding debts, according to the government.
Copy of my residence permit
A letter describing myself, my job, my interests, and why I am interested in the apartment, along with a photo of myself on the top. Luckily I was able to copy this pretty much verbatim from a friend, because I am not particularly skilled in writing charming letters in German.
It is extremely important that you have all these documents together before ever even seeing the apartment, because it is literally a time game, as I have learned the hard way. Within hours the landlord will be flooded with dozens or more of applications and only the first few will even get looked at.
I both email as pdfs and snail mail hard copies of these forms within 30 minutes of the apartment visit.
The next day: success! A call from an unknown number. It turns out to be the management company of the apartment, saying that I am in the running, but first he needs to determine if my German is good enough for this community. A ten minute verbal German quiz follows. I pass! Woohoo!
The next barriers are the calls to my supervisor and current landlord. I pass x2! Woohoo!
Finally, I am requested to go back for a 1 on 1 interview with the current owner of the apartment building. I suspect this is mainly to test my German again and introduce me to the other members of the building, so they can appraise the potential new resident as well. It goes well, but they feel strongly that the apartment should go to someone who really NEEDS it. I don’t really fit this category. I just WANT a sweet little Swiss roof apartment in the Niederdorf. I have a current roof over my head and other options in where I can live.
The next day, I hear back. I didn’t make it 😦 Ah well, on to the next! A good philosophy for life in general, I find.
This whole blog thing is a little strange for me- sometimes I go whole months without even remembering I have one, and then sometimes while something is happening to me I think I HAVE to write a blog post about this. Last week’s Italian road trip definitely fell into that category. Even though I’ve been living abroad now for almost 2 years, there are still moments when I am totally staggered by how strange a certain moment is, and how odd it is in the context of human history that I am standing in this random spot on the globe, thousands of miles of ocean and land from the spot where I was born, a situation that before the past century or so only happened to the conquistadors and Marco Polo, or something. This whole epic road trip made enough of an impression that I am still sitting here laughing about it on the train home from Venice, all of a week later.
Philosophy aside, let me set the scene.
the views from smalltown, Italy
SCENE: The society that my supervisor is head of has an annual meeting that this year will be held in the member hospital in a tiny town in northern Italy. It is so tiny that I do not want to mention the name in case the hosts google their own town and this comes up. My supervisor, like many Europeans, is very ecofriendly and decides that the best option for the 4 of us coming from Zürich is to carpool, and he offers to drive us all down. I am intrigued by the idea of 6 hours (so I thought) in the car with 3 colleagues and agree.
CAST (pseudonyms of course):
Rolf: Swiss version of the absent-minded professor. Prone to opinionated outbursts and dreamy ideas. Mysterious ability to cause any form of electronic to malfunction on approach. And I know this is a German German name and not a Swiss German name, but I couldn’t think of any Swiss names off the top of my head.
Katya: German doctor researcher.
Sarah: Very serious Swiss doctor researcher.
Verona Castle
ACTION:
The drama begins before we even start as we wake up to a blizzard in Zürich. In almost May. This is significant because to cross into Italy from Switzerland you must pass over the Alps, and in snow this can become impossible. Dun dun. We decide to set out earlier than expected to avoid iciness, around 2pm, and hope that the passes are not snowed in. This actually turns out to be the only thing that goes right about the day, as we sail into the Alps in picture postcard weather, tasty confisierie gifts from Sprüngli balanced on our laps. This is great, I think.
Rolf is an incredible tour guide, pointing out all sorts of valleys with peculiar Swiss history and proposing stops at amazing hidden sites like an old Roman style church from the 12th century. And of course we stop in the beautiful town of Lugano in the Italian lakes region (ya know, Lake Como and all those George Clooney type places) for an espresso with a view of Lake Lugano. This is all very fun, but I am noticing that the time is getting later and the skies are getting darker. I decide not to mention anything, as I am the most junior member of the party and also these directions conversations are taking place in German, and I get a bit timid about speaking German in front of my supervisor. I prefer him to think of me as a genius at all times. My nefarious plan is to wait until I am completely fluent in German and then trot it out at an after work apero, effortlessly dropping witty bon mots in Swiss German.
These are the things I fantasize about when I have too much time in a car.
Wandering through old Roman arches in the springtime
After we cross the border into Italy, several things become clear. First, there is no navigation system in the car. Second, there are no maps in the car. Third, the only other person with a functioning smartphone is hopelessly confused. Fourth, it is dark and we are increasingly far away from Milan or any sort of large city with shops that might be open. Fifth, street signage in Italy is not what it is in Switzerland. Sixth, I did not download travel data before leaving and my phone is useless for anything but very expensive calls. Seventh, none of us speak Italian and none of the people we are encountering speak anything but. This is the first time I call my hotel, in what was an attempt to let them know I’d be very late, but turned instead into a game of verbal charades as I realized that we didn’t have any languages in common, either.
