Golden October

After two weeks of crisp and chilly mornings with clear and chilly afternoons, we are experiencing a (presumably brief) respite of beautiful golden warmth. What a blissful feeling! I just love the extravagance of warm afternoons after a period of cold. It feels so self-indulgent! And in October, the warmth is enhanced by the creeping gold and red color of the changing leaves. Is there anything more golden than a warm, October afternoon when the leaves are turning?

Sunday the weather was so warm that I took Ronan to a sandy beach on the far side of the Tisza (from us, anyway.) I've had my eye on it all summer, but hadn't managed to figure out how to get down to it. We biked down and enjoyed a few hours playing in the sand. It was almost too warm! Not something I expected to feel a week into October. Ronan dubbed it "the beach with the sparkly sand" -- there's a lot of mica mixed in with the sand, so this is a good name for it. Now he wants to go back every day! I said we might have time some days, but not every day. It gets dark pretty early, after all.

We were playing a bit before Sunday, too. Friday and Saturday we were at a Fulbright outing - we visited Veszprém, Zirc, Bakonbél, and Pápa. These are all west of Budapest, and a bit north of Lake Balaton - up into the Bakony mountains. (These are more like East Coast mountains, so I'm schooling myself not to call them hills.) Although our entry into Veszprém was less than ideal, since it was accompanied by Ronan's first experience with motion-sickness, we avoided similar drama the rest of the trip. (Thank goodness!)


Veszprém is a beautiful city, and I wouldn't mind the chance to go back and wander around. While there we visited the University of Pannonia -- the English and American studies programs. Interesting fact: I almost applied to the Fulbright position at the University of Pannonia. They have a really strong chemical engineering program. But then I met my current host at an American Chemical Society (ACS) conference, and it was too good a connection to look elsewhere. But hey -- now I do have a contact at the University of Pannonia, so...maybe in future...

We also visited Veszprém's American Corner. They have a weekly science activity for kids, so of course I was interested. They have a library of English-language books, and Tristan discovered "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." He wanted to borrow it, but of course we don't live in Veszprém. I had to assure him a bunch of times that we could get it from our own library, probably in e-book form, and probably as soon as we next had internet access. He was hard to convince. He wanted to stay. So did Ronan, who had discovered the toys in the kids corner. He was having so much fun playing that he cried when we had to leave, poor bug. Of course he was also quite hungry by then, since I still wasn't sure what his stomach was up to -- so that didn't help.

Veszprém is also home to World's End. It might not be quite as dramatic as the Cliffs of Moher, but still quite beautiful and unexpected, given the local terrain. Nearby World's End is a church with an arm-bone from Blessed Erzsébet, the beloved wife of Hungary's first Christian king, Saint Istvan. I'm not much into relics of this kind, but it certainly was interesting to see. I wonder if it was her lower arm or upper arm -- I'm not very well-versed in human anatomy, I'm afraid.

Zirc is a short drive from Veszprém north, into the mountains. It's home to a beautiful Cistercian abbey. We admired the gorgeous books in their library. Well, most people did. I followed Ronan around, trying to convince him that there was something to be interested in. I finally hit on trying to find the biggest, "stumpiest" book in each of the library rooms. (In case you haven't yet encountered this word, "stumpy" is usually used (by Ronan, and now by us, too) to describe size, or quantity, but not exclusively. It can express other characteristics, too. Ronan once described a harbor seal as a "bundle of stump." So you see it is a flexible word. It always said admiringly, though -- regardless of what other characteristics are being described.) There were some pretty stumpy books, I can tell you! And of course it was a library, so there was a stump of books there.

The Cistercian's didn't just collect books; they also collected trees. There's a beautiful arboretum just outside the abbey walls. We took a lovely walk there. It was such a mild afternoon, and the air was so fresh in the mountains, it was quite a treat. Ronan and I rambled along, threw pine cones into the creek, and looked at mushrooms. Tristan hung out with a couple of his adopted uncles - in Hungarian these are bácsi (plural would be bácsik.) (Incidentally, this is also how students address their teachers -- female teachers are "aunts" and male teachers are "uncles.") Tristan has several "uncles" among the Fulbrighters, which is fabulous. I really appreciate how welcoming everyone has been with him, especially. He needs more people.

This brings me to the other reason why this trip was so welcome. Yes, of course it was extremely fun to be guided through beautiful places, and learn about interesting history and culture. But more than that, it was really helpful to reconnect with friends in a social, casual setting. We don't get enough of that in Szeged. I've been working on changing that mix for us by inviting people over, but that only goes so far.

Ronan is probably the best off of the three of us - he gets to play with friends all day. Tristan has a little time to talk at school, of course, but so far he hasn't been able to get together with friends outside of school. Many of his classmates are extremely busy with extra-curricular activities. We're working on it, but it's challenging. So it was especially welcome because Tristan got to spend most of the two days on the trip hanging out with his bácsik -- which was fabulous for everyone involved.

And me? I do OK most of the time. I'm used to having a lot more interactions with my colleagues, though. Here at SZTE my colleagues are uniformly very busy -- so I don't see them much, and I feel a little awkward approaching them to ask if they want to go out for lunch, or get a coffee. It feels like an imposition. So as I said earlier, I've compromised by hosting parties on the weekends. (Speaking of which -- I think it's time to host another one!)

