das Fundbüro: Catching up...February 2009

As many have noticed and commented on, I've been hiding under a rock for the past couple of months. Clearly not a new behavior of mine, rather a mechanism I resort to time and time again in attempt to avoid feeling like I'm drowning when life gets overwhelming. As things are beginning to sort themselves out and I'm able to breathe a bit easier, I want to make a better effort to stay in the loop. Hopefully I'll find some success in doing so!

What's most amazing is that we've already been living here 3 months! And though I've been under the proverbial rock, Sean and I have experienced quite a bit in these 12 weeks. I'd really like to use this blog to share our adventures and experiences, and since I'm not always so chatty, sharing pictures seems like a good route to take. So, I will dedicate this first post to sharing a few pics that we've taken over the past couple of months. Let the catching up begin...

February:
The main event in February was our trip to St. Moritz. My new advisor organized a small (~50 scientists) scientific meeting there, and since partners/guests were welcome, Sean came too, and we were able to get a taste of snowboarding in the Alps. The whole trip was really wonderful for a bunch of reasons. First, the meeting itself was great. Due to its small size, every participant gave a talk, and we ate dinner together as a group every night. This kind of setup really fosters discussion, networking, and collaboration, and I often found myself sharing a bottle of wine or a gondala up the mountain with some of the biggest hitters in ingestive behavior research. In addition to getting to know the more senior scientists, the meeting also allowed me to meet or reunite with other students and postdocs, thus strengthening relationships within our generation of researchers. The second major reason of the trip's success was the amount of time we had on the mountain. The meeting was designed so that we had scientific sessions in the mornings and evenings, with the afternoons completely free. Because of this, I was able to get pretty much 3 full days of snowboarding in, and I think Sean went out for four days. Sean stayed with me most of time (but still got a few 'big boy' runs in on his own), and with the help of his pointers and enough time to really get comfortable on the board, I think I actually improved a bit and by the end of our last day, I was almost (dare I say it!) enjoying myself!
Here are a couple of pics from our trip...

Visibility was a little rough at times--made for a couple scary runs down the mountain, but also for some very cool pics!