Saturday, July 31, 2010

Life has changed

Well I just discovered that a friend of mine lists my blog as one that she subscribes to, which was enough to make me feel guilty for having abandoned it. Therefore, here is an update of life since May 23rd, 2009. Since the name of my blog implies traveling and I've done a lot of that recently, I'm going to focus on that.

July: 5 day road trip/canoe trip in the boundary waters of Canada. Highlights include being awesome (hard work + rewarding trip = bonding) and listening to the Mountie song.

July/August: 2nd trip to Brazil. This one was 2 weeks long and I and another grad student were the only stateside folks who went. It was pretty cool. After much labor we got everything working. And it continued working for 2 days or so. Which brings me to...

September: 3rd trip to Brazil. This time it was me and a professor from Clempson University. We had several things to do, including fix the instrument that quit right after I'd left the last time. We got everything done.... except for fixing that last instrument (did I mention that I needed this to be working so that I could have data for my thesis?). On a side note, just a few days ago I dreamed that the problems we were having were caused by the computer's graphics card overheating. I doubt that's true though.

December: Brief trip to Maryland for a job interview at Hopkins applied physics lab. Met up with an old friend, good times. Christmas in Green Bay, was awesome. Got to hang out with my family, where the generational shift is complete now that I have a nephew and we all got together at my parents house, instead of at my grandparents house. I now have the role of uncle, instead of... young one. Sadly I left for school just a couple days before Eden, my niece, was born.

January: However, my days weren't completely bleak, because this time in the holy name of research I was forced to travel once again. Where, you ask? I and my companion suffered through a trip to Bonaire and Trinidad, in the Caribbean. I'll have you know that I got NO sympathy from friends when I talked about the unbearable heat. I got sunburned rather badly one day because my suitcase was slow to arrive and I didn't have sunscreen (and we were WORKING in direct heat). Fun times though. KFC is very popular in Trinidad, although its a bit spicier there. Also, the first day we were there we freaked out when Chinese take-out was $25-40 an entree. Eventually we found out that the "$" sign in Trinidad means Trinidad and Tobago dollars, not USA dollars. Exchange rate: ~6:1.

Febuary-April: No travel here, except back and forth from home and campus in CU. During this time I wrote my thesis. Through this process God revealed his great mercy to me in that my thesis was completed on time and came out longer than what I expected. I now feel like I should go back and explain how God revealed himself to me during these other events, but I'll just say that he did and leave it at that.

May: House hunting trip to Maryland, during which I found my roommate and his sweet townhouse, where I am now. Also made two trips to Wisconsin, once to visit family with Jen, and once to go to Lake Ellen one last time to say goodbye. That trip could be a blog post in itself, so I'll just leave it at that. I also drove around and visited my grandma Hedlund and some friends around Wisconsin.

June: To MARYLAND! This was a roadtrip. 700 miles across country. I stayed one night in Dayton, OH with a friend from my undergrad. It was fun to be back in Dayton (it was the summer I spent there a few years ago that inspired the creation of this blog), and catch up with two guys who were in that area. The next day was about 8 hours of driving, which I thought would be long. But it was super fun to drive through the mountains and see the sights. I finally arrived here, and discovered my room nearly completely full of boxes that the movers had brought ahead of me. I took a series of pictures to chronicle my progress cleaning up the room over the next few hours... maybe sometime I'll be inspired to post them, especially if people want to see them :P

Cheers,

Peter