Colin Donihue

In just a few hours I’ll be aboard a plane heading to Europe and I feel like I’m only now getting my head around this field season. This semester has been a blur of manuscript writing, committee meeting stressing, research planning, and dissertation drafting. To add to the mix, I’m moving to Boston next year (more on that before too long) so I’ve been apartment hunting, sublettor finding, and organizing the odds and ends that accrue after four years of living in the same apartment (a first since I was back home with my parents in high school!) I think this craziness is best summed by the last night realization that despite talking to one or both of my folks over some medium almost every day this last week, I’d neglected to mention I was leaving today – they thought the flight wasn’t for another week.

Well, luckily this year the Greece packing has been much lighter. Remember last season with all the gear and a couple of kayaks?!

Packing has been easier this trip:

Good thing too because this time I’m taking an extended layover in Paris to meet with Anthony, polish up a paper, and make some final plans for the summer. (He’s the bite force (really lizard functional ecology in general) expert that I’ve mentioned a few times, but I’m going to link his name to the “how to put a lizard to sleep video” because that’s funnier).

So, for those of you following along, here’s my itinerary:

4-26: Red-eye to Paris CDG. I’ll be staying in the Jardin des Plantes.

4-27 thru 4:30: Working in Paris at the Natural History Museum

4-30: To Athens for an overnight

5-1: to Naxos!

I’ll get working on a research plan update during the flight and will fill you in when I get back to internet. I’m looking forward to sharing this summer’s field adventures with you! It’s moments like this, mapping out “post-plane stay-awake walks” and remembering my favorite lizard catching sites, that all that semester-long stress melts away and I feel so extremely fortunate to be doing exactly what I’m doing right now!

as they say, jusqu’à Paris!