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