Anyway, even though I've described a lot, that wasn't even the whole of Friday. After Zirc we headed to Bakonybél, a tiny little town deeper into the Bakony mountains -- that happens to have an observatory. So that evening after dinner we walked to the observatory, and got to have fun looking through a telescope. Improbably, the weather was even cooperative! It was a beautiful, clear night; a little humid, so some of the images weren't super clear, but still. No complaints. We got to see Saturn, Mars, a star cluster, and the Messier 57 (M57) ring nebula. Then we went down to the planetarium and saw a movie on black holes. Finally, everyone trouped out to the roof to do some good, old-fashioned star gazing. By this time Ronan was seriously tired (it was after 10pm), so we headed back to the hotel with a few other Fulbrighters who were ready to turn in, too. The night was crisp and dark, the walk was refreshing and companionable, and the beds were comfortable. Although it might've started a bit rough, it turned into a lovely day.

And then it was fall

Just in time for the official turn of the season, the weather in Szeged has shifted from summer to fall! This morning I got up to an unexpectedly chilly bright, windy day. The clouds are high and puffy, the sky is vibrant blue, and the air has a flavour that I haven't felt in...well, about a year, right? The crispness is so striking, especially in contrast to last week, when I spent most afternoons sweating.

I don't think I have a favourite time of year, and I think that's healthy. I try to enjoy where and when I am -- what other option do I have anyway? If I pine for a season the rest of the year then I'm spending most of the year unhappy. What kind of life would that be?

Fall is so beautiful. The trees haven't really started to turn colors here, but I suspect that these chilly mornings will start to bring the change. But fall is also sad. It's the last fireworks display before the bleakness of winter. Of course winter can be beautiful, too, but I have a more complicated relationship with winter. I've had too many traumatic events happen in the winter for me to look toward it with anticipation. For example, that big elm tree in my front yard has given me some strong feelings of trepidation about winter -- but at the same time I don't want to just chop the tree down. I love trees! And it's a beautiful, old tree. It gives us incredible shade. But it's also scary.

So let's get back to living in the moment -- in fall. This weather makes me want apple cider, pumpkin pie, and cozy blankets. It also reminds me of more things I'd forgotten about bike commuting: the cold hands and ears. Time to make myself some mittens and an earmuff, I guess!

I am now in my third week in the semester, and it's been an incredible experience so far. My classes are so different than what I usually teach, but it's inspiring and exciting (as well as intimidating.) Rather than teaching chemistry, right now I'm teaching science writing. In one class we're focusing on writing journal articles, and in the other we're writing about the elements in the periodic table. Well -- we will be very soon. So far we've mainly been talking about how to write, and some of the challenges for students who are not native speakers of English. Incidentally, the book "Doing Science" by Ivan Valiela has a wonderful chapter on language, specifically intended for scientists who are not native speakers of English. But really, it's not just for scientists, and it's not just for non-native speakers of English. I think anyone who does academic writing would probably get something out of it.

Have you noticed that this is the first time I've really said anything about my classes this semester? So far I've struggled to try to describe my experience -- that's why I haven't said much. I guess I can start with the basics: my classes are small. One class is all Ph.D. students (and a couple of med students); the other is M.Sc. students. Incidentally: in Hungary everyone who is admitted to a Ph.D. program already has a master's degree. They also all have to get level B2 or better in English. This rating means that they are upper intermediate in speaking and writing -- they were probably all as good at English as I was at Spanish back in 1995 when I was nearly fluent. Some of them are a little rusty at speaking because they earned that rating coming out of high school, and maybe haven't had the opportunity to practice speaking all the time. But -- many of them are addicted to English-language movies and serials, like Game of Thrones, so they get lots of opportunities to practice listening and understanding.

This means that most of my students speak at least two languages fluently, or nearly fluently. For those keeping track, in the near future, students in Hungary will need to pass two language exams at level B2 or better in order to be accepted to attend university. Intimidated? I am. But I'm also kind of jealous. I love that so many people here speak multiple languages. I love that bilingual education is the norm, not the exception. There are so many good reasons to learn other languages. Travel is one, of course, but it's also fun to learn more about the structure of languages. I learn so much about English when I study other languages. It's a mirror, you know? By looking at other languages I can more easily reflect back on what English is like.

Anyway, I'll get back to my lovely students. I said my classes were small. I have 18 students in the Ph.D. class and 11 in the M.Sc. class. My students in the Ph.D. class are definitely more confident about speaking in class, and they often contribute and ask questions. I've found us some great things to read to better understand keeping story in our writing (Terry Tempest Williams, "Not Ours to Exploit"), an awareness of audience (Neil deGrasse Tyson, "A Cosmic Perspective"), how to structure introductions (Lorelei Fister and David C. Johnson, "Controlling Solid-State Reaction Mechanisms Using Diffusion Length in Ultrathin-Film Superlattice Composites", which is a journal article from my P.I.'s lab -- but back before I was a graduate student.) I also used that last one as a good example of keeping language simple and minimising the use of jargon (even in a scientific article.)

I sent a big mental "thank-you" to my wonderful colleague, Nathalie Kuroiwa-Lewis, because I spent a half an hour in both of my classes talking about rhetoric and rhetorical situations. I also will give a shout-out to Purdue OWL, since they have some really great resources on so many things having to do with writing (including rhetoric.) (I do like to give credit where it's due!)

It's really weird, though. I'm only teaching 90 minutes, 3 times a week. So the vast majority of my time here I'm really doing something else. What that looks like for me is a lot of time on course prep. This makes sense because -- guess what? -- I've never taught anything like this before. So yeah, Mondays and Wednesdays I spend around 4-5 hours before class getting ready for class. Tuesdays and Thursdays I get ready for my Thursday class. I'm not sure how many hours, but probably 4-5 again. On Friday I try to pick up the pieces, answer the e-mails, and figure out what I need to prepare before next week.

