A new start for the new year

While I generally focus on the lighter side of things, especially when it comes to the professional, work hasn't been so cheery over the past six months. I encountered a number of pretty serious issues when it came to the company I'd chosen, so Nicolas and I have decided to make a clean break for the new year, in a stronger and more dynamic market where my skillset will be properly remunerated. So, after spending all but a few months abroad since June '08—I can hardly believe I'm writing this—guess who's moving back Stateside? Yes, we've gone home for the holidays, and this time it's to stay.

Bye bye, Brighton!

Moving is hard work for kitties. Our little monsters have been camped out with Nicolas's mom since our highly adventurous overnight trip to France in mid-December—a story in itself. They're both booked to fly with me to the US on Jan. 5.

We rather blindly leapt into this decision to move Stateside only to be horrified by our eye-opening discoveries of the rights of US citizens to bring their foreign spouses into the US (or rather, the lack thereof). You see, Nicolas can't follow me. Since he has no means of obtaining a non-tourist visa to wait out the first 90+ days in the US before initiating his green card application, he has the complete the full procedure from abroad. Read: the full 9-12+ month procedure. And, for the cherry on top, he cannot even enter the US to visit me during this time. This means that I'll be working with an American-style vacation schedule (what, maybe 10 days per year??) and I somehow have to find a way to squeeze in as many trips to France as possible just to see my husband in 2018. (TransAtlantic weekends, anyone?) 2018's not looking so shiny from this side of the new year.

For now we've been trying to make the most of our holidays. First, we powered our way across the Northeast US, where we hit up Boston, NYC, and the suburbs of Philly/NJ in all of a week's time.

Nicolas's first trip to Boston, complete with a wild turkey siting in Harvard Square and a trip down my old dormitory hall, 5W, which is now sporting an awesome new cat Lego mural!

Nicolas not only survived but thrived at his first Repak/Aloia family Christmas. He was even this year's champion of the Cousins' Campout Cards Against Humanity showdown.

NY round two: somehow Nicolas and managed two trips to NYC in just one week, but we didn't really photograph the first.

We're in the midst of a very hectic week or so in Paris before we say our final pre-green-card-application goodbyes, hoping it won't be too long until we can start planning our next visit. (I swear, if we ever get around to going on that honeymoon we'd planned, it will be more than well-deserved!) At least you can't say our life is boring. Although these days, we often wish it would be!

And as for where I'll land, there are a few exciting leads to follow up on during the first week of January, but for now I'll keep that up my sleeve. As we've wrapped up our lives Left of the Rabbit Hole, stay tuned for future adventures at my latest blog: An Expat Homecoming.

Happy New Year!

Burn, baby, burn!

While most towns have their fireworks on the 5th of November, Rye waits another week. But that’s not because Rye was late to the game. In fact, historians believe the bonfire tradition in Sussex well pre-dates the 1605 attempted coup by Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes. Some suspect it may have its roots back in the pagan winter festival of samhain. A friendly local bonfire society representative claimed it dated back to the Hundred Years' War, when the citizens of Rye burned their boats rather than allow the rapidly advancing French to seize them. (Because, that's right, Rye's Bonfire Night ends in the burning of an effigy atop a massive stack of furniture and building materials including a boat.) Whatever the origins may be, today, dozens of bonfire societies across Sussex prepare throughout the year for the night that the population of this town swells to easily double its normal population of 9000. Each society prepares its costumes, equips itself with medieval-style torches and a possible assortment of instruments and/or explosives, and parades across the village before convening in a field to light the pyre. Each year, an effigy is burned atop the fire. You can imagine my delight to discover that this year's theme was "Melt Down," featuring side-by-side likenesses of Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. I'd like to note that the Donald's face melted off well before Little Rocket Man was devoured by flames.

Burning it all down: Rye Bonfire Night

The event is unlike anything Stateside, especially when we found ourselves asking if fires could give sunburns as we roasted in front of the pyre, despite being safely behind what the locals had determined to be the "safe distance." This town definitely takes their Throwback Thursday to another level. (Okay, okay, on a Saturday.) I loved it.

Science & engineering in the capital of fashion

Install number two came with a bit more glamor, and a lot more independence. And I even got to break out my very rusty Italian skills. This time I jetted off to Milan on my own to build a two-photon microscope as I saw fit, and did I ever.

A beautifully compact two-photon imaging system, built and aligned by yours truly.

In Italy, church and state are never too far apart. This is a peek inside the San Raffaele Hospital and Medical Research Campus, home to this week's install. Honestly, I think the "Cathedral to Science," as I'm calling it, is stunning.

