Hello everyone,
It's been a Long time that I haven't written. I am sorry, and will once again try and keep up to date with my travels and adventures. It has been one month and more already that I have been living in Leiden - time has passed so quickly! I spent the first week with my typical February flu, because I got my flu shot too late to prevent the costs of traveling by airplane so many times.
In the last week of january I visited Geneva and finally went to see Bern! It was gorgeous, and really one of the most beautiful and historic cities in the world! The symbol of Bern is the bear. In the center of town, there's a pit with two or three bears looking sad and probably feeling trapped. They had a pretty large grounds though...I guess cause they're the city mascot!
We were lucky to have free accomodation thanks to a great friend - who's even more of a world traveler than I will ever hope to be! He ironically went on business to NYC when I went to Bern. This was quite disappointing as I would have loved to be his own personal NY guide. That goes for the rest of you who may visit NYC at any time - don't fail to tell me!!
At the end of January, I flew back to NY for an interview - that turned out no positive results, unfortunately. This was one of my many major attempts to get to Russia..but alas, they didn't take me for the fellowship, and once again travels and work in Russia will have to wait. Does anyone see the absurdity in my 10 years of Russian study, but with no actual travel to the country?? I have made it to Tajikistan, but still not to Saint Petersburg? Perhaps, god willing, one day, when I'm least expecting it...
After 5 days in NY, I made my way back to leiden and without any sleep, I attended a four hour lecture on criminalistics/aka forensic science. This class is awesome, but I am sure that four hours of dna analysis after not sleeping really provoked the flu I would have until mid-february. Just yesterday, we took a full-day tour of the Netherlands Forensics Institute, where we learned mostly about document and paper analysis, but also had a great lecture by the forensic pathology expert.
