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!