But wait! There's all kinds of hours in between there where it sounds like you're not doing anything, Arwyn. What is this, some kind of fancy holiday? No, no! Don't jump to conclusions. I'm keeping very busy, believe me!

In addition to the classes I'm teaching I've worked out an outreach schedule where I'll be doing science activities with the Szeged American Corner 2-3 times a month. Do you know about American Corners? I didn't until last March when my Fulbright host said, "Hey, there's an American Corner opening in Szeged. You should reach out to their director. They're on Facebook!" So I did. American Corners are an outreach of the US Embassy. Local communities host spaces where there are cultural events intended to increase understanding of the US. But they also have really practical stuff, like conversation circles where people can practice English. Right now there is (of course) a push to increase STEM activities in the American Corners, so that's where I come in.

But...I have very strict rules about science activities that I do. Yes, yes, of course I do stuff that's safe. No explosions. Nothing horribly toxic. But that's actually not what I'm talking about (because I consider it obvious that I'd demand safety.) Instead, what I am is deadly opposed to the whole "science magic" kind of show that you often see. It's not that I don't think they're any good. They're super fun! But I'm just not into science as entertainment; I'm into science education. I think learning is already exciting. I think that having "science magic" shows makes science more mysterious, not less. That's right -- I'm trying to make science accessible and interesting, and I want to convince you that you can do science, too. I think "science magic" does the opposite. No, I don't have any scientific research studies that demonstrate this, but maybe I'll talk to some of my colleagues about designing some when I get back.

This next week is our first event, and I'm going to do a chemistry and art activity -- we'll make egg tempera paints. If you want to give it a try, send me an e-mail and I'll share the activity. Only household ingredients required for this one.

Anyway, I'm also biking Ronan to and from his kindergarten -- so that's about 20 km per day I'm on the bike. It's been great -- I get exercise while I'm commuting! Wow! Revolutionary, I know. I envy and admire all of you who've been doing it all along. I'm just happy I can do it right now. It's great to get daily exercise without scheduling in something separate, and it's also really beautiful. I get to ride across the Tisza river every day, and that's lovely. And also my hips are feeling better. Even with sitting for 6+ hours a day while I prep. And then of course there's the constant battle we all face of making sure we have groceries in the house, food on the table at mealtimes, clean clothes to wear, and a house that isn't a total biohazard zone... So yeah. There's plenty to keep me busy.

Living local

I absolutely love farmer's markets.

There's something lush about so much fresh produce assembled together in one place.

I think my first experience of a farmer's market was in Bellingham, when I was a student at Western Washington University. (Isn't that sad? That my first experience with a farmer's market was when I was in college? Yeah, I agree. It's very sad.) But it wasn't exactly a farmer's market -- it was a Saturday market, so there were a lot of non-farmer venders. The most memorable stands were Holmquist Hazelnut orchards, and somebody with honey. That's mostly what I bought -- nuts and honey. Those were high ticket items, and I was on a pretty restricted budget, so it was a big indulgence to go.

When we moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1998 they had a Saturday market, too. It was extravagant and very enjoyable -- all kinds of craft venders, a performance stage, lots of food options. Oh yes -- and flamboyant tie dye clothing. There was a beautiful farmers section, but it comprised only about a quarter of the total market. They did have highly memorable melons - watermelon and cantaloupe so sweet... I salivate at the memory. It was still a treat to go, rather than a regular occurrence -- something that we did when family or friends were visiting, or to take advantage of some specific, hard-to-find item (like local melons.)

In Seattle it's possible to find a farmer's market somewhere in the city almost every day, but no guarantee how close. The one that's closest to us is about a 20 minute drive, and it's on Wednesdays, so I don't go often. And it's still a special deal. I go to a farmer's market in Seattle to buy queso fresco from Samish Bay Cheese, and I used to get bulk ground beef for a good price. But...not so much any more -- so again, I don't go often, and when I do, I go for only one or two specialty items.

When we arrived in Szeged I asked my local host if there was some kind of farmer's market, and he said -- oh yes, there's one over by the bus station -- about a ten minute walk from where you live. It's open every day, he said, from early in the morning until early afternoon! Every day? I thought. How is that possible?

Well, it's possible. I guess it's possible because this is where people shop. It really is a farmer's market, too. It's almost all produce, eggs, honey, nuts -- stuff like that. It's huge. And almost all grown locally. (A few venders are probably from stores, since I occasionally see things like avocados and lemons.) But apparently it's open from 4am until 3pm. I'm not likely to go at 4am, but it was already very busy at 8am when I arrived today -- even though it had just rained.

The big difference between the farmer's markets in Seattle and the one here is that I can actually afford to buy the food! Everything is reasonably priced. (Of course, some of that has to do with the significant difference in the cost of living, but still.) I feel like the proverbial kid in the candy store. There's mounds of grapes, vast piles of peppers, cucumbers stacked like lumber, mounds of melons, boxes of garlics and onions, provocative bags of walnuts and beans, mysterious fronds of fresh herbs... I want to buy All The Things!!!

There's also some things there that I don't know what they are, or I know what they are but haven't tried them before, which is always fun. Last week I tried celery root for the first time. This week I bought another one -- I'm making soup tomorrow!

Of course I'm limited by (1) what I can carry on my bike, (2) what we can fit in our small fridge, and (3) what we can reasonably eat before it goes bad. That's my bike there, with the bright blue kid seat on it. (It's also the only one with a bike helmet -- most people don't wear them here.) Many bikes (including mine) have baskets on the front; others have them on sides, or they pile stuff on the rack on the back. I had a backpack as well as my basket, so that helped.

