Easy and Delicious Pad Thai

...not a myth. I made it, which vouches for the easy part! This recipe is a mix of bits and pieces from various online versions, but it was good, so I wanted to share. And put in on here for when I lose the sheet of paper I wrote it down on!

Ingredients

- 12oz rice noodles
- 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, chopped
- enough oil to fry above chicken (~1/4cup)
- 4 eggs

- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 green onion, sliced

Sauce
-3T seasoned rice vinegar
-6T fish sauce
-5T sugar
-crushed red pepper to taste
 -1.5t peanut butter
-a bit of lime juice (yes, precisely that much)

Optional
-bean sprouts
-salad shrimp

-1/4 c chopped peanuts

Prep
1. Prepare the noodles (if they're raw, cook them, but if they're already cooked, wait)
2. Mix up the sauce ingredients
3. Heat sesame oil on high heat in a wok
4. Fry the garlic and green onion
5. Add chicken, cook.
6. Add eggs and stir in 1-2 minutes (it looks like way too much egg, it's not, don't worry)
7. Add the things that need heating--noodles, bean sprouts, shrimp...
8. Add sauce.

Plate, garnish with chopped peanuts, lime wedges, whatever you like/remember from restaurants. EAT.

A Master's In Music

As much as I liked music before my master's, I became infinitely more obsessed with it during the program. My tastes were changing before I left, and I had some people in my class that have great taste in the kind of music I was gravitating towards, which was awesome. Now that the program is over I realize that certain songs will always remind me of specific semesters--the location, the people I met, the things I was doing. I love it! Here are some of my favorites from each semester:

1st Semester, Groningen (The Netherlands): All kinds of adjusting and rethinking. "Islands" by The xx (whose AMAZING concert I just saw in Asheville, NC).

2nd semester, Montpellier (France): I think it was this one, although I'm honestly not sure! Another weird semester. Not my best musical time.

3rd semester, also in Montpellier: Weird and awesome, sort of carefree and dreamy in a weird way."Hard 2 Keep" by R E A L M A G I C and "Twice (16 Bit remix)" by Little Dragon.

4th semester, Uppsala (Sweden): Work hard and play hard. The sun didn't go down much, and we didn't sleep when it did.

Grey Hairs

I have so many... I started pulling them out, but my Greek friend told me her grandmother says two grow back to replace each one. I felt like I should believe Greek grandmother wisdom, so tried to leave them alone. I mentioned this to my sister and she told me that when you pull one out "six come to the funeral." Glad I stopped when I did! It's alright though--I'll be a cool young grey-haired person. I just wish they'd start coming in somewhere less obvious than my bangs, come on! Particularly that curly one that sticks out the front of my stick-straight hair like a unicorn horn :)

Baking scones to awesome music...

...makes for an excellent Saturday morning(ish). The plan for Terrapin (a brewery) with the family later makes the evening look pretty good too!

Awesome Music: http://8tracks.com/annickoost/pity-party-cancelled-due-to-outrageous-dancing

Figuring out my life update

I was pretty bummed when  my job fell through. Come on--I was supposed to be going to Reunion Island (it's ok to have never heard of it, no one has. It's off the coast of Madagascar). Tropical yet French, with awesome curry, beaches, and mountains. Now, post-moping, I'm ok with it: The island has a "restless" volcano (you can scroll down a bit to see that it erupts at least once most years) and angry sharks and is on the rear end of the universe (it doesn't show up on world maps).

I was also only going to be there for 18 months and was then going to have to revisit the "what do I do with my life" question, my all-time favorite. The idea was to turn the position into a PhD, but you never know if that kind of thing will work out (and given how me having any involvement in the project went, I was right to be skeptical!). So this way I got started earlier sorting out my future.  After thinking about the options and what I want to do with myself, I came to a shocking realization---for the first time ever, I actually want to get a PhD. I never thought I'd feel like that--I thought I'd eventually end up getting one as a logical step in my career. But I have finally found that part of science that keeps me up late happily reading papers. Spatial epidemiology (aka, among other things, landscape epidemiology, ecoepidemiology, and medical/health geography) is the study of the spatial patterns of diseases, and I love it! The methods themselves are fun--I get to make maps and look at satellite images and huge tables of variables--and the questions I can ask with them are awesome. I like it enough to not even be bothered that I've become a statistician of sorts, which I never thought would happen and amuses the people around me to no end.

So now here I am, applying to school again. I do that a lot. I would like to get back over to Europe, and so am looking there. There are great people for me in the UK, where unfortunately funding for non-UK/EU citizens is only slightly more common than unicorns. Maybe it's a good thing--I like the sun and don't want to take a three-year break from it... Maybe I'll have more luck on the continent. I'm also looking in the US to give myself more options (and please my mother), even though I don't really want to stay here. I have found one program I'm excited about against my will though. We'll see! As usual, onward!

Meilleurs Voeux for 2013!

