I've been blogging a lot recently about my travels, so some of you might be curious to know how I'm doing when I'm not traveling. Hence this short update.
Personal Life
My husband came up with a mantra that he repeats several times a day: "Life is good, when wife is good." This goes in both directions: "Life is awesome, when husband is awesome" (awesome = caring, loving, supportive and understanding). As we are nearing the one-year anniversary, we are happy to report that the marriage is treating us extremely well so far. And we are looking forward to 50+ more years together.
Work
Work is going well, but - as always - is super-busy, and a bit stressful because of that. I'm working long days, but it seems to me that for the amount of time and effort invested there is very little tangible outcome. I think I would be much more happy if at the end of my working day I had a feeling of accomplishing something, or at least of finishing something. Therefore, I'm seriously considering changing a career path. I've not made up my mind yet on what else I could be doing, but I'm exploring different options.
For example, in January I took a course on being an effective teacher, which was very interesting. The American style of teaching is very different from the Polish one, so in many ways it was an eye-opening experience. I will try to write a separate post summarizing the differences some time soon.
I also hope to have a chance to teach a course at one of the colleges in San Francisco next semester, as that would help me decide if a teaching career is something I should consider. I love science and I love explaining it to others, so I think that might be something I would enjoy.
Other careers I'm considering are science writing and/or communication of science to the public. During last three months I gave six talks. Each of them was aimed at different audience (ranging from a general public to specialists in my field) and, therefore, was covering slightly different subject. I had fun both preparing for and giving those talks, and I know that I did a very good job with each single one of them. After each of them I received lots of positive feedback from my audience, which makes me think that indeed I would be good at communicating science to others. However, finding a such job is definitely not easy...
Travel
4 continents in 2 months. What a crazy travel year it is! We just came back from Peru and we are already traveling again. Right now we are in Poland, and in a few days we are flying to India. And we might be going to Australia in the second part of the year, as I'm thinking about applying for jobs there...
Hobby
As some of you know, after science, photography is my biggest hobby. I decided to become more serious about it, and invest both more money and time into taking it to the "next level". Just a few days ago I got myself a brand new super-fancy camera and four top-notch lenses, and I'm super-excited about testing them over the next few weeks.
I'm also committed to spending a few hours every week working on a big photographic project of my own, which keeps me busy all the time that I'm not at work. I'm very excited about it, and I hope you will too when I'll present you with its results some time soon.
Blog
I made a promise here that after the series of posts about the 2009 trip to India, I will start publishing posts about our trip to Peru. However, as we are approaching one-year anniversary of our awesome Indian wedding, I thought it would be more fitting to first blog about it and the wedding preparations.
Therefore, starting in March, you can expect here post about our crazy Indian Wedding. They will be appearing here until our first year anniversary on May 9th (again one post every two days).
Between now and March I will blog about the hikes we did and events we attended since we came back from Peru. After 9th of May I will have a few blog posts about 2011 trip to Poland and India, and only in June I will start blogging about Peru.