I had around $15 on me this morning, and I spent most of it, but I got quite a haul: a butternut squash, a bunch of beets, two leeks, about a kilo of baby potatoes, about 4 kilos of Mutsu apples, a pile of cucumbers, a celery root, fresh sweet corn, and a watermelon. We bought a watermelon from the same lady last week, and we ate the whole thing in one day. It was an amazing watermelon. I wished that I could carry two watermelons home, but I was already a little unsure I could handle what I had. And I didn't even buy any beans, walnuts, cantaloupe, pears... But here's my gorgeous loot from the day. And there's always tomorrow!...

First days of school

Most years I'm scrambling to get my syllabi done in mid-August, then I'm in faculty meetings and orientations, and I barely get to track my children's first days of school. This year was a little different. Of course we're in Szeged, but it was also different because we all had the first day of school on the same day. This never happens at home. At home Ronan goes in preschool a couple of weeks before my own school begins so that I have a little time to prepare for my classes. Then Tristan usually starts a week after I do. This year was also different because we have all kind of had two "first" days of school.

The official first day of school for all of us was September 3rd. I woke up, showered -- all normal stuff -- and then realised there was a thunderstorm going on. I got the boys up, made pancakes for a special treat, and got us all out of the door by 7:30am. Ronan declined to be photographed for his first day, so here's Tristan wearing his formal school clothes -- it's not a uniform, but I guess everyone wears a white top and black bottoms for special days at school.

Tristan knew which tram to take, and had his pass (Multi Pass!) and ID. I had arranged to take Ronan to his kindergarten by bicycle, and apparently the weather was testing my resolve. (I was told later that in Hungary they say that when the children have to go back to school they all cry, so the weather cries, too -- so I guess the rain was normal and expected!) Luckily, by the time we left the thunder had stopped, and it was just lightly raining. Still. I remembered a lot of things about bike commuting that I hadn't thought about in a long time. (I think the last time I bike commuted was around 11 years ago...) For example: remember to use your flasher lights when it's raining, even during the daytime; also: buses are scary, even when you're in a bike lane.

To my surprise, Ronan wiped his eyes a few times, but didn't cry when I left him at school. (Yay!
That's the first time ever!) I biked back home, quickly changed my clothes, then walked to the immigration office. I'd received a letter from them the previous Friday (right after returning from Balatonlelle, incidentally) that there was some problem with my biometric data (?) and I needed to come in within 5 days to get it taken care of. This wouldn't have been a big deal, except that their office is only open Tuesday through Thursday, and I was scheduled to be in Budapest Tuesday through Friday afternoon for Fulbright training. After some panicking, my wonderful colleagues in Chemistry called the immigration office and arranged for me to come in at 9am on Monday morning.

So I got to the office a few minutes early, the guards let me in, and then I was told that no, it was impossible, I had to come back during their normal office hours. I meekly said that we had called on Friday and talked to someone, and she said it was OK, so they said they'd talk to her. They came back in a bit to say that no, that person hadn't authorized me to come in on Monday, but that they were going to help me out anyway. I said thank you, and waited.

It turned out that there had been some entry errors in the system, and somebody hadn't written my mother's maiden name correctly, so they needed me there to verify what was correct. I mentally agonised that maybe I wasn't spelling my mother's middle name correctly, but I just went for it anyway. Then they took my picture and fingerprints again, and I was all set. Apparently they have already approved my residence permit (yay!), they just needed the updated information so they could issue the card -- so I should have that in 2-3 weeks. (Very big yay!)

So this was all before 9:30am. At that point, I took myself into my office and worked on school stuff. Since I wasn't going to be around the rest of the week because we had Fulbright orientation in Budapest, we arranged not to start classes on Monday. Also, it's apparently normal for the graduate classes here not to start until mid-September, even though the official start of classes is September 3rd. So I had a luxuriously undisturbed three hours or so (first in AGES) of preparing class materials and uploading them to the course software. If you're scratching your head about why that was so pleasant, you probably don't have young children.

Tristan only had a half-day at his school, so I rolled home around 1pm and debriefed with him - he'd had a good day. His head teacher asked me to call, so I did and we made some plans. I picked up Ronan around 3pm, and we finished packing and caught the 4:45pm train to Budapest. So that was our first first day of school. The Fulbright orientation was great. Lots of useful information, and plenty of fun, too. Here we are on a brief stop at Buda castle (you can see Pest behind us.) (Hey look: a photo with all three of us in it for a change!)

Fast forward a week and we were ready for our next first day of school -- this time for real. Tristan had a full day of classes, Ronan had a full day at kindergarten, and I got to teach my first class with my PhD students. All went well for the boys, and I'm so pleased because Tristan really likes some of his classes (and he didn't have any complaints about the others.) He was joyful about his English teacher, enjoyed his art class immensely, and loved the fact that his PE class is really a dance class. I love that he's happy. I also love that art and music are normal parts of the curriculum here. I love that PE isn't confined to team sports. Why wouldn't we want to do dance in a PE class? It means I'm also going to look into dance classes for him to take outside of school, though -- here and at home -- since he actually enjoys it.

My class went well, too. Teaching writing/communication skills is definitely a very different animal than teaching chemistry, though! It's going to be a learning curve for me as well as for my students. But I'm really excited and having fun with it. And I shared two quotes on writing from amazing USA authors they probably hadn't heard of before -- Ta-Nehisi Coates and Terry Tempest Williams. I'm also using Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird) and Joshua Schimel (Writing Science) to give tips on writing and science writing, respectively. I figure that introducing science students to non-standard USA authors is probably part of my mission.

