The funny thing is....

It seems that the weeks I don't have the time needed to write a decent blog post are the weeks I have the most to say! Like the past few. Hence the no new blog posts in a long time! And it's too bad. Because blogging is one of my favorite things. Besides swing dancing, teaching Zumba, being with my family, and hanging (or even just phone chatting) with my boy Michael. And so I can't believe I haven't written in so long. 

I can't write long given that I just spent at least 4 hours cooking food for the week and now it's almost Monday, but I really want to share a little about what's new in life. 

Well, lots of things are new in life. 

Like that new iPhone update that most people hate and I thus far have refused to get. 

Like the fact that it's weirdly still summer weather and yet time has determined that it needs to be October already. 

Like the new Arcade Fire song that is super long and yet the radio station I listen to feels the need to play it multiple times per day (which is fine, because it's awesome!). 

But in MY life, what's new is that I'm finally figuring out some of my unsolved weird/annoying/frustrating health symptoms. About 10 months ago I decided I needed to give up coffee. I was having pretty bad acid reflux and also stomaches later in the day after drinking a latte or espresso in the morning. I was also having a lot of trouble swallowing food and pills. Not drinking coffee seemed to help some with my stomach but I was still drinking at least 3 cups of caffeinated tea per day just because I felt like I needed it. Without it, I would fall asleep at my desk multiple times throughout the day. I was feeling like a terrible grad student and I thought I just wasn't very good at this "real job" thing. I felt foggy most days and still got stomaches nearly every night. 

I did get my swallowing problems figured out and "fixed"as I was diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophagitis in May, meaning I have an abnormally large autoimmune (allergic) reaction to....we don't know. Some foods. Maybe alcohol. It's hard to tell. But basically, over time I have had eosinophils (a specific type of white blood cell) building up in my esophagus, making it very narrow, which in turn made swallowing very difficult. Thankfully, I was able to have a endoscopy done where they put a camera down my esophagus to look at it, and the camera ended up breaking apart one of these so-called "strictures", where the eosinophils had made it very narrow. And lo and behold, swallowing became much easier! So that's the story of why I've choked so many times in the past, and why I still have to be careful with certain foods and with how much I bite at one time. This also solves the mystery of why I'm such a slow eater!!

But as of a few weeks ago, I hadn't yet solved the mystery of why I couldn't stay awake in class or at work, why I have terrible eczema that my steroid cream doesn't even seem to help, and why my stomach was so uncomfortable almost every night. 

For the past few years I've been subscribed to an email newsletter written by a health coach. I don't even know how I first found this newsletter but I've enjoyed it since and a few times I've seen her promoting her "21 day detox." I didn't think much of this in previous years besides "Oh, I don't need to think about that. That's probably for health nuts or old people." (Admittedly, my rationale was a wee bit...unreasonable)

Anyway, sometime around the end of August, I read again that she was doing this detox from Sept. 15 to Oct. 6th. I couldn't tell exactly what it entailed but the testimonies were so good that I couldn't quite get it off my mind. "Better energy...more alert...better skin...I never knew I was allergic to gluten!...ect, ect"  I started to wonder if going on a super-well-controlled diet would teach my anything about my own system. Not wanting to make a big decision like this on my own, I talked to all the important people in my life about potentially doing this. I was met by some skepticism from both my mom and Michael, but that was totally fine- because I was skeptical too. But one day, about 2 weeks before the detox was scheduled to begin, I decided that if there was even a chance it would help some of my issues, it was worth a try!

Long story short- it really, truly has been worth it. It hasn't been easy, but its a different type of "not easy" than I expected. Yes, I miss cheese. Yes, I kind of crave some chicken every once in awhile. Yes, I really miss chocolate. But honestly, I'm loving the kind of food I am eating now. 

The hard part, really, is how much I have to THINK about what I'm eating. I know I know, I'm studying to get my PhD, you think I'd be okay with thinking. But it takes time. Time to plan all the meals. Time to prep meals ahead of the week so I don't end up eating out at all. Time (and hassle) to take my food for a whole day with me because I often don't go home at all between 7:30 am and 10:00 pm. 

But like I said, it's all been worth it. In the last 14 days (I have 7 days left to go in the detox) I realized that a combination of caffeine, sugar, gluten, dairy and/or meat (at this point I can't exclude anything or really point fingers) was making me tired, bloated, itchy and acne-y. Obviously not everything has just cleared up and become wonderful in the past 14 days. But I feel so much better after eating my food now. I feel full and satisfied...and then I'm able to wait until the next meal without feeling desperate or cranky about being hungry. After a few initial "getting used to the detox" kind of sleepy, foggy days, I have had so much energy all day long. I actually know what it feels like now to sit and read a paper at my desk without realizing halfway through that my eyes are closed. Some of my sleepiness is definitely due to the "not large" amounts of sleep I get. But I honestly think a lot of it was due to the food I was eating!! 

This is a crazy concept to me. And it's crazy because it really shouldn't be crazy. Not at all. It makes complete sense that what we put in our body directly affects how we feel. But I guess I've never experienced such a change in how I feel based on a change in what I've eaten. So I'm still ridiculously impressed with it. 

Ok, I gotta get to bed. I'll write more about the detox again I'm sure. It wraps up in 7 days but honestly, I really want to keep eating like this so I kind of wish it were longer! I think I will stay largely gluten-free and continue avoiding processed "food" in favor of all the delicious fruits and vegetables I've been treating myself to. 

Hopefully this was interesting to anyone who has made it this far with me :) Please let me know if you are curious about this type of detox- I promise it's not a juice cleanse or low-carb diet or any "fad" type of thing like that. It's all about eating real food! Before this, I would've said "Oh, I eat healthy. I eat lots of "real" foods."  And I would have been wrong. This has been a huge learning experience. More later :)

Happy almost-October!

The beauty of a changeable brain

This post has taken me far too long. I started writing it 2 weeks ago, approximately one week after I made a pact with myself to write in my blog every week. I have failed that self pact twice since then. But, regardless, I think this was a worthy post to start and henceforth I shall finish it. I wrote this as I was feeling very mentally disgruntled. I was having some trouble with my mind racing about with unimportant thoughts and it really started to distract me from work. My normal routine at the time was to work while I was at work and then when I came home I generally cooked and cleaned, but while I did that, I would have TV shows or comedy sketches playing on my computer. I enjoyed it and felt like it was pretty normal to have those things on "in the background" while I was semi-productive, because what was I going to do otherwise?.....Think for myself? Contemplate life's mysteries? Brainstorm for genius ideas for work?

I should have. I should have done all of those things. But instead I was saturating my brain with entertainment because that felt easier. Until I started feeling a little out of control. Then it was slightly less easy and perhaps even a little dangerous. When you constantly have things entering your brain through your eyes and ears, you get a little less good at being in that space by yourself, and you (or at least I) tend to be less okay with it being just plain quiet. So I realized I needed to change that, and I declared a (however short) moratorium on all things falling under the category of addictive media. To me that is basically TV shows and iPhone games. I still allowed myself to listen to music and to watch Zumba DVDs because that's actually for a job, so it's semi-important. And it's fun. And educational.

So basically Zumba was in, everything else was out.

Then, throughout the two weeks since then I wrote a few times so I'll throw those mini-posts in here and then I'll wrap up with something really insightful. Ready?


Maybe it's all in my head. In fact, I think it really is all in my head. But something has to change.

I've become addicted to too many things. Although, having said that, I don't actually know how many things is the "perfect number to be addicted to." Don't worry, none of these things involve anything seriously harmful or illegal in any way. But nonetheless, it's damaging to my brain and my sense of wellness. I can feel it.

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It's been 5 days since I watched TV or played any iPhone games. It's smaller than a drop in the bucket in terms of time and it's miniscule in terms of the other forms of media to which I expose my brain. But it was something, nonetheless. And it helped. I really did stop getting the urge to open a game or turn on a tv episode any time I was doing something semi-mindless around the house (cooking, cleaning, folding clothes). In the past few weeks I found myself playing clips of comedians or a new episode of the Danish show I am so fond of anytime I had a free moment or a moment doing chores. And when one was over, I would automatically press play for the next one. I was simultaneously addicted to it and disgusted by it. Which I suppose is how most, maybe all, addictions are. 

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I came home last night after work and upon deciding that I should enjoy my last evening of "summer", I didn't even consider sitting in bed watching tv or lounging around playing games on my phone. Instead, I automatically thought of how much Zumba I could do and how I could finally clean my desk and fold those clothes that had been laying in a heap at the foot of my bed. As minuscule as my little experiment in "TV purging" has been, I really do feel surprisingly different. 


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 As a neuroscientist (an aspiring one, at least) I shouldn't be so surprised that we can change our brains. I KNOW we can. And yet it shocked me that I did; that I, fairly easily, reduced my excessive compulsion to play a game or have people talking at me so I didn't have to generate thoughts myself.
I understand that it's not much, and that I'd have to do a lot more to diminish the other addictive behaviors I have (sugar craving being a large one; Facebook-checking being another), but I'm pleased nonetheless. I oddly do feel much freer and also more in control. I felt a weird amount of obligated every time I would watch TV shows, knowing that there were so many other episodes to be watched. It was such strong persuasion to keep pressing play, even when I was only paying half-attention to each passing episode. But why was it my responsibility to watch them? It's nice to realize it's not my responsibility.