It's the time of year to bring out a tradition I discovered and loved while in Europe. French friends introduced me to it, but a German one recently did the same thing, so I'm not sure how widespread it is. The tradition is really wishing someone a happy new year, as in sending a personalized message with specific wishes for them for their upcoming year.  I remembered too late to get cards out to you guys this year, so I'm going to violate the whole idea by posting general wishes for all of you, but it's still better than just wishing you a Happy New Year (although that is certainly part of the package)! You guys are all doing such different things it's hard to generalize, but no matter what you're up to, I wish all of you a happy 2013 full of awesome adventures of whatever suits you best, from travel to work/school to home life!

Things as of now

This keeps getting more and more behind. And now that I'm home I'm not even sure I need a travel blog anymore! I'll keep trying and see if I can get this whole blogging thing right eventually. For the moment, a list of the things I've done since July, since I keep telling various people different combinations of events.

First, I finished my masters! After all the traveling this summer, I went back and actually finished everything while still managing to see friends and enjoy the last of my time in Sweden. I ended up with a project and result I was very excited about.

Our graduation was to be in Montpellier, so next it was off to France. But the cheapest place to fly to from Sweden was Nice. How horrible! After the crazy couple of months I'd had, two days on a beach with a good friend did wonders! And French food--there are almost no words for what French food tastes like after living in Sweden... We ate only cheese, fruit, bread, meat, and wine while we were there. I also realized how very much I had missed France while gone, sort of surprising myself. It was nice though to arrive and feel at home immediately. After two days of rest in Nice, Montpellier was a fun whirlwind of a week with entirely too little sleep and too much sweat. After a Swedish summer that topped out around 20C/68F, heading into a humid Montpellier late August at 35C/95F almost killed me. I'm not even exaggerating much. But it was fun to see everyone, and I graduated! Sorta. They forgot to print my certificate (ahh, the excellent organization of this program continues to amaze me), but close enough. After graduation, we were to head to Serbia, but again unfortunately, we had to fly from Paris. So we took a couple of days with a friend there and had more fun. I had been to Paris in January alone, and I must say being there in August with friends made a HUGE difference. Paris in January is unbelievably dreary and grey, and as I keep mentioning, I am one solar-powered woman.

In Serbia, I stayed with my friend and her family. Even after recuperating in France for a while, we were still dead, so a lot of the time in Serbia was spent sleeping an unholy amount, waking up to eat before flopping on the couch for crappy reality TV, getting up only to go back to the table or bed. It was sluggish. But we also had a lot of fun wandering around her town of Novi Sad and venturing into the countryside and Belgrade.

Next was Greece! We got an awesome deal on a 10 day trip to Parga on the northwest coast and jumped at it. You can probably guess, but there was more sluggishness during this trip. It was awesome. The town was nice--not resorty at all but a fishing village built on a hillside that had become a tourist place, so it was low-key with normal buildings in a beautiful setting.We had a choice of four beaches in or near town, each of which bordered the lovely warm and restorative Mediterranean.

After Greece and a few more days in Serbia I headed to Budapest. I had wanted to see both Budapest and Prague since before I even went to Europe, and I finally had the time and was in the right location. Budapest was a cheap 7 hour train ride from Novi Sad, so off I went. It was awesome. A nice mix of monumental and normal feeling, a lot of fun to wander around aimlessly, and the goulash is awesome.

As much as I liked Budapest, I loved Prague. It immediately grabbed me. The buildings are fun, all painted and with interesting details, and the setting is amazing. The castle is on a hill across the river, as is a large park, both of which are great to wander around. Prague is also really green, full of parks and gardens and islands in the river, which I liked. I realized that even in cities I am always drawn to the parks. Noted for future travel planning! But seriously, Prague. Go.

After Prague it was off to Munich to meet the parents for Oktoberfest. Pretty cool huh? I have done Oktoberfest before, but it was fun again.

Then I headed with the parents to Austria for a few days. We did Salzburg, St. Polten (a small town where they visit at the University), and Vienna. All very nice. Salzburg was much smaller than I expected, but very nice. It has a fortress on a huge rock above the city which gives an amazing view of the city and surrounding valley and is a nice place to have a beer! Vienna is huge. All the buildings you're supposed to see are monumentally enormous, it's kind of shocking. But again, a nice city. I also loved driving through the countryside, stopping at some of the small lakes scattered in the mountains and driving along a wine valley on the Danube.

Phew. That was an amazing run of travels, I am fully aware. It was so much fun. I saw so much, both things I never expected and things I had wanted to for a long time. It was a perfect way to cap off my  two years of an international master program, during which I made a real effort to travel a lot. 

Eventually though, I had to get back to real life and so went to Montpellier to fill out paperwork for a job I was supposed to have on Reunion Island. It's a beautiful tropical island beside Madagascar, where I was going to work on a project I was really excited about (so certainly not a bad real life, but work nonetheless). While in Montpellier it became obvious that the job would take a while to start, so I decided to head back to the US to wait. So now I'm here at home, getting a chance to see a lot of you lovely people and work on the many things I wanted to finish before starting the job. Unfortunately the job fell through last week. It was a complicated project with many partners and lots of politics, and I got caught in the crossfire. So now the plan is--no big deal--figure out what I want to do with my life and plan accordingly.  Onward!