Since I'm not a fast blog writer, it's now Friday, and I can report that we had a few bumps this week, too. My classes all went well, but I think that the Master's students got scared -- we went from a fully enrolled class (the max is 20, since it's a writing course) with one or two waiting to get in, to only having 11 students attend yesterday. I tried to be as nice and reassuring as possible, so I hope they'll tell their friends that I'm not scary, and that they'll be successful in my class. On the other hand, I went from 11 students enrolled in my PhD class on Monday to approximately 17 or 18 who are interested in attending (again, maxed at 20) -- and one or two may appear. We'll see. So I'm trying to be optimistic about enrolment.

Other bumps included my bike breaking down yesterday on the way to take Ronan to kindergarten. Nothing serious -- the chain just kept falling off. So we improvised. Luckily there's a lot of busses, and I already knew which ones go near his kindergarten. Also luckily there's a really great bike repair guy that I already knew, too, so repairs are underway. But that definitely interrupts one's plans for a day. It meant I got to school about an hour later than I'd hoped to get there, which made me a little stressed for my class. But all's well that end's well, right? I taught a good lesson, and got everything done that had to be done.

Practical applications of intermolecular forces

So we just got back from a stay at Balatonlelle, a small town on the south side of Lake Balaton. For those who haven't heard of it, Lake Balaton is locally known as the "inland sea", although it is a freshwater lake, because it's quite large. It's about 77 km long, with an average width of about 10 km. It's also amazingly shallow -- average depth is apparently around 10 feet, if you can believe Wikipedia. Our own experience supports this (but of course 3 days playing on a beach isn't exactly empirical) -- we could go at least a couple hundred yards and still touch the bottom. I guess the shallow shoreline is really common on the south side of the lake.

The first day we arrived fairly late, and I'd been up late the night before, so we didn't do much. That night and into the morning it rained and was fairly cold. It was incredible! I hadn't felt cool in a long time. I actually wanted my sweatshirt on!

But the day after that we got to play at the beach. It had been quite a long time since I'd played at the beach. The first day I don't really remember what we built. I wasn't really very into it. I was still having a hard time remembering how to play on a beach. Does that sound pathetic? Well, it kind of is. But I also think it's really common for adults. We don't get much practice with this playing after we become adults. Even adults who are regularly involved in athletics don't necessarily do unstructured play. Sometimes even when we're parents this happens -- rather than playing with our kids we talk to other adults, or do things on our phones, or read a book, or whatever. No judging here - sometimes it's what you gotta do to stay sane. Anyway, the water was warm, and the kids were having fun. I was feeling paranoid about what to do with my purse, which meant I was having less fun, and carrying my purse everywhere. Even with a shoulder strap, that can cramp one's style. (Purses and things like that are another bane on the life of an adult. But I think I may already have mentioned that in my previous post!)

Anyway, I think the most notable thing we did the first day was rent kayaks for an hour. I was a little skeptical, because Ronan is four, and I wasn't sure he could sit in a boat for that long. To my surprise, Ronan was really into it! We paddled around, looked at birds, and picked up floating plant debris. That's probably when I started to get into it.

So on the second day I was much more ready to engage with the sand. It also helped that Tristan started working with another kid who was already working with a pretty impressive sand construction, and then Ronan and I started working nearby. Eventually the two constructions merged. We made a lake, and then the lake was allowed to overflow and threaten the pyramid (like you do.) But Tristan and his friend were clever, so the pyramid stayed up. We didn't mind.

We arranged to meet this cool kid the next day, too, but we got there a bit earlier than they did, so we started building volcanos. Now it's been a while since I played on a sandy beach, but I don't remember ever being able to build up something made of sand and then have the water stay in it. What I remember is that you dig a lake (see above), and then you keep dumping water in it, and the water stays in the lake for about 2 seconds and then drains out -- so you never really accumulate any significant amount of water, unless you've arranged to have your lake's bottom be below the water table. That was not our experience this time.

I'm not sure I really why I thought it was going to work when I started building a volcano, but that didn't stop me. It sounded like a fun idea in my head, so I just started building it, and it was fun. And then Tristan built a town below the volcano so that we could try to demolish it with the "lava" flow. (So were we doing construction or destruction?) I built the sides up and up and up, and then we filled it with water. It was probably 4 or 5 gallons of water that we put into this volcano. Incredibly, the water stayed in it. Well, we didn't wait for hours, but long enough to fill it, then take some pictures, and then Ronan was stomping the side of it and letting the water flow out. And then we did it again. And again. And again. We had some blow-outs where the sand was too wet. I got better at repairing the hole from the flow, and started to feel like a sand engineer. The insides of the volcano became smoother and more even. I was pretty impressed.

Eventually we built 3 volcanos, and had them all wreaking destruction on the poor town. Check out all that water staying in those volcanos! It was pretty incredible. By the end of the day we had built and filled 5 volcanos, but we were pretty tired by that point -- we'd been at the beach for about 8 hours by then, so we only had them destroy things one time, and we had a blow-out at the last minute, so I don't have photos. But still -- I kind of can't believe I could get that much water to stay in what was effectively piles of sand.

