Professor just got a facial and a massage

All better.

Professor needs some coffee

I'm preparing the syllabus, labs, powerpoints, and lecture notes for the class I'm teaching this summer (Introduction to Biological Anthropology). Some of the topics we're covering are: What is Science; Evolution v. Creationism; History of Evolutionary Thought; Darwin and Natural Selection; Mendelian Genetics; Basic Cell Biology, DNA and Genetics; How new species are formed; How species are classified and how relatedness is determined; Human Biological Variation and the concept of 'race'. This is all within the FIRST WEEK of class.

Not to sound like too much of a snob, but...

after spending a month in Europe, let me say that most American food is total crap.

Spring is back and so am I!

I got back to DC a few days ago on a beautiful spring day. The city is really lovely right now and the views out my apartment windows are gorgeous with the blooming flowers and leaves outside. Open windows, walking barefoot, tank-tops...yay, spring is here!! Although - I was in the sun for a few hours yesterday and got a severe sunburn on ONE shoulder. Not super considering that in a few weeks I will be a bridesmaid in Lauren's wedding and wearing a strapless dress.

Writing

'Écrire, c'est ranger la vrac de la vie.'

-Xavier, Les Poupées Russes

Leaving Berlin

I had a great weekend - after the excitement of finding the additional fossils on Friday afternoon, Fire and I went to a vegetarian restaurant and consumed copious amounts of food, wine, and Irish coffee while catching up on all the English we had not been speaking for the past few weeks. We were literally at the restaurant from 7pm to 1am. We went out for brunch the next morning, and I spent the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday exploring more of the city, taking a yoga class, and having intense moments of reflection and meditation and new understanding.

I am so thankful and utterly grateful to have been in Berlin the past month to heal, reflect, and find myself again. I fell in love with the city and its energy helped me re-focus while having fun and being light-hearted and enjoying myself. I loved every single minute I spent here, and had so many wonderful moments – seeing Thomas again, spending time with him and having him show me around the city (and cook me a great vegetarian meal last weekend), meeting Fire and connecting with her and having fun and eating great meals together (I am so grateful for my ability to form deep friendships with people I meet anywhere in the world), finding the yoga studio and learning and smiling and exploring and meeting friendly and welcoming people, walking and wandering around the city, finding surprises at every twist and turn, having a great place to work in the museum, an interesting fossil collection, and discovering additional material that will allow me to return in a few months.

True Story

In the field you usually find the most interesting fossils and artifacts on the last day of the season. Today, which was supposed to be my last day at the museum, the curator showed me an entire cabinet in a dark, dusty corner of the collections room that contains fossils from my site --including primates, carnivores, giraffes, suids, bovids, and other taxa essential for my study. This means that I just HAVE to return to Berlin in the fall to analyze this additional material!

Breathing à deux

I’ve been going to a fantastic yoga studio that I pass on my way home from the museum. The instructors are very assertive with their assists – I’ve had hands on parts of my body that haven’t been touched since my ex-boyfriend and I were together. In class yesterday the instructor had his chest pressed against my back for several minutes while we were in a stretching pose. We were breathing deeply and our breath was perfectly in sync. Feeling this made me miss this sort of touch – I think it’s mostly unique to a romantic relationship, when you’re lounging around on the couch or falling asleep together. I don’t know if I’ve ever consciously thought about how this physical connection is so beautiful and intimate, and bonds two people together.

On related note, the past few weeks have been such a good time for me. I feel more grounded and present than I have in a long time, maybe ever. I've been meditating a lot and having some intense experiences - also some really vivid dreams - and I think it's because my emotional senses are so heightened that I've been able to tap into some deep parts of myself. At first this was really cathartic but also wrapped around the pain of losing my relationship, but now (thankfully) the experiences are more centered around the gratefulness and joy I feel for my life and my present circumstances – who I am, lessons I have learned along the way, where my life is headed and who I am becoming.

Tea Party

Last night my friend Fire and I went to a Russian tea house for dinner. The drinks and food were great and the company was even better. It's funny to run into people I know when I'm at a museum abroad, but it's quite common considering how small our paleoanthro-world is.