After crushing it on long days Monday and Tuesday, we had a fully functioning microscope by Wednesday morning. With three full days of the install week to image every fluorescent sample we could get our hands on, there was more than enough time to fully train our customers. And with my colleague landing on Thursday morning to answer every intricate question they could have on imaging software functionality, I was able to engineer my escape before sundown on Wednesday to hit up some tourist attractions. Lacking any originality, I beelined for the duomo, the world's second largest Catholic cathedral, which bows only to the Vatican's St. Peter's. 

Il Duomo, a centerpiece of Milan that took only a mere 582 years to build.

Having checked that off the list, I found myself floundering. What else are you exactly supposed to do or see in Milan? With the TripAdvisor app acting up, my mind turned to Italy's number one resource: gelato. But I couldn't even follow the 0.3 mile route to a well-rated gelateria before stumbling across a site my tastebuds wouldn't let me pass up: Cioccolati Italiani. With streams of chocolate flowing down the window front and Russian doll desserts of nutella-stuffed-crepe-stuffed-cones calling to me from colorful banners, my feet made the decision for me. And of course, where better to enjoy a creamy Italian treat in the heart of the capital of fashion than in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, in front of the window displays of Gucci, Prada, Armani, and Louis Vuitton??

Gucci and Prada and Vuitton, oh my!

The cold and rain got the better of me, but not without my enjoying some creative Italian window displays en route back to the hotel. 

Some highlights from the windows of Milan's shopping district.

And the evening wasn't complete without a solid game of find-the-smallest-Italian-"car." 

Top 3 contestants in the competition for dinkiest Italian car.

But while I couldn't devote the week to tourism, I didn't deny myself the luxury of Italian cuisine, with a little help from my handy app The Fork, whose free discounts let me stretch the company dinner budget to include a nightly glass of wine and a dessert.

Snippets from a week of culinary fantasy, made possible much in part thanks to my lovely app TheFork, which let me stretch that company food budget to a week of three-course delights. Top find: Cantine Milano, highly recommended.

While I was eager to get my butt home to my husband and our furry feline monsters, I couldn't help but feel a bit of heartbreak over saying arrivederci once again to one of my absolute favorite countries. Hope to see you (and taste your delicious gelati) again soon!

Why did I ever leave this country??

A new set of wheels

Having accepted the fact that I will never be comfortable driving a manual (after several months of trying to convince myself otherwise), and not being willing to commit to a winter full of cold and dark bus stations for public transport that literally runs hours behind schedule, it was high time to bite the bullet, shake every last penny out of the piggy bank, and find myself a more suitable vehicle for the daily commute. And did I ever! After being inspired by a painfully cute Little Tikes themed car parked just aside the Uckfield bus station, I narrowed my car shopping targets.

How adorable is this Little Tikes Smart Car?

Sadly, the Little Tikes Smart Car was not to be. But look what a cutie I've landed! I am back on the left side of the road and terrified for my life going strong.

Now we just have to sort out how to get that silly manual Ford Fiesta off our hands, and hopefully a bit of something back into the bank account...

A new scope and some old friends

Finally, a mere two months after my last eventful business trip, I yet again took to the skies for Scientifica. My destination: the Gateway City.

Nelly the Neuron and I made it to St. Louis!

This week's adventure was just as eventful, if quite different, from the last. Specifically, there was a fair bit of head banging and time on hold with customs. It certainly didn't lend itself to an easy or particularly fruitful install to be missing some key parts until Friday at lunch time.

After five days and many fights with customs, here we have our nearly fully functioning two-photon system...

Thank goodness each install day was punctuated with a friendly face at lunchtime: Sylvia, one of my oldest friends, and her husband have just moved out to Saint Louis a few months ago. And as luck would have it, my install was scheduled just a few buildings over from where she spends her days post-doc'ing. I'm proud to say I got to be one of Sylvia and Peter's very first visitors, albeit a somewhat distracted and busy one.

By the time Nelly the Neuron and I escaped lab after 9pm on Friday evening, these beers at the 4 Hands Brewery with Sylvia and Peter were well earned.

Luckily, my flight didn't leave until Saturday afternoon, which left us a few precious hours to power-tour their new hometown. It's surprisingly empty, but overall a cute little place. Missouri: check. States-visited count now stands at 22. Perhaps I need to look into spending a bit more time venturing back home? All in good time. 😉

Sylvia and me, about 20 years after becoming friends. It's certainly a plus of my itinerant lifestyle to have friends scattered all over the globe, just waiting to catch up when the winds blow us back together.

Chocolate and Louboutins and, finally, someone else's vows

A view from the outskirts of Geneva, just a few minutes away from the home of Nicolas's father's long-term girlfriend/partner.

A weekend of chocolates and Labradors and Louboutins (not mine!): not a bad little getaway if I do say so myself. And I couldn't complain that finally, the wedding excitement was buzzing around somebody else. There's certainly a bit less pressure when you're no longer the eye of the storm. We both enjoyed finally taking the back seat at a wedding in 2017.

