Auf Englisch, bitte

In the interest of the common good, I will henceforth and for a little while, say 7 or so weeks, blog in English. Enjoy while it lasts!

Our course is finally taking off, after a somewhat stumbling (as in, nothing works) start. It chose the day to do so, too, the first day since I arrived here that I haven't, at any point during the morning, afternoon or evening, been rained heavily upon. Instead we had the most glorious view of four volcanoes (and lots of cattle) while doing our fieldwork, and the 30+ sunblock I smeared all over me could only barely keep up with the UV-ray bombardment.

Mauna Kea was rather terrific in the setting sun. I never realised before how immense it is. Trust me, it's big. It's so big that it fills out the floor-to-ceiling window in the dining hall. It's so big that even Greek Peak looks small by comparison, Shan. And you can ski it! It's the real thing. And you can go there to gaze at the stars through fancy telescopes, some of which can be seen from below looking like petrified giants. Will most definitely have to do that.

As you all can see, life as a grad student on the Big Island is obviously tougher than I ever imagined it would be. The toughest part of today has to be when we went to the beach after completing our field work. How - and I mean HOW - can anyone be expected to live with this?!?! Give me rain, give me fog, give me Ithaca weather! Now!!