Yes, that's right! I started this travel blog a long time ago even though I actually have not hit motherland's soil yet. I was hoping it would help me keep track of my preparation and build up excitement for the trip but I instead used my time laying around the house, doing homework, making last hurrah weekend trips, and reading pubmed.
Let's hope that changes.
Anyway, lots of things have transpired this last summer yet somehow it is only in the last few weeks that I am starting to get a better handle on the details on my projects and still figuring out my exact roles in them. That's right - projects with a BIG OLD "S". I'm now going to work on three projects in Hanoi and excited about all of em. As everything (ah, the world of research) is still very much a work in progress, I will digress to much later until I give details of what the projects are. But one of the them has me working and having meetings with engineers in my old alma mater - UC Berkeley. Oh how nostalgic it has been trekking my way around those hills and taking BART to that beautiful Cal campus.
I am starting to have more regular contact with my mentor, his staff, and the Vietnam research team. So far, all personable people...the Vietnam staff and I even text skype which includes happy exclamation points and smiley emoticons. Haha! (I can't wait to meet them) Even cooler is that I had a mentee from UC Berkeley the last month. He was hard working, excitable, and generally swell. It was a nice reminder that for some reason people actually aspire to do the things I do and a sweet motivating push to appreciate my position and work harder. Even better news is that he is going to help me with one of my projects! I can't wait to list him as an author. Though we might have to wait at least a year for that to happen.
On a personal note, I am overall in a very happy time of my life. My family is well and healthy, I have many loving friends that I can lean on, I have time for hobbies and exercise, and for a bit I had some romance. Sadly, Vietnam will have to put a pause on a lot of these aspects of my life for awhile...but I guess it's a sacrifice I chose to make for some adventure...and um, science. Now, just several more days until I land halfway across the world and say, "Xin Chao Viet Nam."