Yes, there's a time and a place for enjoyment of most forms of media and yes, I'm still going to watch my favorite Danish show again one of these days, but it was really useful for me to start feeling sufficiently satisfied with my own thoughts and to really enjoy some peace and quiet.

Especially going in to this new semester (this will technically be my last year of classes!!), I'm grateful to start on a slightly-more-balanced foot than I was previously when I felt largely dependent on external things to preoccupy my mind.

Maybe I didn't end up saying anything especially insightful but I better end this for now because I have an early morning wake up call for a beautiful Iowa countryside bike ride with my lab mates.

Happy back to school season to all :)

Finding my niche. Possibly a niche that doesn't exist. Yet.

Note: This was originally intended for my science blog but it got a little too "fluffy" so I will save that blog for some hard science and put this here instead :)


I'm convinced that as we get a little bit older and supposedly start figuring our lives out, we all are expected to be comfortable answering the common "What do you want to be when you grow up?"-type questions. I'm pretty sure it's still a difficult question with fairly-naive-to-our-own-future answers, but because we answer it so often we develop catch phrases. We tend to stick with those catch phrases and since they seem to satisfy the general public...voila! We have a planned, believable future. This becomes a little trickier, however, when you are actually working on a degree and people start asking about your quickly approaching future. Upon hearing my answer, they generally begin with that concerned face, along with the "ooooohhhh" sound that means they think I'm in for torture. And then they say.

"So...neuroscience. Hmm. If you aren't going to cut brains open (because I constantly reassure people that I will not be performing brain surgery), what on earth are you going to do with that?"

I have to be totally honest (partly because this is a blog and I'm pretty sure you are supposed to be honest on blogs, but also because I'm a terrible liar)...this is a really difficult question for me.
What am I going to do with my degree?
Well, first I'm going to get it.
And then I'm probably going to be really happy about it.
And then....

My common answer is that I want to do research, likely at the University level. I love coming up with ideas and questions that we can answer in a systematic, detailed way. I enjoy collaborating with others. I like analyzing data because numbers are fun and you can make pretty graphs. I also enjoy teaching and mentoring students.

But sometimes my gut makes fun of my when I answer that question because I'm not sure I can see myself running a lab, analyzing data and having the title of Dr. Clark.  Oh wait, that part I can see. And I like it.

Here's the thing. My gut tells me that in a million years...which is when I'll finally have worked my way through classes, the comprehensive exam, the prospectus and a dissertation to get this degree....I might end up with a career that isn't even invented yet. It sounds like a silly thing to say, but the more I contemplate it, the more I believe it could be true. Technology is moving at such a rapid pace that I know many people who work, for example, with computers, who wouldn't have guessed at age 23 that that would be their future career. Science, as a field, is also moving at an incomprehensible speed. I actually find it incredibly exciting to think that, right now, I cannot even picture the career I might have.

This topic stemmed from a magnet that I have on my refrigerator that reads "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" Someone recently asked me, "So, Rachel, what would it be?"

My immediate answer was "This." I'd do neuroscience, I'd try to get my PhD, I'd research exercise and cognition and I would learn as much as possible. It just wouldn't be as stressful as it sometimes is in real life, where failure sometimes looms ominously over my desk as I read articles, memorize the cranial nerves, revise papers, analyze data and write in my blog.

While that is true, I'd still do neuroscience because I love it, I realized that I'd also do so many other things. I would learn as many cool swing dance moves as possible and then throw myself on a lively dance floor with the best dancers I know so my unfailing self could take over and turn my into a vintage swing dance goddess.

I'd do a triathlon, which I currently contemplate doing because I love both swimming and biking but the running itself is incredible daunting given my weak knees, my pulled hamstring and my annoying asthma.

I'd find all kinds of crafty projects (like artwork and furniture) to furnish my current apartment or future home...and then I'd actually do them because they'd be wildly successful, instead of the flop that sometimes occurs after such an artsy attempt.

Finally, I'd also write a book. Fellow scientists, don't get fiesty about this....but I'd write a popular science book. Because those are my favorite type of science to read on vacation. So I would write the most scientifically legitimate popular science book that I possibly could. And since I could not fail, given the nature of the question I've rhetorically posed to myself, the book would ultimately be incredible. It'd be funny and witty and influential and educational. By the way, "popular science", as a genre, just refers to the nonfiction style of book that discusses "hot topics" in science, in a way that engages even the least sciency person among us.

Background story: I fell in love with exercise neuroscience a few years ago when I read a popular science book about "The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain". I couldn't put it down. I didn't even know exercise neuroscience was a field...let alone a flourishing one! I'm convinced that was a major factor in leading me to this line of research. I would receive such enjoyment from being one of those author/speaker/creator people bridging the gap between science and the public. 

This is another part of a career I think I may someday have. I want to help incorporate scientific findings into realistic lifestyle changes. It sounds utopian, but people are currently working toward that goal. Lifestyle trackers (which is a whole topic for another day) are just one way scientific research is pushing its way into everyday life. I want to somehow be somewhere in that movement.

Oh- and of course I'd still blog. Which is kind of like a no-fail situation already because even if you all hate my blog, I never have to see the disdain on your face as you read it or hear the mocking laughter as you poke fun at me with all your friends. I just get to see how many people have visited my posts and ignorantly assume everyone loves it ;)

Ok, I got a little off track but, in conclusion, if I could not fail, I would be a swing dancing exercise neuroscientist and author of a pop-sci book that changes the world.

What would you do? 

Super moon

I suppose I inadvertently made my three blog night come true. My screen froze while I was typing the first post and I didn't want to lose it so I just published it and now I'll wrap it up with this post. 

Moral of the story- I don't think I have enough time or energy to actually put much of myself into all these different online "social medias" but since I am a member of this generation, I'll do my best and that will just have to be good enough. I'm not sure my humor will really shine in just 140 characters, but I'm kind of looking forward to giving this tweeting thing a try. 

On a final and less tech-y note, I hope you all have taken at least one look at this super moon that is hovering over us right now. I'm relaxing on our balcony with the moon at a perfect 45 degree angle to my eyes, with the light of it reflecting a bit off our pond behind the apartment building. It's worth the time and the bugs to just sit and stare at it for awhile. To think about how far away it actually is, but how close it looks. To picture the intense light coming from the sun and reflecting off every part of the moon so that we can see it in its full shape. Yeah, it's worth it to sit and stare for awhile. 

And who knows, maybe I'll have to Instagram it ;)

Goodnight super moon. 

 

It's a two blog night

That was supposed to be funny. But then I realized that the band name is actually three dog night and so my joke suddenly made much less sense. But I hope you at least got a small chuckle out of that.

I just wrote my second post in my science blog (www.clarkonneuroscience.blogspot.com, if you are already bored of this post and want some science), hence the two blog night title. I had to hold myself back while writing it from a few really cheesy jokes and from using too many lingo words. So, lucky you, I'm going to use all of those here! I think that's the beauty of having two blogs. Provided I don't neglect one of them, I will always have a nice place to blow off my blog steam after being all nice and proper.

So now I have to talk about something besides science. Hmmm...I obviously hadn't thought this far ahead. Let's start by talking about how I am now a full-flegged member of the social interwebs. And I don't know how I feel about it. I now have, in no particular order,
Facebook
Blog (obviously)
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facetime

I got an iPhone recently due to the very heartbreaking end of my blackberry. My poor Sprock 2.0 (my first blackberry was named Sprock, but then it broke and when I got my new blackberry, he became 2.0 because, try as he might, he couldn't quite replace Sprock 1.0). Anyway, his battery had been wearing out gradually, such that he'd turn off partway through the morning after only being awake for a few hours. I guess I do that sometimes so I can't complain too much. But the breaking point was when he turned off when his battery wasn't even low and he wouldn't turn back on until I had fully charged him. And even then he was hesitant. So I took him in for repair and the Sprint employees informed me that I was due for a few phone and the iPhone 4 was free so why don't I just get a new one. Well, ok. If you insist.

So now I have Ollie (shout out to Dan for coming up with the awesome name!) And because I haven't quite gotten used to keyboard-less texting yet, I feel as though I constantly have my nose to my phone. I walk down the street and feel the same way I did when I was little and would literally have my nose in a book. But that was way cooler. Now I look up in time to stop at a red light and suddenly I've sent a text that read "How's it king over tree? Having a food day?" (translation: How's it going over there? Having a good day?)

And then I feel ridiculous.

ANYWAYS, back to me and my social interwebs, because I'm a newly addicted iphone-addict I've jumped on the apps bandwagon and got myself connected to the world in more ways than necessary. I'll admit that I'm already enjoying instagram because it gives me more reason to take fake-artistic photos and pretend that every view of my life looks like that. But to best honest, I don't know how to link in, or twit or...I guess that's it. I know how to do everything else.