After doing circles in the general vicinity of Verona for some time, a local makes a valiant attempt to give us directions in slow, clear Italian. We at least know the words for left and right, so attempt to follow them in what turns out to be clearly the wrong direction, as we are spat out onto a superhighway back to Milan. We get off at the next exit, turn around, and miracle of miracles finally spot the tiniest of tiny signposts with the name of the town that we are searching for! Much joy ensues, and the next 45 minutes are spent in a treasure hunt for a series of these tiny signs, with much ducking under of bridges and circling of roundabouts.
We finally pull into our destination close to midnight (so just 4 hours later than planned), where with the aid of two other coworkers who had spent several hours lost trying to find the hotel earlier that day, we pull into the agriturismo where my coworkers are staying. No one knows where my hotel is (the one they are staying in was booked out by the time I got to it), and everyone is too exhausted to continue the search.
One of my coworkers offered very kindly to share her bed with me, and we all retreated indoors to our separate rooms. However, I was not best pleased. Sharing a bed is fine on vacation, but on a business trip?! I had not one, but two presentations the next day, and wanted to do things like wake up early and work out, practice my talks loudly in my underwear, and prepare myself to socialize with important Europeans 30+ years older than me for the next couple days. In a final, desperate attempt, I call my hotel again and restart the verbal charades. Eventually, I was able to make him understand where I was, and he said he would come pick me up outside the agriturismo “een five minute.” This is where my previous post from last week begins.
Fifteen minutes later, I am still waiting for said man and realize that maybe this was not my best laid plan. I’m waiting alone, in the dark, in the middle of what I’m guessing are vineyards (this turned out to be true in the morning, and quite beautiful may I add!), with a massive, very friendly stray cat I had managed to pick up in my adventures, locked out of the agriturismo where all my coworkers were by now probably sleeping, and I couldn’t remember how much credit I had left on my phone to call any of them if this guy didn’t turn up after all.
Roman Verona amphitheater, where they still stage operas!
Long story short, the guy eventually turned up and I certainly made his evening. “An American!” he said disbelievingly. “What you do here?”
I don’t know, my friend, I don’t know.
Apparently it made enough of an impression that some of the Spaniards whom I met later at the conference exclaimed, “oh, it’s the American! You must be in our hotel” on introducing myself. Turns out my hotel friend of the midnight hour told them all the story of the American he tracked down in a vineyard when they checked in.
Sighing under the Bridge of Sighs, Venice
My favorite part of this whole debacle is that for some reason my refusal to accept no for an answer and give up on my hotel seems to have impressed my supervisor way more than any of my actual work, based on the frequency of him bringing it up at cocktail hour in the days afterward. “I see now how clever you really are,” are I believe the exact words he used, which is the most effusive compliment I’ve received yet. I’ll take it! Call me the Marco Polo of the 21st century.
The conference itself went quite well- I gave three presentations over the three days that were well received and generated some interesting discussion. More importantly, we ate DELICIOUS food and drank DELICIOUS wine, including fresh truffles as our visit was lucky enough to coincide with the start of truffle season! And then topped it all off with further adventures through northern Italy, but that is definitely a story for another day.
Happy travels, my friends, and remember- make sure there is a GPS involved.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, this is not a travel blog. I am supposed to be describing my “expat” (not a huge fan of that word, but that’s another topic) life as a PhD student in Switzerland. But even though that’s the whole point of this writing exercise- me living in the moment and remembering the ups and downs of adjusting to life abroad and the academic life, somehow I find it difficult to tackle. It is way easier to talk about the tasty burrata I ate on a weekend trip to Rome than to ponder what I think about the PhD experience.
So, about that whole PhD thing. I hit the 1.5 year mark this month! Which means I am halfway through the whole shebang. Am I on track? My answer to this varies a bit depending on the day.
…this is a joke, i promise.
My first year was pretty consumed with a bunch of things related to setting up a study. It was really cool to be part of the whole scientific process from dreaming up the conceptual framework to testing questionnaires to getting ethics people on board to actually enrolling my first travelers. Because really, that’s all that science is- a bunch of dreamers trying to ask some cool questions. I learned a lot, took some interesting classes, picked up a couple new statistical packages, and enjoyed getting to know the scientific community in Europe better.
why my contract says 60% and I am there 100%
Most importantly, though, I have collected the data that my thesis is to be based on, and it looks really cool. Which means it is GO TIME. There is a whole culture in academia that is called “Publish or Perish,” and I am acutely aware that I need to start publishing. And I’m on it! But there are definitely days where I sit down and stare at RStudio and the 951 observations of 236 variables I need to weed through and wonder if I should just go back to bed.
