It's probably time for me to actually write this blog post. I've had pictures sitting in a draft for a week now, but haven't actually written anything. Oops.
First things first, the defence was successful and I managed to walk away with this fancy piece of paper that proclaims I have a masters degree.
Which means the mission of the last 2 years of my life was achieved. Wooooo!
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To celebrate this momentous occasion, we went on the first real holiday I've had since starting grad school. It's one thing to travel, but as a grad student, there's always the shadow of school and research hanging over your head.
It took about 10 days for the whole 'I'm done and graduated and don't have anything I have to get back to' thing to sink it.
So we headed to Tuscany and met up with my sister and proceeded to have a wonderful time drinking wine, wandering the country side, and riding some really, really nice carbon bikes. We took an insane number of pictures, a smattering of which are as follows:
The Steiner girls like to play. The shit-eating grin is due to the forgotten pleasures of a really nice carbon fibre road bike (I am so getting one when we're back in Alaska). Also, playgrounds in the middle of the Tuscan country side are kinda fantastic.
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| The view of San Gimignano from the top of a tower |
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| The graffiti on the do not enter signs in Florence was awesome |
As nerdy engineers, Ev and I enjoyed the architecture in Florence. Not such a fan of the city itself - it was crowded and touristy. But what else is new.
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Rach left us in Florence and we continued to Croatia for some beaches and rock climbing. It's been almost a year since Ev and I climbed on some real rock. I gotta say, there's nothing quite like it. To beat the heat (and people), we got up at the buttcrack of dawn and were at the crag before 6am.
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| The 5am wakeup call was a bit much for Dad. |
There was a hike, and naturally, Ev had to find the tallest point around.
A day trip to Krka National Park was awesome. The waterfalls are epic, and we got to go swimming, which, given the whole 35 degree C heat, was magical.
And the state of the concrete was... abysmal. Rebar should not be able to be used as a hanger. Ev was very adamant about this.
Croatia is beautiful. Lots of mountains and rock and beaches for swimming.
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The parents have now been put on a plane home and Ev and I are in the process of cleaning and packing up our stuff. We seem to have done a pretty good job of not accumulating a bunch of stuff in the 2 years we've been in Europe, which is kind of impressive. Soon we'll be heading back to Alaska and the whole 'responsible adult' thing.
Well, maybe not 'adult'.
Or 'responsible'.
Heh.
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