The point of this is that I don't know how I feel about it. I do love staying connected with people through facebook and I think I chose good people to follow on Twitter because the two times that I've checked it since I got it I've seen posts about science, swing dancing and the Veronica Mars movie. What more can I need?






fds

Final destination: Barcelona

Rick Steves' calls Barcelona a lovely place to visit either first of last because of its coastal and far Eastern location. For me, it was my final destination. Michael still has Paris to go (he'll head there tomorrow) but I'm now on my way home :(
I was super excited for Barcelona partly because I had been there before and partly because we had rented this super cold apartment. We first found the bed and breakfast that owned the apartment, we were going to book just one of the rooms, but then we also saw that they owned an apartment nearby and...it was super grey! And modern. And it wasn't actually that expensive so we decided to go for it. It had its own kitchen, a huge tv, a great speaker system. This allowed us to cook dinner two of the three nights, which was really nice after all the eating out we'd done recently.  And nice because Michael is a pretty good cook :)

Our first day in Barcelona was a Sunday so we kind of took it easy. We had breakfast with the owner and other guests at the bed and breakfast. He helped us buy our tickets for La Sagrada Familia and gave us some other advice. We walked to the two of the famous buildings by Antonio Gaudi, La Pedrera and Casa Batillo.
They are both really crazy buildings. Hannah and I went in one of them when we visited previously but they are pretty expensive so Michael and I decided to just admire the outside. We then went to a park, per my request, because I just wanted as much time outside in the wonderful weather as possible. Barcelona actually has many "green lungs" (parks that provide some fresh air in the midst of city living). This one was focused on water and had multiple ponds and some interesting architecture. We also found the recreational sports area where we napped and then played hacky sack. Add that location to the list. Michael says I should also make a list of places I've napped. Honestly, it would largely be similar to the one of places I've hacky-ed.

Our second, and my final, day in Barcelona was our 'best tourists ever' day. We woke up early and got to La Sagrada Familia for our 9 am appointment to go up the tower. It was as beautiful as I remember. And we did the audio guide so we actually learned a lot as well. The church is already huge but compared to the model of what it should look like when its done, it has a ways to go. Supposedly it will be finished within the next 40 years. It was started in 1889. But, as we learned, Gaudi knew it would be a work of the centuries, so he was not expecting it to be even near finished by the time he died. It's quite amazing how many people have come together to design it and how they all try to be true to the Gaudi style even though many of his plans were burned during a Spanish war.

After spending a few hours at the church, we walked down to la rambla, one of the most famous streets in barca. We perused the central market and enjoyed some food, as well as suuuuper expensive chocolate. Nothing bad had even happened so I guess that chocolate was just for fun. We finally made it down to the water, which we enjoyed before taking the metro up to Parc Guell, also designed by Gaudi. It was there that we discovered that if both our careers fail, we can just got to a European city, play hacky sack and put a hat out and we'd probably make at least a few euros everyday. That was a fun realization. One more place on the lists of both napping and hacky-ing.

That evening we went to a tapas bar I had found for Michael's early birthday celebration. He'll be 23 on Friday, when he's in Paris, so I wanted us to celebrate while in barca. We enjoyed delicious tapas, some of the best sangria I've ever had and traditional Catalan deserts.

I'm disappointed I didn't have more time to explore the city, because there is so much to see there, but I am also antsy to get back to work. This was a lot of time off. I thought about reading articles and doing some work while away but there really wasn't time for it. Im pretty sure I won't get another vacation like this for a long time so I decided to just focus on the vacationing, which I did. I'm now on the way home- I can hardly believe it. It feels like forever ago that I was just arriving in Denmark. I'm very grateful for this adventure and so glad I had a great travel buddy. I never would have gone all those places if Michael wasn't set on having a massive Europe trip.

We just started the descent over Chicago airport, where we'll land in 40 minutes. I fly from there to Des Moines. I can't wait to see my mom!

All of Nice in one post.

Our host in Nice was a spunky woman who had lived pretty much everywhere, speaks at least Italian, French, English and Spanish, and baked the most delicious fresh bread for breakfast each day. She sat with us and other guests at breakfast each day so we learned her story a bit and also got expert advice on the city. The first day, upon Josephine's advisement, we went to the main market in Nice in the morning and then visited one of the fanciest hotels I've ever seen. The market was a few city blocks of tables filled with fresh fruit, dried fruit, fresh fish, meat, cheese, flowers, paintings, ect. We also found an Italian market on the promenade near the water, so we bought a canoli and some cheese and a sandwich and ate while sitting on the beach. One thing that really surprised me was how many people were laying out in bikinis (or less) at 10 ish in the morning.  I though it was still as bit chilly for that but it was good sun, I suppose. I just trout that'd be more of an afternoon activity but apparently not. And it turned out to be smart of them, given that a storm rolled in that afternoon, while we were riding bikes that we had rented. Thankfully we rode away from it so we only got a little wet.  Nice, as Josephine told us, is sunny 300 days a year because there are mountains/hills surrounding it and so the clouds rarely come all the way to the city. They did come in a little that day. We had to abandon the bikes a little early and take refuge in various souvenir shops and one very expensive candy shop while we waited for the restaurant we wanted to eat at to open. Michael and I have a habit of getting candy whenever we get in a tiny argument or something semi-unfortunate happens. It's similar to my "get hurt, get froyo" motto. Because of the rain, we ended up with some rather expensive biscuits, chocolate covered almonds, caramels and fruit flavored chewy candies, basically just fancy starbursts. Fun fact, in Denmark and many other European counties, food coloring is illegal so all of their candies are flavored naturally, which keeps them white, rather than the bright colors our candy is.
Anyway we finally had some pasta and afterward, again upon Josephine's recommendation, visited what she claimed was the best gelato place. She swears by it. And I see why. It had the best pistachio gelato I've ever had and every other flavor we tried (which was a lot - the worker was very generous with samples) tasted exactly of its fruit/candy. Pistachio, dark chocolate, peach, white chocolate, chocolate raspberry, cinnamon, mango, strawberry, dark chocolate baobab, salted caramel...I'm hungry just thinking about it.

Our second day was our most adventurous. We walked up a big hill full of fancy mansions and hotels to the Matisse museum and roman archeological ruins, which was pretty cool to see. I kind of didn't realize that Romans had lived there but it is very close to Italy so it makes sense. They had excavated public baths and a neighborhood in an area surrounded by modern city, so it's likely there are even more ruins underground in the surrounding area. The Matisse museum was fun because t was small enough we could really read through everything and tent lot know Henri Matisse's life and work. I had no idea he designed a church and he considered it his life's main piece of work. It was no La Sagrada Familia (more on that to come) but it was pretty neat.

We walked back to the city to catch a train to a beach town about 10 minutes away. Have I mentioned how beautiful the water near Nice was? It was the best blue. So clear, and when it foams from the waves it basically sparkles. We spent the afternoon beach-ing, which I loved. It wasn't super warm but laying in the sun was nice and we both got brave enough around 5 pm to swim in the sea enough to make us completely numb from the cold.

When we got back to Nice, we walked through Old Town to a hill called chateau hill, where a castle used to stand. Now it is a park with a cemetery, a waterfall, great lookout points and a tower at the very top. We got there  a few minutes before 8 and watched the sunset from a lookout point and then visited the waterfall. We were surprised there weren't more people enjoying the same view. Wen we got to the bottom of the hill and realized one of the main gates was closed and locked, we realized why we had been so alone. It was closed. And there was a wall we could have scaled...except it dropped at least 30 feet to the busy road below. No thank you. Some French girls on the other side of the gate laughed at us and repeatedly told us "it's closed". Thank you, we know that now. We speed-walked toward another exit and assed some delinquent 14-year old French boys who also told us, "hey! Is closed!" And had only laughs in response to my "yes, but how do we get out?" Just as Michael and I were near panic state (where are both excellent, calm travelers but when you think you are going to be sleeping in a French park all night, you tend to get a little worried) we found the other locked car gate, which was next to a little pedestrian door that was unlocked. Phew! And so we went to a little restaurant that Josephine suggested for a lovely, very late dinner. When almost locked in a park, buy yourselves a nice meal of veal and pasta and some pannacotta for desert.

Because our meal had ended around 1130, we ditched the getting up early tradition. W slept in a little, packed our stuff, walked to a nearby market, got a final gelato from that amazing place, and then walked to the station for our bus to the airport. That was it for nice and it was soon Hola Barcelona!

To Nice

The first of our 3 legs of the train ride to Nice is gorgeous so far, at least the parts I've been awake for. Which is probably like one tenth of the actual ride. I keep falling asleep and waking up when my head bobs all the way to my chest, and Michael is laughing at me from his seat. He's actually reading about Nice, being productive. At least one of us will know what is going on when we get there.

I'm very sad to have left cinque Terre. I can't wait to write about it. It was unlike anywhere I have ever been before. A wonderful place to relax and enjoy a few lazy days. We did do some hiking, but the conditions weren't good enough for us to do quite as much as we wanted so instead we went in shops and, when the sun finally came out, we laid out on the rocks and dangled our feet in the Mediterranean sea. Which is beautiful. And when the sun shines on it, it's my very favorite color of blue. And even when the sun doesn't shine on it, it's a nice grey. Again, win-win.

Cinque Terre: Corniglia and Riomaggiore

The last full day in cinque terre, we visited the two other towns, Corniglia and Riomaggiore. It was a rainy day so we umbrellaed around Corniglia after walking up the 400 some steps to the town. We took many Panoramic photos, shopped a little and took the train to Riomaggiore. The sun came out just in time for some shopping ;) and then a picnic lunch on the rocks.


