Transit; Finding Firm Ground; Fresh Fruit

Those first few days of scenery blurring by, new faces, new names, new bed. Trying to piece together a routine that involves sleep and some reasonable degree of food out of what you packed in your suitcase (hint: it's never enough, because clothes and computer won't help make dinner).

I spent two days wandering lost around the nearest supermarchet looking for food, and managed at least to get a few basics. But it wasn't till I found the fresh produce marchet in a cobbled downtown courtyard that I realized: after living for a year on the fresh delicious fruits and veggies of Santa Barbara's farmers markets, I've forgotten how to shop for food anywhere else.

The produce is cheap; certainly cheaper than Santa Barbara (though let's be honest, that's hardly a challenge). A few euros for a full bag of fresh fruit, bread, eggs, cheese. And the familiarity of it, the universality of stalls heaped high with produce, is intoxicatingly easy. I feel at home.

A handful of plums, a wedge of cheese, a still-warm baguette. Nothing else needed.

The program takes off without pause for breath; I arrived Thursday, and on Friday was sitting a French exam. I tested B1, which makes me a threshold independent user according the European Framework of Reference for Languages.

I have no doubt that this semester will see me challenge that. I'm excited. I can't stop thinking in the constant stream of (threshold independent) French that I need to have constantly in mind if I want to be able to react to sudden new situations. It accompanies me to bed at night, wakes me up in the morning - the conjugations, the silent plurals, the genders, the buzz of new vocabulary.

C'est très fatigant.

The dorm is comfortable. A tiny little room, as wide as I am tall and twice as long, complete with desk, bed, closet and a crazy spacepod bathroom-shower-sink that redefines 'space-efficient'. Across the lawn from my classes, and on top of two bus stops that go direct to the city center (straight to that Saturday market!), it is cozy and it is connected.

And it is home! For the next six months, that is - until the next adventure.

The Grad School Plan. Or something to that effect.

In one month (!!!) I will step on a plane, order up a delicious-at-altitude tomato juice, and settle into about 3 feature-length films' worth of flight haze before re-emerging into the welcoming arms of the academic world.

That is to say: I am starting my Masters in Applied Ecology at the University of Poitiers, France, in one month. ONE. MONTH. And I will be focusing on river ecosystems; bio-indicators; and how to educate communities on monitoring the quality of their local water sources.

The program is through Erasmus Mundus, an EU-based collaboration between European universities that facilitates study between multiple campuses. I will be studying at the University of Poitiers for one semester, and at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) for three semesters more. That’s the current plan. But there’s a lot of mobility, and a lot of room for switching it up. So I might just end up on another of the affiliated campuses for some of that time, very possibly the Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany. WHO KNOWS.

One thing is for sure: a month in there will be spent at the University of Quito, Ecuador, with field time in the Galapagos. So, you know. There’s that.

This program brings with it the normal academic challenges of essay-writing and deadlines and presentations, but it also presents linguistic challenges, and cultural ones; and I am fully aware that I will be diving in at the deep end. But I feel like that is exactly what is important right now. Considering how wide-spread current environmental challenges are, we need to be able to think globally and act locally; and intercultural fluency will be key.

So, stay tuned. Science, procrastination, homework, adventures, bike rides, and international river ecology to follow.

Indigenous communities world wide connecting through the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, and the conviction that through the collection of data, communities can assert their rights for clean and healthy rivers.