So why did it work? Here's where intermolecular forces come in. This is a slight attraction that some particles have for each other. It's kind of like when you rub pins on a magnet and they sort of stick to each other. For a while. Until the bottom ones start to fall off, or you blow on it a little bit. It turns out that a lot of things (like water and sand) are a little like really wimpy magnets. (Except it's not a magnetic force -- it's an electrical one. But we don't really have a good mental picture for what that would be like, so I'm comparing it to magnets. OK?) The particles are slightly attracted to each other, so they stick to each other a little bit. Not very much, but a little. And if you mess around a bunch, then they stop sticking and fall apart. So this is why you get clumps of sand, and this is why mud sticks to your shoes, and it's also why it takes a lot of energy to boil water.

In this case, I think it mostly had to do with the particle sizes of the sand. The sand at Balatonlelle included some extremely fine particles -- it was kind of dusty. This meant that the water was pretty silty and cloudy on the first day because of the storm the previous day - lots of these tiny particles were still suspended in the water, and hadn't settled out yet. Most of the beaches I've played on don't have that super fine dustiness to the sand. The super fine particles allowed for more interactions between the sand particles and the water (and the sand particles and the water, etc. etc.) -- which meant that the sand held together better, even when I filled its inside with water. I just made sure that there was enough sand piled together that it didn't become saturated with water right away. With the extra fine particles around, that made the water-sand "glue" even more effective than it otherwise would have been. It was a pretty awesome experience. Next time you go play on the beach you can check out what the sand there is like and let me know!

Disencumbering the self

A couple of days ago I had the distinct pleasure of going out for the evening...by myself. For those of you who aren't parents, this probably sounds like a really stupid thing to be excited about. But for the parents here, you probably can hear the swell of celebratory music, and imagine the fireworks. This is more significant than usual because I'm currently single-parenting, and don't yet have an established social network on which to rely for babysitters and such. So the trumpets and fireworks were definitely there.

It was especially fun because I went out to see the Pet Shop Boys perform at the SZIN festival in Szeged -- an annual music festival that's pretty awesome. I'm definitely out of touch with concerts, but I haven't ever been to anything in the states that's quite like it. I was expecting something like Bumbershoot (which admittedly I haven't attended in a long time), and in some respects it was similar, but it had a very different feel -- perhaps in part due to the much more casual attitude about alcohol -- but I think mainly in that the stages were closer together, so you never really get away from the walls of music.

The boys and I had gone there during the day and enjoyed the free stuff at community booths, the early concerts, the spontaneous games, and the karaoke. There was a lot to see, and it was early enough that it wasn't too crowded. As we headed out (around 7:30pm) there was a huge crowd of people coming in.

When I returned it was dark, and starting to cool down a bit from the steamy day. It was still plenty warm enough that I got an ice cream and didn't want anything to do with a sweatshirt. I went and stood around with other fans, slowly worming my way a little closer to the stage. It was interesting, though -- unlike other concerts that I've been to (a long time ago) where I was in general admission and on the floor in front of the concert, nobody touched me. We all stood around politely keeping our personal space intact. Even after the concert started we all expressed our appreciation politely, the only impingement being the ubiquitous cell phones that are held up in one's field of view. (This is another new thing for me since I've been in a general admission crowd, and that tells you how long it's been, doesn't it?)

Anyway, one of the best things about the evening was that I didn't bring anything much with me to the concert. As a parent, my normal load consists of a purse that contains essential items like money, wallet, ID, cell phone, and keys. It also contains hand sanitiser, hand wipes, pocket knife, snacks, bandaids, usually at least one water bottle, and anything that my children have recently handed me to hold. If we're going out for a longer time (like we had done that day) then I probably also have a backpack with more water bottles and more food, perhaps sunscreen, and possibly toys that were considered "essential" by my children when we left, and then handed to me to hold about 10 minutes later as they found something more interesting. If we're going somewhere expected to be visually interesting, then I probably have my camera, too.

So most of the time my encumberance is significant. If I were a character in a game I'd definitely have some penalties to my actions. But that evening when I left the apartment all I took was my ID, a small amount of cash, and my keys. No purse. Not even my water bottle (which I regretted a bit, but not enough to change my mind.) It was liberating. One moves around so differently. There is a freedom there that I don't experience very often as an adult.

Even before I had kids I would still have a purse. In college I didn't go anywhere without a backpack. You know what you can't do with a purse or a backpack? You can't run very effectively. You can't do any physical play. Even if it has a shoulder strap, it bounces around. I think this is part of why our bodies stiffen up as we get older. Sure, we age and our bodies aren't as naturally bouncy as they used to be, but we also stop playing, and I think part of the reason is because we encumber ourselves more. The more our encumbrance, the less likely we are to move spontaneously. And then if we're lugging around a bunch of important things - like wallet, cell phone, and camera - we can't just put that bag down and play because we're afraid it might get stolen.

I guess I have as an aspirational goal to minimise my encumbrance. There's not a lot I can do about some of it right now, because I'd rather prevent sunburn, dehydration, and meltdowns. I do want to capture some of the moments (especially right now, when my children are young and we're having an adventure together), but I guess I'll keep this aspirational goal in mind as they grow older, and not forget to leave things behind when I can.

Back from the black hole

OK, so here and I promised I was going to write regularly...and then I sort of fell off the map. Well, of course I didn't really -- I just got a little busy with four intensive weeks of Hungarian language classes. It was seriously intense. But it was also extremely awesome.

Looking through our door

Yesterday was the last day, and I'm really amazed at how far I've come in four weeks. I'm sad not to be cramming Hungarian for 6+ hours a day, but I'm also happy for a little break. So now I can get you a little more about Szeged, and a little bit more about our lives here.

The view to the left from
our door

As I mentioned in my previous post, we are living in a historic building. It's called the Ungár-Mayer house, and it was designed by local architect Ede Magyar and built in 1910-1911. It's a beautiful example of Art Nouveau style. If you're interested, here's a little more about it (and some of the other Art Nouveau buildings in Szeged and a few other cities.)