We had a bit of a tradition of getting up extra early on our last day in a place and walking somewhere. Innsbruck, it was to the garden. Florence it was around the olive grove. But the most impressive, and scary, was the morning we left cinque Terre. We wanted a good view of the sunrise so we left the hostel at 615 and headed up a trail towards this hill town called volastra. It was overcast, with a chance of rain. The path was steep and less protected than I expected. It would have been a great view of sunrise. If there had been a sunrise. We got about 20 minutes in to the supposedly 35 minute hike to volastra when I chickened out and made up turn around. I just figured better safe than sorry and we were not really prepared to face rain on the muddy hillside. As Michael said, the clouds were ominous and better safe than sorry.

We safely made it back to town, picked up bread and Nutella and fruit from the little co op grocery store in town and packed up all our stuff in time for our 10 am train.
Our route took us to Genova and Ventimiglia and lastly to Nice, where we stayed in an adorable bed and breakfast called Chez Josephine.

I believe I have a post already written about the ride from Italy to Nice so I will post that at some point but for now I'll just say that it was amazing. Upon arrival in Nice we had pasta for dinner and gelato for dessert and we watched a 4 man dance group on the street, which was very entertaining even though they actually were not very impressive dancers. It all almost made up for having to leave the wonderful Cinque Terre behind.  Almost.

Cinque Terre: Monterosso and Vernazza

The second day began with a visit to the church we had walked to the night before. It had a stained glass window on the front that was carved out of marble, but was so intricate that it looked more like lace. This style actually appeared in at least 3 of the churches that we visited in the 5 cities.

Our goal was to visit all 5 cities in our 2 days so we had to get started. We hit up Monterosso first, since we had seen it the day. It was every bit as adorable even without the lemon festival- we walked by the water, saw the town church, ate at a little cafe.

We also observed a wedding photo shoot in progress, as well as the couple walking down the tunnel from the train and a lovely tunnel performer who accompanied the couple with a wedding march. We also ran into them in the next town, where they were taking photos on the beach. Standing on the rocks. In the wind. Adorable.

Cnque Terre is a great area for hiking. The towns are so close together that you could hike trails from one end to the other in a day. A long day, but a day. But you can easily hike from one town to the next in part of a day. So we took the 2 hour hike from monterosso to vernazza. It was along the coast the whole way, with amazing views, and lots of stairs! There were multiple "dangerous pathways" along  the hike but it was really fun.  And supposedly it's one of the most 'rewarding' because at the end of it you get to be in vernazza. Equally adorable, with a lovely little church and one of the best gelato places we'd been to. Gelato de amor...the gelato of love. And love it we did.


The waves were intense that day and we sat and watched them, and almost got swept away at one point! We walked to a different place on the rocks and I played in the waves in a shallow area. Michael was camera-ready in they've that I got smoked by the wave. Unfortunately for him, I did not :)

The wedding couple was on these rocks taking pictures as well.

That evening we went to the very top of the Manarola hill for dinner, where we had more scampi and some of the best pasta I'd had all throughout Italy. And also a hilarious waiter. I took forever to eat my food, as always so I was about half done and Michael was almost finished when the waiter came by and said "don't say you give up...I can kill you." Of course, said with irony and the nice Italian accent, we didn't take him too seriously.  But we absolutely finished that food. And we were glad we did :)

He also did some magic tricks and we bet him our dinner bill that he couldn't guess the card . And then we owed him ten dollars because of course he guessed our card. We happily tipped him.

Cinque Terre I - arrival and a lemon festival

As hard as it is to pick a favorite from all the places we went- because I honestly loved all of them- I now have a slight preference towards the Cinque Terre. The elation I felt as our train burst forth from the dark tunnel and the sunlight and blue water of the Mediterranean Sea met my eyes was pretty much indescribable.   Even though I really enjoyed Florence, I was hankering for some water. And with the Cinque Terre, I got it.  As far as our eyes could see was gorgeous water. And as far as our peripheral vision could see was coastal hills and adorable villages (though you have to get closer to see how colorful they really are because peripheral vision cannot see color...just a little science for you ;)


Cinque Terre also scored some points based on the place we stayed. It may sound superficial, but the place you stay absolutely changes your view of the city.
My expert trip planner and travel buddy had discovered this sort-of hostel, more like hotel, in the city of Manarola. Oh, a little orientation,"Cinque Terre" means five cities. And, surprise, it's made up of 5 cities, which are all buried in the hillside of the Italian riviera. It's a major tourist hot spot, meaning we heard more English than Italian and Michael even saw someone he knew from Grinnell. The cities are (in south to north order): Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso.

Ok, so the place we stayed was right across from the train station in Manarola, meaning we only had to walk about 10 steps up the hill, which was great with our backpacks. Everything in Manarola is on a hill. The town begins down at the harbor and then climbs steeply up. Our fancy hostel was run by Simone, a super helpful guy who clued us in on an iPhone app he created that had restaurants, beaches, train schedules, ect for the area. He also supplied us with a corkscrew on one occasion during our stay :)

Our room was large and simply decorated- looked as though it came right out of Ikea. Which I loved!

Wen we checked in, Simone told us that Monterosso was having its annual lemon festival and it was only that day so we must check it out.  After tossing our stuff on the bed, we hopped on the train and went to Monterosso. It was adorable! Lemons, lemon juice, lemon pastries, and lemon souvenirs were everywhere! The whether was perfect and we just walked around admiring everything until we decided we were hungry enough that we must try some lemon specialities. We also saw a great local "band"....well, it was a group of people in traditional-type clothing, walking through the streets, singing, clapping, playing some instruments and engaging all the passers-by in their songs. We followed them through town until I got distracted by a store (which happened fairly often on this trip). Michael also had found a cute art store that had paintings he really enjoyed so we looked around there. Turned out it was also a custom jewelry store so I'm now the proud owner of a wonderful "made in Italy" necklace. And we had a nice chat with the American-born, now Italian citizen, owner of the shop.
Before long we headed back to Manarola for dinner at one of the four restaurants in the town. It was actually very nice having just 4 places to choose from. And having them all be basically next door to our hostel.  I enjoyed unpeeled scampi for the 2nd time (Michael is now a champ at peeling them for me) and then tried pannacotta, a popular Italian dessert. Popular for good reason, I'd say.

We then tried to watch the sunset from a hill on the edge of town that juts out into the water but it was a little cloudy so we vowed to come back another night, which we did. We also climbed up the main town hill to a church that we were planning to go see the next day and to a good nighttime overlook of the town. Even though the towns bustle with tourists during the day, at night they are quiet and peaceful.  And with that view...pretty good way to end a day

And, unsurprisingly, Florence III

Saturday
'Twas a rainy morning, so we weren't quite as motivated to get our touristing on, but when we finally did get to town we went straight to the duomo (common nickname for the cathedral Santa Maria del fiore) to climb the 436 steps in the campanile. The pictures probably weren't as good as on a sunny day but it was still a pretty good view and we got our leg workout for the day. We then checked out the inside of the cathedral (which we hadn't been able to do the day before because I absentmindedly wore shorts, which are not allowed). The inside is surprisingly simple, without the ornate decorations that we saw in many other churches. There is, however, a massive fresco on the inside of the dome, depicting the final judgement and the dead rising out of their graves and heaven and hell. It is 3600 square meters of intense.

It was still raining quite a lot at that point, so we went to the central market. We were rather overwhelmed by all the amazing stands with fresh fruit, fresh meat, fresh fish, lots of varieties of alcohol. We found a nice place to have some lunch and stayed inside until the rain let up...sort of. We made our way to the Boboli gardens and the sun came out just in time for us to enjoy 2 hours of wandering around the gardens, taking pictures and admiring the impeccable landscape. A floating island, Cyprus alley, a Danish family that we happened to meet near the main statue. It was all very lovely :)

Sunday we walked around the olive grove since we hadn't done it before. We got the bottoms of our pants all soggy but it was worth it to see the property and the view from the hilltop. Finally we ate our Italian breakfast and departed for Cinque Terre.

That will be the start of another post

As I (and this post) are currently lacking good transitions, this is Florence II

Friday
Bike tour:
Piazza Della Republica (the location of the old city, when it was merely a fort built up for soldiers)
Piazza Della Signoria
Palazzo Vecchio (location of the Capitol building)
Ponte Vecchio (very old, adorable bridge with tiny little gold shops. It used to be a place for selling meat because they could just dump any bad or unsold meat into the river and it would wash downstream to Pisa (whom the Florentines did not like) but since the Medici family used that area, they didn't want it to smell bad, so they changed it to just gold shops.
Pitti Palace (with over 1000 rooms, you can go there to have a 'pity' party, as the Pitti family did when the Medici family bought out this beautiful palace from them)  Also the location of the Boboli gardens that we visited later
Holy Trinity Plaza
A leather market
Santa Maria Novella (and plaza)
Duomo- more accurately known as the cathedral de Santa Maria del fiore. ("Of the flowers." Because the symbol for Florence is the flour de lis.) It is often called the duomo (as most big European churches are) for the Latin word for house. And also because of the giant dome, which is the main feature of the Florence cathedral. It is the largest dome in Europe. And this cathedral is the 3rd, right behind St. Peter's Basilica and Milan's duomo (which I've also had the privilege to see and to climb). It actually took 25 years after. Te cathedral was built for an architect to figure out how to build the dome that large. And then after he finished and before he died, he burnt the plans. So they are still trying to figure out how he actually made it work.