Such good boys! Our weekend companions, Nicolas's dad's girlfriend's furbabies.

We were in Geneva for the wedding of Nicolas's father's girlfriend's son, who you could think of as Nicolas's almost-step-brother (aka my nearly-brother-in-law?), though Nicolas and Philippe's lives came together as adults. I must have spent half of the weekend just trying to understand how all the guests were connected to each other. Between marriages, divorces, new partners, and adoptions, the family lineages were anything but straightforward. But that didn't stop this mostly Swiss crowd from coming together to throw an excellent party. While most of their wealth was discreetly showcased, like in the flashes of Louboutin red underfoot, their lakeside mansions let on that the wedding budget probably hadn't required strict adherence.

Finally attending a wedding that's not our own! And yes, I rocked that fascinator. I don't care if we weren't in the UK.

We, on the other hand, had to be careful to keep our purse strings drawn tight. When we meandered through the city, window displays casually invited us to drop a month's (or year's) salary on a single accessory, and it didn't seem to deter the regular streams of shoppers slipping in and out of the shops. There is such a disconnect between that society and the "real world" as we know it.

A stroll through historic downtown Geneva.

The Swiss don't only know their way around a bank account. And their chocolatey delicacies are still within the realm of financial accessibility for mere mortals like us. Capping off the weekend with a cognac-flavored truffle from Auer chocolatier was certainly not a bad way to go.

Yum.

All butter-beer'ed up

No Harry Potter fan can truly say they've lived in England until they've done the Warner Brothers Studio Tour London. So, with a fellow Harry-Potter-obsessed cousin in the UK for the moment, we scheduled our trip, but things didn't quite go as planned. After she and her friends arrived an hour ahead of schedule, and traffic put us an hour behind, Nicolas and I didn't exactly see the people we'd planned the trip around. Nonetheless, we did get to take a peek behind the curtain of the Harry Potter films. To say this tickled one of us much more than the other is a massive understatement.

A bit of Cupboard Under the Stairs action to whet your appetite while awaiting the tour.

Having barely made it into the second-to-last tour of the day, we shuffled along the snaking queue that led us into a mini cinema. The guides worked (some of) us up over a promotional film featuring many of the films' stars and then, finally, they raised the screen and pushed open a set of double doors to reveal the Great Hall, home of the sorting hat's fateful sortings and countless Hogwarts feasts. So began the tour of the making of Harry Potter.

The Great Hall of Hogwarts! Admittedly somewhat less magical sans Enchanted Ceiling. Still, I wouldn't turn down my owl if it brought my admissions letter tomorrow.

Winding past scenery, props, and costumes, we got to learn about the real-world wizardry behind the big screen magic.

And the behind-the-scenes studio tour begins! You've got your Gryffindor Common Room, Snape's Potions Classroom, Dumbledore's Office, the Triwizard Tournament Yule Ball costumes, and more.

One of my favorite tidbits were the feature on the animals of Harry Potter-- who knew there'd been so many for each animal character? Apparently owls are dreadfully hard to train, nothing like the corvids who'll happily get behind any new tricks the training crew had up their sleeve. And all those Fangs and Mrs. Norrises were to die for! Each with their own skill sets and personalities. I wish I had the patience to be an animal handler!

A wall of Animal Actors of Harry Potter 💕

And then there was the bit on making Hagrid. When it came to creating a half giant on the big screen, the crew had an idea or two. They started with a 6'6"? rugby man and built from there. He was put in a costume with stilts and an entire interior ventilation system. Seriously.

Any tour through the magical wizarding world of Harry Potter has to be washed down with a sip of butter beer. And despite warnings to the contrary, it wasn't horrible. And I just couldn't wrap my head around the drink's head-- a frothy, ice-creamy set of bubbles perched atop of a caramel-flavored cream soda.

So. Excited. For. Butterbeer. Can you tell?

Of course, Nicolas was not in luck: the tour did not end after the cafe stop. No, we were only getting started. (Or really, half way there.)

Dragged my husband down Diagon Alley, and got the photo to prove it! Life achievement unlocked.

4 Privet Drive inundated with Hogwarts letters, Olivander's shelves stacked with boxed wands, the Weasleys' Burrow, Dolores Umbridge's office, the Ministry of Magic, a hippogriff, and more. My high-school-nerd heaven.

Successfully dragging me through the gift shop without my picking up a single wand or magical set of earrings was probably Nicolas's greatest victory of the day. After one last admiring look upon the statues of the wizards from a world where I'd much rather belong, we tucked ourselves back into our decidedly unenchanted Ford Fiesta and made the long ride home.

Farewell, my Harry Potter Wizarding World.