It’s kind of tough to describe, because this is simultaneously my favorite phase of the PhD so far and the hardest. There are sooo many questions I want to ask, but I also need to figure out the right questions to ask quickly so I can get something interesting to write up. Scientists could dawdle in minutiae their whole lives if they aren’t careful, but my priority is to find something that contributes to the scientific body of knowledge in a novel way.
i really like phdcomics. they get me.
Beyond these big scientific questions, there is just simple time management and burnout. For example, to do the cluster analysis I want, I need to go through all 236 of those variables, decide which ones contribute to a clinically relevant picture of travel health and don’t overlap with each other, and then reformat all of the variables I want to include into something appropriate for a cluster. Also, I’m documenting all decisions I make when for purposes of a later methods section. This is tedious, but necessary. I’ve fallen back on a handy time management called the Pomodoro Technique, which I often resort to when getting into these periods of time sucking tasks.
So I guess that’s my general sum up of how I’m feeling now: a little overwhelmed, but excited. Time and work output don’t correlate quite as linearly as when I worked a normal office job, which is why I’ve also found it helps to have a weekly routine of tracking tasks and accomplishments closely. It might take several days to wade through a pile of literature, but it’s just part of the scientific game.
On another note, my dad comes tomorrow! I’ll be wandering the ski slopes of Switzerland with him and Ryan, and I CAN’T WAIT!!
Egads, I have so many things I want to talk about! First of all, I am no longer a resident of Habsburgstrasse, the street of kings. By hook or crook (or actually a couple trips in my wonderful friend Sarah’s teeny tiny car) I have managed to jigsaw puzzle my various belongings into my new place of residence.
Discovery: wine makes bed disassembly much more enjoyable
Side note: how can I possibly have accumulated so much stuff after arriving here with 2 suitcases last August?
After a celebratory dinner of Thai food, I came back “home” to this mess last Thursday:
Every time I walked into the room I promptly ran back out
Where it has remained since then. The thought of wading into that pile was exhausting, so instead I distracted myself with science aperos (also known as free university happy hours), where the below happened:
Who says scientists aren’t cool? They also use these to paint the inside of cells or something.Abentuerzelt/Adventure Tent
Oh, and also food festivals and trips to the zoo, where we got the side eye from a baby elephant. And a trip to the circus today! Finally, though, I ran out of distractions and was forced to do what I could tonight.
Now only mild heart attacks on entering the room
I have a conference all week (wish me luck on my talk!), so most likely the IKEA reassembly factory will have to happen later this week. I tried my hand at the clothes hanger and got only half the pieces to fit back in where they are supposed to, so am feeling somewhat dubious.
I have more recent adventures to share, but for now must get back to reviewing my conference presentation. Much love to all those who read these posts, even when it is just inane moving photos xoxo
Oof, I have abandoned you, dear blog! I have had a post in the works about the logistics of an Alps trek practically since I returned, almost 2 weeks ago now, and it will come soon! But in the meantime life has seriously intervened. I only started this blog long after I had navigated the bumpiest parts of my transition between continents, so it might have seemed like smooth sailing, but it really was not. Lately I have been feeling those same hiccups again, although at least this time around I feel much more equipped to handle them! Woohoo for the small victories in life. Also, I have awesome friends and a wonderful boyfriend around to help support me this go around, and I cannot even tell you how much I have realized that that makes all the difference in the world.
Most of this is my own fault- I am not a person who likes to say no to anything, and sometimes this catches up with me. Sooo in the next few weeks I need to somehow prepare a talk for an international conference, complete an entire analysis, go on an 8 week vacation to Norway, and submit a grant proposal. Oh, and by the way, I am unexpectedly getting booted out of my apartment come September (“renovations” or some such thing), so I need to find a place to live in that time too. Luckily I’m 90% sure I have that last part sorted after some frantic dashing around between apartment viewings in the last week- although my next apartment will be entirely German speaking, which was exhausting enough for the interview part. I think it will be very good for my German, though, which I haven’t found time to work on for the last month. Sigh. I feel a bit like a big life fail these days.
I guess I am a bit hesitant to even publish on a bit of a downer post, but times like these are all part of the adventure 😀 I read an interesting paper at work this week that characterized the negative psychological effects of a “hypermobile” lifestyle, and even though I wouldn’t necessarily describe my life as “hypermobile,” it made me think a lot about the benefits of slowing down for a while. My goal for the rest of this year might be to slow down, not do so much and leave my time unplanned.
Only after September, though. Too many fun adventures planned for September.
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the gipfeli diaries 