After the bike tour Michael and I set off on our own. We went to the Galleria Dell'academia,which houses Michaelangelo's David and other important statues and paintings. Michael had downloaded a walking audio guide by Rick Steves so he and I shared headphones and followed Rick Steves' helpful and amusing directions through the museum. It may have looked weird but I loved it! It was a great way to get a lot of interesting information out of the museum, which is something I can admittedly be bad at sometimes. I get museum-ed easily (similar to how my mom and I say we feel "malled" after Abby makes us shop too much). But in Florence, you gotta just push through the pain cause there is so much to see!

After the academia, we got some good Italian food from a restaurant on the square of the duomo. Well, it would have been good Italian food, except that I didn't know the difference between salt and sugar and ended up with some very sugary cheese, which is a very VERY unpleasant experience. Michael agreed to find a place for me to get chocolate because I was pretty unhappy about my food faux paus. Sugary cheese is just not a taste you want to stay in your mouth very long. Or in your imagination. I have to stop talking about it now.

After that we went to the Uffizi, which is the Italian word for office. It is one of the most important museums and is housed in what was the Medici family's office building, hence the name. We also did a Rick Steves guide for that, which was useful because we probably could have spent upwards of 4 hours in there on our own, but we got there at 430 ish and it closed at 7 and we kind of had to rush through the end. There is currently a lot of renovation on the building so there were a few rooms we didn't get to see.

Our last sightseeing stop of the night was Piazza Michaelangelo, which is a nice public square up on a hill overlooking the town. We watched sunset from there and played a good round of hackysack. Add that location to my list :)

Walking back along the river, we ate dinner at a cute restaurant along lungarno, which we think means "along the Arno river".

Florence

It will be somewhat hard to write about Florence because our days were jam packed so not only is there a ton to write about, but I also didn't do any of the writing at the time. All 3 days we left our adorable bed and breakfast by 9am and came home somewhere around 10 or 11Pm. Our B and B was a 20 minute bus ride and a 10 minute uphill walk away from the city. This was awesome because it gave us peace and quiet and a great view, but it meant we packed for the whole day and just stayed in the city until it was time to go to bed.

Florence is an incredible, exciting city. We bought the Firenze card (Firenze is how you say Florence in Italian) which gave us free entrance to many of the city's millions of museums for 72 hours. I think we packed enough in that it was well worth it. The first day we did a bike tour of the city because we figured that would be a good way to see the main sights, get a good feel of how to get around the city and learn some of the history. It did all of the above, and gave us gelato! Our guide was great and I learned a ton about the city and the family that ruled the city for many hundreds of years, the Medici family.  The Medici family was behind most of the buildings that we visited and much of the artwork that we saw. I'll just list the places we went and give little descriptions. Otherwise this post will be waaaaay too long for anyone to enjoyably read.

Thursday
Arrived in Florence. We almost just camped out in our B and B in the evening but we decided to go into the city to get our bearings. We walked around, saw some churches, saw the church....the Cathedral de Santa Maria del Fiore....and then got dinner at a nice place on piazza Della republica. Since it was our first night in Italy, we just had to follow dinner with some gelato....of course. we ate it while sitting by palazzo vecchio while admiring the many statues of the square's  'open air museum', then we found our bus stop and headed "home".

From Austria to Italy

Also known as, from snow covered mountains to green covered mountains. Michael and I both slept for the first half of the first leg of our train ride to Florence. We left Innsbruck at 927 am, waved goodbye to innsbruck's beautiful mountains and made our way into gorgeous Italy. I tried to stay awake to see the sights along the way but anyone who knows me knows how bad I am at actually staying awake in a moving vehicle. I didn't get to sit by Michael or by the window so I did a lot of head bobbing, eyes closed, startled waking up, just to go back to sleep again. I'm sure I looked ridiculous. Finally I opened my eyes and saw beautiful green fields with adorable houses and villages nestled onto the sides of mountains and I urged myself to wake up so I could see more. Michael and I went to the food car and ordered a light lunch and drinks mostly so we could sit together and have a good view. We took many pictures, oohed and aahhed (that part was mostly me) at the adorable villages, and met a guy from Texas who said that he "knew we were one of them" (the Americans, we presume). Now we have about half an hour left on the first leg of the trip. We will get off at Verona and take another train to bologna. From there it will be a short ride to Florence.  And then m and I will find the bus that will take us to our countryside olive grove bed and breakfast. It looked wonderful online so I'm very excited. I think they will have a dog.

Last day in Innsbruck

To follow the last post, Tuesday afternoon after we had our adventure in Hungerburg we went to the Tyrolean folk art museum in Innsbruck. I wasn't sure what to expect but it was an impressive museum! We had a cool reading guide machine thingy which we pointed at the barcode tag in front of each exhibit and the laser scanned it and pulled up information. It was a pretty neat way to see the museum and to learn a lot about the cultural history of the area. I honestly didn't know that much about Tyrolean culture so I was grateful we had the chance to learn about it a bit.
We also visited the church that is right beside the museum and we were lucky enough to visit it right in the middle of an organ concert. Every church,every single church, that we've seen in Europe has a fancy organ. Churches differ in their fanciness and ornateness, but the organ is always impressive. So we admired the decorations and listened to the organ music. Not a bad way to see a church.

We wrapped that night up with dinner at the Ottoburg, one of the oldest buildings in the city, which has now been turned into a local cuisine restaurant. It was originally built sometime around the 1300s. It's a beautiful building and our cute little table was next to a window that looked out to the mountains. We ate our Austrian-style ravioli (with spinach and multiple types of delicious cheese) and Wiener schnitzel, which was a little too heavily fried but not bad otherwise.
Gotta try the local specialties ;)


Our last day in Innsbruck was a little chilly but we got up early to walk around Hofgarten, a gorgeous garden in the middle of the city. It basically means the garden for royalty. The Hofburg, right beside the garden, is the royal palace. And the hofkirke was the royal church that we had visited the day before. We walked through it as the sun came up and as business people in suits passed by on their morning commute. We also were passed by a group of school children on what appeared to be their morning laps around the garden. Almost all of the were jogging, even though they were in normal school clothes.  They were working up a sweat and...get this...they even seemed to be enjoying it. Think we could talk American children, and their teachers, in to spending a half an hour running a mile around a city garden before school?

We spent the rest of the day visiting the Swarovski crystal shop/exhibition area (because we decided not to go to the gigantic crystal museum, which I'm a little sad about, but it was too far away to really be worth it), climbing up the Stadturn, a tower that gave us a great view of the city, and visiting other churches. Our other big adventure of that day was renting bikes and exploring the city on wheels. On our way to get the bikes, it started to rain so we went to this museum I had noticed earlier. It was called Audioversum and it was developed and run by a prominent cochlear-implant company (that we, as silly Americans, had never heard of). It was awesome! We got to play sound localizing and 'guess that sound' games. We had a super cool guide who took us through the entire museum and we were the only people in there. We got to watch 3d videos of how sound is transducer which was super fun because we are both huge nerds. I had learned recently n my med neuro class about sound transduction and the cochlea, auditory cranial nerve and other brain areas responsible for sensing sound so it was fun to see how they had put that into interactive exhibits.

We finally got our bikes and it turned out to be a pretty nice day for riding. We rode up to the bergiesel, the famous ski jump of Innsbruck. I have some incredible pictures from the top of that, as it is a fairly high point in the city. In front of the ski jump is the city of Innsbruck and behind it is rugged terrain and mountains. If Innsbruck ever gets to be the site for the Winter Olympics again, I'll be able to say that I've been there :)

We rode to 3 more churches and then spent 10 minutes at a modern art museum right before it closed. Michael is a fan of churches and I'm a huge fan of modern art. So it was a win-win.

That pretty much sums it up for Innsbruck. The pictures will speak to how beautiful the area is. Ill be sure to post some

Innsbruck

Monday

It was a bit of a blessing that our bags didn't end up making it to Innsbruck with us, because then we didn't have to carry them through the city. We didn't get them as soon as we had hoped, but they did finally arrive at our hostel Tuesday evening. Turns out it isn't so hard to manage with just one outfit for two whole days. No makeup, no medicine, one iPhone charger, no socks, one pair of underwear. And yet we managed and actually really enjoyed it. But I was glad when they did come and it was nice to put on a clean shirt.

Monday evening, after we checked in to the hostel, we walked around the city and realized that our hostel really was very very close to all of the main sights. We were able to see the Goldenes Dachl (roof) right away and some churches and important statues that were nearby. In front of a statue called St. Anne's column, Michael said something about how he never asked anyone to take his picture by any landmarks during the rest of his trip when he was by himself.  A nearby local girl heard us (which is not surprising since we Americans tend to be very loud) and said " shall I take your picture?" We were mildly embarrassed but laughed a lot and said yes, thanks! And so now we have a lovely photo :)

After that we walked more and found ourselves at a cool plaza/fountain/skatepark near the triumphforte (the iconic landmark in Innsbruck, which depicts on one side, wedding festivities of a prince, but because his father died during the celebration, the other side of the arch depicts the great sadness).

