Notes from the Field

Welcome to my new blog!

I’m super excited to have this up and running, with many thanks and cyber hugs to Jose for being so fantastic, and also incredibly technologically inclined. Over the next few days I’ll be posting the posts I’ve written since arriving in Nepal, but as it is not my top priority, you may need to bear with me while I bring things up to speed.

So, why a blog?

I’ve actually blogged before(!) but kept it a secret from all but a handful of people, as I was mostly interested in exploring the medium, and in the level of interaction I would experience from anonymous users. That blog has long laid quiet, though, and an experience as fantastic as this – the opportunity to do my own field research, by my design, in a country as beautiful, unique, and multifaceted as Nepal, seemed like too rich an experience to keep all to myself, or to post on an “old” blog. So here’s the new one.

I’m hoping that this blog can become an electronic watering hole, of sorts, for my friends, family, loved ones, peers, former colleagues, and anyone else interested in weekly updates from the field, and as such, invite you to share it as you see fit – whether because I make you laugh out loud at work (and perhaps selfishly, I hope I do), because you recognize something you understand or can relate to in a story or experience I share, or even just because you care about me and want to share my little adventure here with those around you, just as I seek to share it with each of you. I’ve hid the blog from the search engines, for the moment, so the only way its readership will grow, is through each of you – if you want to share it. Whether you do or you don’t, though, that’s okay with me.

I would however encourage you to comment – that’s really the point (low-tech folks – there’s a “comment box” below each post). I look forward to hearing your thoughts on my ideas about the world, on the things I struggle with, and even at the times you watch me fail (especially if you have ideas that might help!) I have wanted to do something like this for such a long time – this feels like a really big step. So thanks for taking the time to read, and I can’t wait to start to get started, and share this new adventure with each of you.

Of note before we start:

* Adventure is an important theme in my family, and one which is certain to carry forward for generations, if not several dozens of blogposts. As each of the three kids in my immediate family can and have attested, there are a few little quirks of my father’s that have not only endured in his children but that have rippled outward and infected the communities around us, be they our boyfriends and girlfriends, childhood friends, friends’ families, school contacts, colleagues, etc. That is to say, when we were kids, my dad had a tendency to be pretty stubborn about not asking for directions when he gets lost. He would rather drive (far!) in the sort-of-right direction, than stop at any of the myriad gas stations that litter northeastern highways and byways, and ask where he is. When we were kids we thought this was annoying. High-pitched, whiny-kid-in-the-backseat-who-has-to-pee, annoying. When we’d mope and complain that my father was taking us off in the wrong direction, or that we just wanted to get there, already, my father would pull a face, stick an arm up into the air (sometimes out the car window) as if we were the cavalry charging off into battle, and in his deepest, most dramatic voice, call out (to no one and everyone), “AD-VEN-TURE!!” And we kids in the back would moan and roll our eyes, dragged around by our da-a-a-a-ad, but it seems that secretly, we all loved it.

Because it was. Always. An adventure.

And so I hope it will be this summer, although I know that contemporary Nepal is not an adventure in the Indiana Jones sense of the word, but perhaps in the way my father meant it. An opportunity to grow, to see, to learn and bear witness. To go down a path (in his case, a highway, but work with me here) where you’re not quite sure what you’ll find at its end, but you know you’re interested enough in finding out what lies in wait to take the first few steps in that direction. Most of the time, in my experience, when I do these kinds of things, and strike off on my own…it tends to change my life. Not overtly, perhaps, but in the little ways I experience and interact with the culture I am lucky enough to visit, with my own culture, and with the way I value and relate to my loved ones, and country. They are always worth doing. So I keep doing them.

*I am not succinct. Many of you can vouch for this. Despite hours spent pining for succinctness, its on a long list of not-in-this-lifetime character attributes that I aspire to and fail at with regularity. That’s why I think a blog format is ideal – join me, leave me, and rejoin me anywhere in this experience as you see fit and have time for – no hard feelings if you are too busy to read. Unless you’re my parents – in which case you better find the whole darn thing absolutely fascinating. I will work to keep blog posts to four paragraphs, and if I have had enough sleep, I will almost always fail in this attempt. I will also endeavor to write at least three posts per week in the beginning. I know from the get-go there will be more, and would speculate that in the middle there may be less. But we’ll get there.

*I know about myself that I am going to write across disciplines and areas of interest. I thought about doing a blog about the research process, a blog about Nepal, a blog about graduate school, a blog about being a single female traveler and scientist, or an aspiring writer just trying to get words down. But I am not any single one of these things, and this blog is my first, so I decided to be liberal with the subject matter. I will sort posts by tag, which will hopefully save readers time if I go on a long tangent about access to the outcomes of federally funded scientific research, or about stupid things people say to women who are in science. Bear with me.

*Finally, I believe strongly that we don’t do or achieve anything in life alone. I don’t mean to say that going to Nepal for my summer research is an achievement (although covering the cost of a plane ticket kind of was!), but I do know I could never have done any of the things I’ve accomplished anywhere in my life without the support of friends and family who maybe wouldn’t do what I do, or do it the way I do it, but who always are positive, encouraging, and enabling. So thanks to the friends and family who just in the last few weeks have repeatedly opened up their afternoons to ever-delayed train station departures, who have stuffed and crammed my things into bags when they wouldn’t fit (and in some cases, duct taped them on!), who raced for trains we missed and then sat on the platform getting me high on caffeine and letting me expound on life for awhile, who sent the write-in-the-rain notebooks they didn’t want me to overlook, who tended me with cold washcloths and care when I fell sick upon landing in Nepal, and who have lent me technology, resources, affection and their attention as I prepared for yet another adventure. You make my life so full and joyful that it overwhelms me, and remind me of all the reasons I have to return home.

With Love.