Reflections on Summer 2016

Wow, it has been a crazy but incredible three months! I've flown on 13 different planes (adding up to over 60 hours of airtime!) and visited three countries on two different continents. I've eaten sarmale in Bucharest (highly recommended, by the way) and kangaroo steak in Australia; seen wallabies, platypus, a kookaburra, wombats, koalas, crocodiles, parrots, sharks, sea turtles, and tons of kangaroos; visited the largest reef in the world as well as one of the oldest living rainforests; even been to an opera at the Sydney Opera House! All of this is on top of my research experience, and meeting a wonderful group of people... I have been truly fortunate to have had this experience, and I don't want to forget one second of it.

I'm back in Memphis now of course, unpacking and getting ready to settle into classes, but I just had to take a minute to remind myself of everything I've done in the past few months. I'm glad to be back, but I'll miss everything there for sure! (Well, maybe everything except the big scary kangaroos...)

Here's my research group at Stromlo, since I finally got a group photo:

From left to right: Ayan, Henry, Josh, yours truly, Adam, Lisa, Brent, Melanie, Elisabete, Julie, Tiantian, Fuyan, Sonya, a postdoc who'd just gotten there so I didn't know her name :(, and Anshu. All together, we represent somewhere around ten different countries!