Having found ourselves in this wide open and beautiful plaza, it only made sense to play hackysack. Basically Michael is the best hacky buddy I've ever had.  When I was in Europe before, I played by myself many many times, and always wanted a friend to join me. Now he and I can hacky all over Europe :)

So far the list of places we've played is the Larsen's house, King's Garden in Copenhagen, and that skate park. Im sure we'll be adding to it soon.


Anyway, after hacky, we went to pick up food but didn't realize it was a holiday on Monday (Whitsunday) so everything closed very early. We just barely made it to a supermarket to buy cheese, peppers and some apples. Back at the hostel, Michael cooked up a nice dinner of pasta with the aforementioned ingredients and some spices he had bought earlier during his trip.

And thus concluded our first day in Innsbruck :)


Tuesday was a beautiful day, but it's a good thing we both wore layers because we  ended up on top of a mountain and, who would've guessed, it was really cold!! It was windy and there was snow, but it was completely worth it. We had an amazing view of Innsbruck and of the river Inn that runs through Innsbruck (can you guess where the city gets its name?) We spent a lot of time hanging out on the mountain, watching sheep, pointing out different mountains, walking around in the snow and of course, taking tons of pictures. Finally our fingers and noses got cold enough that we took the cable car partway down the mountain and explored the village of Hungerburg. We were just planning to look at some houses and take more pictures but we stumbled upon a cute little church so we examined it from the outside and, when we saw that the side door was open, we explored the inside too. We were incredibly lucky to be approached by a man who turned out to be the pastor of the little church. He told us all about the different frescoes on the walls and the history of the church itself. There was a small language barrier but he did pretty well speaking English and we loved hearing all about this church and area that he obviously loves. He even asked if we were hungry and invited us in for cake and coffee. Neither of us actually drinks coffee, but how could we say no to that?? So we accepted and had a wonderful time eating cake from a local restaurant and some bread that a nun at the church baked. We chatted of our trip, his trip to the US (North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia), more history of the church, McDonald's, skiing and the most important things to see in Innsbruck. We must stayed for over an hour but when when finished the cake and bread and coffee and homemade lemon "citron", a refreshing natural lemon juice, Peter walked us all the way down to the cable car station. He pointed out interesting buildings and told us stories on the way.  As I'm sure Michael will mention in his future guest post in my blog, it was all in all an accidentally awesome encounter

Luggageless in Innsbruck

I'll preface this by saying that we do in fact now have our bags and all our belongings are intact. It honestly wasn't too much of an ordeal to not have our luggage for 2 days, but it was a little nerve-wracking, which is why I didn't tell anyone back home that we lost them (sorry mom!).

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 We've made it to our second destination- Innsbruck. Well, we have made it to the airport. But currently, no further. And our bags did not make it with us. We are pretty sure we will get them this evening because there's another flight coming in from Frankfurt. Our layover was quite short in Frankfurt....and our flight in was a bit delayed, meaning Michael and I were those crazy people running through the airport.  And because it was Frankfurt, we were running through the airport, up and down stairs, around many corners, and finally on to a bus for whom we were the only passengers.  A nice Turkish bus driver special-delivered us to the very far away loading site of our tiny turboprop plane.  Along the way he regaled us with stories of when he drove Lady Gaga around the airport (she is short and has very big yellow hair) and Heidi Clune, who was supposedly visiting her husband. . Oh and snoop dogg. He's met snoop dogg. So that was cool. Our nice Turkish bus driver didn't have the best English but we rather enjoyed his tales. He also played some party tunes and told us to come back and find him when we get married (earlier he said to me "this time, friends. next time...married.") He got us to the plane just in time....and then there was another 10 minute delay because of weather, haha.The flight was short and a little bumpy but the scenery was beautiful, as it is here. Outside the airport (where we are waiting for a city bus) we are faced with snowcapped mountains, on top of which are luminescent clouds. The blue sky is peaking through in lots of places though and while it is a bit windy, it is a nice day to be walking around downtown. Which is the plan as soon as we can catch the bus to city central.

Im hoping the bags come tonight or tomorrow morning...otherwise Michael and I will be taking lots of pictures wearing our new Star Alliance tshirts, which were generously given by the lost and found desk here.

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Note

The one previous and other soon to come posts have all been written on my iPad during travel. I haven't had much wifi or time to edit, but I want to post them anyway so you may follow our adventures. With that as my excuse, I'll apologize for the multiple typos/autocorrect errors and the semi-pathetic writing. I'll admit it's not my best. But that's because I'm living it up over here in Europe, so I hope you understand :)

M and I are eating an Italian style dinner at a Spanish-style time right now ( it's almost 11 pm for us over here) and then we will be off to bed so we can get up early and leave this lovely olive grove for our trains to Cinque Terre. Looking forward to a little more sun, hopefully, because it was a bit rainy here in Florence today. Hope all is well back home and elsewhere.

R

Tales of Copenhagen

I don't think my telling of our time at the larsens can do justice to how wonderful it was. Not only was I thrilled to be back with them, but we spent the whole time being hygge, playing games, eating delicious food, partying, laughing.

Friday, upon arriving in dk, m and I made our way on the stog to bagsvaerd, the place that was my home 2 years ago. The larsens were home and I was fortunate enough to get to meet Rosie, the larsens exchange student for the past 4 months. She is a wonderful girl from California and I was so happy she wasn't upset that I was invading her space. Quite the opposite, she seemed very happy to meet me and said it would make her goodbye a tiny bit easier. Friday was actually her last day with the larsens. We all bid her farewell at the train station later in the afternoon and she was on her way to Sweden to visit friends before heading back to the US.

Friday night was meget hyggeligt, with bread and cheese and fruit and salad and wine and candles and good conversation. Couldn't have asked for a better welcome back dinner.

Saturday was one of the most fun and relaxing days I have had in a long time. Around 11 am, Michael and his host parents came to the Larsen's house and we all headed out to Bagsvaerd lake. It was a gorgeously sunny day, but not so hot as to elicit much sweat. We rented canoes and spent the afternoon exploring various channels of the lake. At the end of one we stopped and had a picnic lunch, after which the kids and M and I (that'll be my shorthand for Andreas, Rebecca, Michael and I) played hacky sack for a while and then the kids taught m and I to play "dåsen", a game similar to the American "kick the can". It was fun to be 12 again.

After the wonderful afternoon on the river, the Larsen's hosted one of the best barbecues I have ever been to. There were fun neighbors, good music booming from the stereo system inside the house, all kinds of delicious grilled meat and fancy salads, a plethora of beer, wine & liquor, along with an adorable child that we played with a lot. Later on in the evening, one of the highlights was the Eurovision Song Contest, which Denmark won. So that was incredibly fun.

Oh! And floating fire lanterns. That's right, we had floating fire lanterns. You light this peice of burlap that's on a wire at the bottom of the lantern and then hold the sides and top of it until it inflates enough and starts floating, then you let it go and hope it doesn't catch on the tree. Which a few did. And I thought we were going to burn down the tree and the house. But we didnt.

We let probably 6 float into the sky at the same time and then we all stood back and oohed and ahhed until they faded from sight.
The party raged with music and a bonfire and alcohol and lawn games (lit up with an extension cord and a powerful outdoor light from a neighbor) until 4 in the morning, when Michael and I finally gave in and went to bed

People watching people

It's like in the movies, where everyone on the upcoming flight is lining up and the screen zooms in on certain characters, highlighting the woman in high heels, the older man who looks very sophisticated and is mentally counting something with the help of the hand that rests on his carry-on suitcase, the woman on a work call whose Danish accent is clearly heard through the perfectly English words, the numerous men in suitcoats who obviously have somewhere important to be, the girl my age with the badass headphones (she's obviously cool), the dude in a pearl jam shirt, Starbucks coffee in hand. I could go on and on.  There was a slight delay in boarding so this whole line of people was standing in line right in front of a sitting me, just waiting to be people-watched. I've made eye contact with most of them. Makes me wonder what they think of me. And if any of them think this is almost like the movies, when the shot freezes as the viewers are introduced to each person, interesting in their own way, distraught or ecstatic for their own reasons, all of which will be revealed later in the season.

I wish I could write stories. This is fun.

Let the adventure commence!

Here I am, waiting for a first flight to Chicago, after which I will leave American soil and fly to Toronto. From there I will fly overnight to Copenhagen, which actually translates to a 7 hour flight, but it begins at 9pm and arrives at 10:45. I'm generally pretty good at sleeping on flights (meaning I can't stay awake for the life of me) so I'm looking forward to the 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep. Haha. I can't wait to be back in Denmark. I miss the language, I miss the pastries, I miss the s-tog...and of course I really miss my host family. Tonight we will be having hygge :)

My efficient hiking backpack is suspiciously not totally packed full. Room left for presents I guess! I can't tell yet whether I packed too many clothes, not enough clothes or just the right amount. I almost hope I didn't pack enough so I just have to do a little shopping. I'm traveling with a boy so I'm afraid my shopping opportunities are going to be limited. I might have to charm him into giving up just a few hours in each place so I can get my shopping fix...and find treasures for my friends!