Szeged is positioned next to the Tisza river, and it's experienced a lot of floods. The most recent big one was the "great flood" of 1879, when the city was under water for four months. (The slope from the river to the city was going the wrong way, so the water couldn't drain back into the river when the water went down. They fixed that since then.) The city was so damaged that about 95% of the buildings had to be demolished, so this made space for a lot of new construction -- much of it in various Art Nouveau styles. We're lucky that the great flood wasn't in the 1970's, right?

Ronan looking at the Belvarosi bridge
and the Tisza river

Another interesting thing about the reconstruction is that the city was built with a ring road system, very similar to Paris' ring roads. I felt clever this week because I figured out that "körút" (which is one of the types of road here, like "avenue" or "street") means that it's one of the ring roads -- since "körül" means "around." Of course I could be wrong about this - I haven't asked anyone about it yet. I'll let you know!

Karasz street, walking east towards
Szechenyi square

So back to where we live: our apartment building is on a pedestrian street right in the centre of Szeged - this is pretty awesome, and I still feel so incredibly lucky that they found us this apartment. One of the obvious advantages to this location is the proximity to lots of things - the university, plenty of different kinds of shops, parks, squares, historic things, concerts, festivals, ice cream stores (lots of these -- yay! Actually no -- it's gelato, not ice cream), bakeries... It's pretty neat. We're walking distance to pretty much everything, and easy public transportation distance to everything else. I've never lived anywhere like this. The closest I've ever come is the first year we lived in Eugene - we lived walking distance to most things we needed, and biking distance to most other things. But we weren't in the middle of town, and of course Eugene isn't a town like Szeged. Well, in some ways it is -- they're both college towns, and they're both by rivers. But towns and cities in Europe have a very different architecture and feel from towns and cities in the USA. But anyway, I've never lived in a city where I'm right in the centre of what's going on, so I'm enjoying this novel experience.

Kossuth Lajos statue, just down Karasz street from us

Arrivals

It seemed like we just kept arriving to places on our way here. We arrived at the airport. (After a long flight) we arrived in London. (After another long wait) we arrived in Budapest. Finally, after a very speedy drive from Budapest, we arrived in Szeged.

I'm happy to report that the flights were all unremarkable. Driving from Budapest to Szeged was much more interesting. The countryside reminded me a lot of driving through western Oregon - lots of farmland and trees, rolling hills. It was very green. We saw a lot of fields of sunflowers (and corn), and I asked our driver what the word was for sunflower in Hungarian. It's napraforgo. (With an accent mark on the last o - I just can't figure out how to type it in here.) There were a lot of trees that I recognized: piles of locust; quite a few aspen and willow. Orchards of fruit or nut trees.

One interesting difference in our drive from Budapest to Szeged was that the freeway never actually went through any cities. We skirted the sides, of course, but I never really saw anything that looked like "city" surrounding the road. Can you imagine what Seattle would be like if they'd thought ahead and said, "You know -- situating this freeway through the center of town might not be the best idea..."

Our apartment in Szeged is really great! It's right in the middle of the city, so it looks like it'll be walking distance to pretty much everything (or easy access via tram.) The building is old and beautiful, and the ceilings inside are probably 15 feet high. It's been refinished so it has air conditioning and modern accessories, but maintains the feel of the original. I'm super excited about air conditioning. All we have at home is a little window unit upstairs that mostly keeps the bedrooms cool enough so that we can sleep in them, except occasionally when we get a string of really hot days where it doesn't cool off much at night. Of course this probably deserves a #firstworldproblems kind of tag, if I were into hash tagging things. Anyway, our apartment is in this amazing building:

We were pretty exhausted yesterday, so it was a bit of a chore to do much of anything, but we got a short tour from my colleague at the university, including a trip through the chemistry buildings. That's right: not science buildings, but chemistry buildings. First clue that the University of Szeged (SZTE) is just a little bit bigger than Saint Martin's University (SMU)? For context, at SMU we have around 75-80 tenure-track faculty members (or so); at SZTE they have around 2000.

The plan for today is to explore a bit more, and start to learn how to find our way around the city.

Divesting

Well, this is the day! We're heading to the airport in a few hours. I tried to sleep in, but my body decided otherwise. On the other hand, at least I didn't have insomnia last night! It's fairly common for me on the night before a trip. I guess this time my brain realized that I had most things figured out, so it didn't need to spend half the night trying to remember all of the things that I've forgotten to pack.

What have I forgotten to pack? At this point? Who knows. I'm pretty sure we have all the critical stuff: passports, visa documents, medication, credit cards, and glasses. Pretty much everything else we could buy if we have to. (OK, I really do recognize that having the funds to buy what you forgot isn't trivial.) But it's fairly liberating to realize that when we get down to the absolutes, most of us have pretty minimal essential requirements.

There's something very interesting about getting ready to go on a trip - especially when it involves flying. There's a lot of prioritization that has to happen. Well, I guess it doesn't have to, but it's a really good idea. I'm a big proponent of Rick Steves' advice for traveling light, so that's what we'll be doing. I've happily done this for short and medium length trips, but I've never gone anywhere -- by plane -- with the intention to stay for 6 months before. My starting plan was three backpacks (one each) and two small rolling bags. Also my purse, but I don't really count that. In addition to our clothes and shoes, I need to bring my laptop, a few books (paperback) (and no, hard copies aren't negotiable), some essential medicines, and...probably some things for the kids to entertain themselves. It's kind of challenging. I expanded the original plan to include a messenger bag for the computer, and another small bag for snacks. So that's 8 receptacles including my purse.