To start out - a tea cocktail, of course.

Borscht....yummm.

And finally, some proper tea - Orange Pekoe

Pictures

I realized I haven't posted any pictures yet so I wanted to share some images of the life I've been leading in Berlin.

My cozy bedroom:

The view of the Spree River from my bedroom window:

My 'office' at the museum:

I can't believe I'm leaving in a week! I will be sorry to go. It turns out that a former post-doc from the Smithsonian is at the museum this week and we're getting together tonight to check out a Russian tea house. More later!

Gute Nachrichten!!

(Good News!!)

There was an email in my inbox this morning from the Explorers Club of DC telling me that my grant application was successful! This makes me 4/4 with the small grants (or not-so-small: this one was pretty hefty). I feel so, so blessed and am effusively grateful - being able to travel around the world and being provided for financially.

This week I have:

1) Taken yoga and Sanskrit chanting classes at a Jivamukti yoga studio
2) Had my friend Thomas take me out to the young, cool, hip parts of town
3) Gone to Tacheles, an alternative art community in an abandoned building with a bar in the empty area of the former Berlin wall
4) Had the best Mediterranean food of my life
5) Met several pieces of German eye-candy who speak English
6) Seen everything on the subway from punks to flamboyant gays to clean-cut teenagers to old women in leather pants
7) Had brunch at a Russian diner
8) Gone to the Jewish Museum
9) Had several bottles of Berliner Weisse

So much art, history, culture…cool, interesting and friendly people…places to go out…you see everything - people expressing themselves as uniquely as they want and others don’t blink an eye. I love, love, love it here.

I'm in love

with Berlin.

More later, if I can tear myself away from the city.

From Josh:

'Berlin is addictive and you'll probably not want to leave...It's like the East Village meets Washington DC in an incredibly hip post-apocalyptic landscape dotted with Beirgartens. It's such a human city--scarred and with a tragic past, walled off against itself, yet very quirky and vibrant.'

I agree!

Ich bin ein Berliner

Hallo from Berlin! I took an internet sabbatical last week while I was waiting to get my laptop connected to the museum network. After checking my email on the guesthouse computer and spending 10 minutes typing out a 3-sentence reply, I decided it wasn’t worth it to bother with 1) a German keyboard and 2) a PC whose interface was entirely in German.

I am staying in a sad-looking neighborhood in the ugliest of ugly Soviet-era buildings. My apartment has a very Communist feel to it - meaning that it is entirely functional with no aesthetic appeal - but my bedroom is quite nice and I have a view of the Spree River from my window. Luckily I am not that far from some pretty happening neighborhoods, and I’m just across the river from the beautifully historic Bodemuseum. It’s actually a great location – very central to the main parts of the city- but my block itself looks über-dismal.

The biggest challenge I have faced here, by far, is the language. Somehow I’ve become spoiled with all my traveling because I’ve always managed fine with English. Here? Nien. Not only do most people not speak or understand English (I’m in former East Berlin, and not in a touristy area) but everything is written in German, too. Now, German is not a language that is easily decipherable despite proficiency in both French and English. I sometimes feel like I’m in Ethiopia again, staring at a sea of characters I keep hoping will start to make sense if I look at them long enough. For example, the day I arrived I went to the grocery store to buy some shampoo and conditioner. Shampoo was easy enough (‘shampoo’) but I couldn’t find anything remotely resembling ‘conditioner’. I ended up going with ‘spülung’, which, luckily, turned out to be the right product. That day I also bought some yoghurt that was so rich I swear it must have been made with heavy cream. And trying to pick some tea that didn’t have caffeine in it, that was tricky too.

And, being a vegetarian, language is a real problem is when it comes to food. If I go to a restaurant and recognize the word sandwich or salat, I still can’t read the ingredients listed below the menu item. Or, at the grocery store, I can easily spend 30 minutes in the canned soup aisle looking for something that I hope does not have meat in it. I pass a few Asian restaurants on my walk to the museum and what I’ve seen in passing looks like my worst nightmare – Asian characters with German words underneath.

I have much more to talk about than food and language but will leave it at here for now. Tchus!