The itinerary for almost every place is museums, beaches (or in the case of Austria, mountains), hiking/exploring and trying not to look like tourists. As I mentioned before, we will be in each place about 3 days. Ill try and take at least a few pictures in each place on the iPad so I can upload them.  All other pics I will take on my brand spanking new camera...which I had to buy because the memory cards I bought for my other camera did not arrive in the mail in time :( granted, I should've ordered them earlier, but amazon did say they would arrive by Tuesday....two days ago. And then didn't come. So now I have a camera that can take panoramic shots, extract only certain colors for a shot, take continuous shots at once and zoom in x8. So I guess I can't complain ;) just means ill be encouraged to take the best pictures I can to show you all later.

------ I just got a phone call from my European trebled buddy Michael. He's currently hanging out on Nyhavn and he told me about all the places he's been today. I can picture it so well- I can't believe I'm going to be there soon!

Nw for the boring stuff...I finished my first year of grad school classes! I've sort of already started my class for summer. I'm taking an online stats course, which I actually am very excited about being I haven't taken stats since Knox and I really miss it! And I also feel like I'm a poor excuse for a scientist with my current lack of statistical knowledge. So when I return from Europe I will be spending a good chunk of each day catching up on the class because I'm technically missing the first two weeks of it. I've never taken a summer course before. Now experiences galore!

As I was saying, I finished my other courses- all 4 of them. This semester was challenging, to say the least. But I can't even really express how much I learned. I simultaneously learnt a ton of material and also learnt how little I actually know. I think a good for does that, it shows you how much more there is to learn about the subject. Medical neuroscience definitely did that. To be honest, all of my classes did that. Oh, I know the basics of the fMRI technique? Great, well now I need to learn how to analyze the results, how to calibrate the machine to account for cardiac and respiration cycles, how to understand the underlying mathematical and mechanical concepts that I am only vaguely familiar with now. The same goes for my cog psych class which introduced us to running statistical analyses in excel and to designing programs and analyzing data in programs called eprime and Matlab. So.....let's just say I'm glad grad school isn't only one year long. Because I would be completely inadequately equipped to be any type of scientist.

Ok I'll end the gibberish. My flight has been delayed about half an hour. Thankfully both of my layovers (Chicago and Toronto) are about 3 hours each so I'm not too concerned about missing a flight. I'm not easily bored so ill just enjoy my down time and daydream about my upcoming adventure.



Thanks for reading! And stay tuned, I have a feeling future posts will be a whole lot more exciting than this one

Putting the passport to use

I'm typing on an iPad at a swanky little cafe in the Toronto airport, so I won't write much. I have another post written but its inaccessible on my own in-wifi-ed iPad so ill post it later. First leg of the trip went swimmingly. I even got to watch Big Bang theory and modern family on the flit. What is this crazy technology!?

If all goes as planned, I'll arrive in Copenhagen tomorrow at 10:45. I heard a Danish woman talking earlier today and it made me even more excited to get back there. It's liked I've missed it a lot of something. Weird.

Ok, i better get to my gate. I'll keep you updated! And hopefully post at least a few photos.

In the spirit of adventure,
Rachel

"I don't need to go to the hospital because all of my executive functions are intact and I have no cranial nerve dysfunction" -What a neuroscientist says when asked if she is alright.

Dear friends,
Let me preface this by saying that I am fine, although it appears this being clumsy thing is a new lifestyle choice rather than a once in a while occurrence. Let me follow that by saying it really has been a month (and a few days) since my last post so probably don't believe me when I say I'm going to post more often or not let a full month go by without a post. And let me follow that by saying that this is as good of a time as any to write at least a little bit so here goes.

I'm sitting at home on our couch with my foot elevated and covered in an ice pack. I was planning to be at work this afternoon after a lovely bike ride to church. The lovely bike ride stopped short when I took a tumble between a bridge railing and a "Sidewalk Closed" sign. I know, I know...what was I doing riding past a sidewalk closed sign? Well, I thought I was being smart by avoiding all the pedestrians on the other side of the bridge. Harumph. So much for that.

Anyways, long story kind of short, my hand/handlebar hit the railing, I put my foot down to stop, my foot decided it wanted to be unbalanced and I fell over, my bike fell over on me, I hit my head (but I was wearing a helmet!!) and I laid there for a few minutes not really knowing what to do and maybe saying a few *colorful* words. Like goshdarnit and skiddlderink.

Or others.

And then some nice people stopped to help me. But it turns out my foot was more painful than I expected and upon trying to stand up, I noted some massive light-headedness, started making my way to the ground and found the ground quicker than I wanted to because next thing I knew I was waking up in a very confused state and being told that I had passed out. Gosh darn it, body. You knew you were hurt and just didn't want to face that fact. So you passed out, had a super weird dream full of electroswing music and woke me up nice and gently to the knowledge that an ambulance was coming for me. Great.

The ambulance did come. As did a firetruck. And a police car. The latter two were sent away quickly (thank goodness!) and the paramedics stayed with me long enough to make sure I was no longer light headed, my blood pressure was fine (quite good, in fact! for having just passed out) and my ankle is mainly swollen and likely twisted a bit. But besides that I was fine. So I refused (nicely) to go to the hospital, I signed the necessary forms, and the ambulance left and I hobbled away with my bike. Thanks to good advice from family and help from good friends, I made it home and am now recovering. Man, it wasn't exactly the way I pictured this day would happen. But, like I told the nice paramedic that was helping me, there could have been worse ways for us to meet.

On to bigger and more exciting things, the school year is wrapping up. I cannot believe it. Without wanting to speak too soon, I will say that in 3 weeks I will have *probably* made it through my first year in graduate school. I can't even begin to describe how much I've learned and how glad I am that I am here.

As soon as the school year finishes...well, technically before it finishes, I will be off to Europe for "Michael and Rachel's Epic European Adventure!" Yeeeeaaaahhh, that was as catchy of a title as I could come up with. Let me know if you have any better ideas. It's currently the title for my itinerary, my planner and my special European playlist. We've got all the necessary items planned (except for my train tickets....I really hope those come in the mail soon) and I've even started packing a bit. I'll be toting a rad hiking backpack and another over-the-shoulder bag. Really hoping I can fit 2 1/2 weeks worth of clothes in there. Guess this means I can't bring any textbooks ;)  Actually, to my great fortune, my mom is letting me borrow her iPad so I'll sometimes have internet access and I can pre-load some maps and useful apps on there. I can even put papers for work on there so I can read on the plane and train. But I'll just admit it, I will not be reading those while on the beach :)

Here is our official schedule in case you are interested.....

--May 16th fly to Copenhagen and stay with Danish host families (this is literally the part I'm excited for the most-- I miss my host family so much!!)
-- May 20 fly to Innsbruck, Austria
--May 23 train to Florence, Italy (we are staying at an Olive farm...an Olive grove?..an Olive...I don't know what to call it but it's going to be awesome!)
--May 26 train to Cinque Terre (five beautiful little cities along the Italian riviera)
--May 29 train to Nice, France
--June 1 fly to Barcelona
--June 4 I fly back to the US and Michael continues his trip in Barcelona for another day and then to Paris about the time that I'll be back at work


I suppose I better wrap this up so I can get at least a fraction of the work done that I had planned for today. Hope this finds you enjoying the beautiful weather. Happy Iowa spring...finally!!


Vi ses!
Rachel

Snow break 2013

It's nearing the end of spring...er, snow break. It's a beautiful winter wonderland outside right now, which is giving me more motivation to drink hot chocolate and write this LONG OVERDUE blog post than to study the hypothalamus. I have 14 days until my next medical neuroscience exam. I'll start studying tomorrow ;)

I feel a little guilty about how long it's been since I've written, especially since I've technically been on spring break for over a week now. But somehow that week filled up very quickly and I didn't find much extra time to sit and reflect. During the first weekend I packed up my childhood room. That included a lot of reminiscing, sorting, tossing and packing boxes as efficiently as I could. It was very weird to see the finished product: boxes filling the space beneath my big wooden loft, empty walls (except for the awesome pink, purple and green paint job my family did for me when I was about 8), a pretty empty closet, and just my bed left with sheets, blankets and pillows that will wait until later to be packed. I found some great stuff while cleaning- a high school journal full of angsty entries and epic poems (that have been shredded and really never deserved to see the light of day in the first place), a crisp $20 bill from my Grandma Audrey and Grandpa Darrell for my 8th grade graduation, some report cards (one of which told me I got a 3 (out of 4) for "uses scientific process correctly" HA!), Danish money that will soon be packed to travel back to Denmark with me in May, a shirt I used to love that said "My Space is the pool"......get it?? :P  and, finally, lots of pictures. Of family and of friends. And they all made me smile. Even the ones from middle school when my hair was goofy and my glasses were nerdy.

I'm glad I had a goal. I knew what needed to be done. I needed boxes packed and ready to go to the new house (by the way, my mom bought a new house, for anyone who doesn't know yet. haha). For the record, my new room is going to be sweet. It's going to have 3 light grey walls and one dark grey walls. I picked the colors :)  Anyway, I'm glad I had a goal because otherwise I might've found packing up my childhood room to be more painful. It's sad, of course, to have things changing. It's especially sad in these circumstances, to know that dad would have enjoyed this process, and he would love the new house. And so it's hard to get away from feeling like we're leaving our memories of him there. In the house where we shared all that love and joy and time together.  But we're not leaving it there. We're bringing all the memories and love and laughter with us. To another place that we can make a home. A place we will come for years and years to celebrate holidays or just for the heck of it, because we love to be together.