I'll be honest: I was in panic mode yesterday when I had nearly filled up both rolling bags and hadn't packed any of Tristan's stuff yet. But I had forgotten how large my backpack is, and so I'm feeling pretty OK now. There's still a few more things to pack, but they're mostly the kinds of things that you can't really pack until the last minute -- chargers and toothbrushes and stuff like that.

The other thing that's interesting about packing is what you don't bring along. All those little cards for grocery stores in my wallet? Nope -- definitely don't need them. U.S. cash? Not so much. Pocket knife? Move it from my purse into a checked bag. (Darn it. I still think that's silly.) Keys? Not this time. There is a lot of personal paraphernalia that is location-specific. I think I've divested of those things now, so I'd better stop while I'm ahead.

Whew. This is going to be a big day. Wish us luck!

Precious things

The last time I went away from home for a significant amount of time, it was in 2013, and we spent six weeks in France, Spain, and Wales (with a very short stop in London right at the end.) We left in mid-May and returned in late June, and I remember being surprised at how many things had changed - mainly in my yard - since I had been gone. I was also surprised at how many things were the same, but I hadn't really remembered them - like traffic. Not that there isn't traffic in all the places we visited - there certainly was. But I had mainly been a pedestrian, not a driver, so I didn't interact with them the same way.

Now I look around my yard and think of how everything is in full bloom right now, and how it'll be winter when I get back. This is the first year in a while that I have been starting to feel like my yard is in pretty good shape. The peas and raspberries are ripe, the kale is tall, and the tomatoes and cucumbers are doing their best under my somewhat shady conditions. And by "shady" I just mean that I have a lot of big trees. Really.

This time of year one of our favorites things is to picnic. My husband and I have always picnicked. When we were in college sometimes we would go out even on cold and somewhat rainy days and have "gothic picnics" at Whatcom falls park. Nowadays although we love to picnic at parks, we often just picnic in our own backyard. Our backyard is very private, and has really lovely shade. Since we live near the top of a hill there's almost always a bit of a breeze to help cool us down if it's a warmer day. It's pretty idyllic. So while I'm really excited about getting to go to Hungary, I'm sad that my husband won't be able to come with us for the whole time.

Since I've been thinking about all these things that we will miss, I've been trying to take extra time to do more of them before we go: more picnics, more playing in the yard, more spending time with family and friends. One part of my brain frets because it says I "should" be spending time fixing the faucet, or finishing cleaning out the basement, or pulling the rest of the weeds behind the cottage. The other part revels in the relationships that I'm building and maintaining by spending time with people instead. So I'm telling that other part of my brain to chill out. I'll get done the things that really need to get done before we go, and I'll have acquired the few things that we need to acquire before we go. The bags will be packed in due time. Those things can wait a little longer. Today is here for soaking up a little more time with the people that I'll be missing soon.

Reawakening

I haven't used this blog in a long time.

The adventurers
South Beach, WA (8/2017)

I started it 8 years ago because I wanted to talk about food -- cooking, growing food crops -- stuff like that. I wrote a handful of posts over the next two years, but...I don't know that I had much of a direction beyond that, so it didn't go very far. Not at all surprising, right? I still want to talk about food, but I have a lot more ideas now, and I'm also a lot more comfortable with myself -- especially with thinking of myself as someone who writes.

See what I did there? I didn't call myself a writer; I just said that I was someone who writes. At some point in the future maybe I'll feel comfortable calling myself a writer. For now, I don't think I have that level of confidence in myself to use that label. But I can be someone who writes. 

I'm about to go on a pretty big adventure. If you're already my friend then you know that I'll be heading out to Hungary in two weeks for a Fulbright in Szeged. I'm starting with a four week intensive language program in Hungarian (and before you ask, I've been studying Hungarian on my own for the last year+. It's a pretty cool language, all things considered. Would I say that about every language I've studied? Yes, probably. Languages are exciting. If you don't know another one besides for English then you should consider trying to learn one. I won't sugarcoat it: it's tremendously hard mental work, but it's super cool to realize that your brain can do this kind of thing. And despite what you might have been told, you're never to old to learn another language. Or another new thing. Quite the opposite, in fact: there's a lot of research that shows that doing mentally challenging tasks helps prevent things like Alzheimer's. So get right to it!)

Now that I've convinced you to go to your library and check out some language CDs, or use their Mango subscription, or try the Duolingo app...I'll get back to my original point: the current adventure.

I'm excited about going to Hungary not only because it's a new country, a new language, a Fulbright, and it'll be my first experience living abroad (I don't count the couple of overseas holidays I've taken. I won't be there exclusively as a tourist, so it's going to be a significantly different vibe.) I'm also excited because I won't be relying on a car to get me around. We'll be living within walking distance of the University of Szeged, where I'll be teaching for fall semester. I'm expecting to get bicycles, and otherwise rely on public transportation or trains to get us where we want to be. I haven't worked with this kind of transportation model since college, so it's going to be fun remembering how this works, and sharing the experience with my children. I also expect that it's going to be amazing for my body.

Am I nervous about it? Of course! Anything new is also a little scary. But I've received nothing but amazing support and helpfulness from my wonderful hosts at the university, the Hungarian Fulbright commission, and from the others in the community that I've interacted with, so I am confident that if we need something there will be people to help us out. That helps to offset any nervousness I'm feeling with a warm glow of security.

Anyway, if you're interested in hearing what's going on with these adventures, then here's a good place for me to share. Welcome!