Back to the things I found in my room. Holy cow, I was more of a teenager than I thought at the time. I will admit, most of the time I found myself to be at least somewhat superior to the average high schooler. I didn't have mood swings (because I was apparently always a bit of a downer), I always did all of my work (because I thought that that was the measure of my self worth), I cared little if people actually liked me (and lots of them didn't) as long as they respected me (and probably only some of them did) and I had surprisingly dark thoughts (I wrote a whole entry in my sophomore english class journal about whether I'd ever have a near-death experience and that maybe it would make life seem less meaningless-- yikes!).  I guess I wasn't as immune to the woes of being a teenager as I thought I was. But I'm pleased to announce that I think I've turned out ok. Thus far, at least.  My perspective on life is much different now and for that I am very grateful. Knox has toned me down a bit (which was definitely for the better) and Denmark has made me more adventurous and Iowa City has made me more responsible, but also more fun :) I find great joy in having the chance to work out, the chance to spend time with my friends, the chance to have one glass of wine with dinner. Those are things young Rachel Clark might not have stood for (the working out, yes. the wine, no).  Anyways, this post wasn't supposed to be all about me. I don't know what it was supposed to be about though, so I hope you enjoyed it.

Onto the upcoming events of life. Starting tomorrow life is going to get a little crazy. The next few weeks include our second med neuro exam, an oral presentation for a conference on campus (which I have yet to create), a draft of my section of a review paper our lab is writing, a few projects for classes, starting an experiment with our newly developed iPad app, giving my "rotation talk" for neuroscience seminar, a trip to San Francisco for the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, a visit from my Europe travel-buddy Michael (which will inevitably include more planning for our epic trip!), our second lab exam for med neuro and....that's as far as I can see. Just a few weeks beyond that and it will be finals and then I will be in Europe. Phew! Okay, so I just have this feeling that all of that is going to go very quickly. I kind of already can't believe how quickly this first year in grad school has gone. But then I think about how little I knew before I started about the kind of work I'd be doing and it feels like a lot of years have been crammed into these few months.

OH! Earlier I mentioned that the first weekend was me packing up my room. That was supposed to lead into how this weekend was spent with a trip to Waverley to see Abby and Kyle and that I thoroughly enjoyed my sister (and brother-in-law) time. I don't want to brag too much but I kind of have the best sister and brother-in-law. We went shopping, slept in, ate good food, watched movies, ate more good food, did homework/real work and pretty much I didn't ever want to leave. Not a bad problem to have, if I do say so myself. I'm just grateful they are within driving distance and that they like me enough to let me crash at their place for a weekend :)

I think the hypothalamus really is calling my name now. Until next time... (I'll try really hard for it to not be a whole month before I write again! That was ridiculous. Seriously. I'm sorry it's been so long. For how much I enjoy writing these, you'd think I'd do it more often. )

Stay safe in that lovely spring weather out there and enjoy the end of the week, because it might actually get up to 45 degrees!

Hej hej!

Oh sorry, you're not Rachel!

Ok I will get back to the fact that I haven't written in a rather long time and why exactly that has been but first!...my good story of the week:

On Friday I was walking past the hospital on my way to my medical neuroscience class and I had one headphone in as per usual, listening to this awesome podcast I'm obsessed with (Hey Mister Jesse. It's a swing, jazz and blues music podcast, hence my obsession) Anywho, so in the midst of my swing, jazz and blues, I hear someone yell out "Rachel!" It took me a few seconds longer than should have been necessary to realize someone was yelling at me (I think I still feel slightly invisible/unknown on this large campus...compared to Knox at least) so I do finally turn around and this girl emerges from behind some columns I had walked past a minute ago. Our paths were perpendicular, but she must have seen me as I crossed in front of the columns. So we are kind of far away at this point and when I turn around, I start wracking my brain to figure out how I recognize her. She's too far away to really tell her facial expression but it immediately went a little sour and she kind of raised her arms to brush away the fact that I had turned around. She stumbled over the words "Oh...sorry! You're...not Rachel." 

ummm.....but yes I am! Unfortunately we were too far away for me to ease her embarrassment by laughing about how "well, actually I am Rachel! But, apparently not the Rachel you mistook me for?" So all in all it was awkward. She probably felt it was more awkward for her, but I feel it was more awkward for me because she mistook me for...being me! Or some other Rachel. I guess I'm not the only one on this campus. 

Back to why I kind of stink at writing my blog on a regular basis. It's because I have too many awesome things to do. Which ultimately takes up a lot of time...but also gives me so many stories that it's overwhelming to pick just a few. I really am taking a greater number of classes right now than last semester and they are somehow just keeping me very busy. But they are fantastic! My medical neuroscience class is a more in-depth study of the brain, spinal cord, vascular system, you name it, than I have ever had. And I'm just eating it up. Except not really. And that's a bad joke to make because we just saw a real spinal cord/vertebral column in lab the other day and well....to put it crudely, the surrounding tissue looked a whole lot like chicken. Or pulled pork. Which surprised me. Because the brain doesn't look like either of those things. And so it was very strange for me to see a part of the body that is not grey or white matter. But don't get me wrong, it was not appetizing. Not in the very least. In fact, I often can't eat until about 1 pm on lab days, when lab gets done at 11:30, because I can't quite get over the whole "dissection" thing. 

The three other classes I'm taking are excellent also and on top of that I have my lab rotation(s). I say "rotation(s)" that because technically I am rotating in the Neurosurgery lab right now but I'm also still working in the Health, Brain and Cognition Lab because before too long I am going to be back there for good! The really exciting thing with work this past week was that I got to test out the app that our lab developed with the help of a local programming company. It's been a really interesting process to take what was first a real-life task, and then a computer-based task, and to put it on the iPad, with the hopes of making a sensitive, flexible tool that can be used to track certain cognitive abilities in clinical populations. I really enjoy thinking about the fact that technologies that I will probably be working with down the road in my career, probably aren't even invented yet. I mean, even when I was applying for grad schools I didn't expect to be working with an iPad for cognitive testing. Just another reason I am really grateful for this job. It always surprises me. Which is incidentally a quality I like in people too :) 

So the busy-ness is mostly what has kept me from writing for awhile. But don't worry, that doesn't mean I have forgotten about you. I've actually been reminiscing quite a lot lately about how glad I am to have this blog, and how grateful I am that people read it. And even if people didn't read it....I'd probably still write. Because it is really a good chance for me to slow down and just think about life. Which is a quality I find is often overlooked in this day and age of constant productivity (which often actually means mindless-wandering around the internet). I really think we need to spend more time just thinking about our lives (because it often makes us more grateful for even the little things) and less time wishing things were different, more exciting, less stressful, more elegant, ect ect.  

On a totally different note, because I need to wrap this up soon or I might lose all of my audience to boredom, here is my latest and greatest news. In just a few months I get to, once again, be an American in Europe, trying not to look like an American in Europe. 

AND I CAN'T WAIT! (was that too excitable?)

One of my best friends that I've known since my summer in Iowa City, has been planning to take a trip to Europe before his life gets swallowed up by med school (and I mean that in the best way, because he's going to be great in med school! But it will legit swallow most of his life). He actually studied abroad in Denmark the semester before I did so we both have host families to stay with and a deep desire to be back there. We've joked for awhile about going to Europe together but ever since the idea was first implanted as a tiny seed in my brain, it's turned into more of an obsession. Finally, after a lot of logical discussions with myself in my head (and after getting enthusiastic approval from my really awesome boss) I decided I needed to join him on his adventure. I just couldn't pass up a chance to travel to incredible places with one of my best friends. I just really hope 2 weeks with me will be as fun as he thinks it will be. I honestly do think we will be excellent travel buddies because we get along really well and we basically never run out of things to talk about. So that will be helpful for our multiple long train rides together...through the Swiss Alps. And the Italian Riviera. Ok I will stop bragging. for now. But be prepared to hear more as the plans become more concrete in a few weeks :)

I have all kinds of other things to say but my cognitive neuroscience paper on "The Mind and Brain of Short-Term Memory" is just begging to be read. And how can I say no to a title like that? 

Before I sign off I have to share with you a few of my favorite songs of this past week. I'm no music expert. Or even aficionado. I have the enthusiasm but not the extensive knowledge yet. But nonetheless I'm going to share what I like because you might enjoy it too. And dancing to this kind of music is one of the things that has made me really happy lately (not to mention, it is fulfilling my #1 resolution of 2013! --which was to swing, swing, swing dance more :)

I love being here with you - Ella Fitzgerald

Straighten up and fly right -Nat King Cole

Suzy - Caravan Palace  (I've been all about the electro-swing lately. It really gets me out of bed quickly...and keeps me dancing while I get ready)

Be prepared, there will be more in future posts. I'm obsessed with everything swing, jazz or blues right now. And with clothing from the 20s-40s eras. 

Tak for reading! hej hej