Return to everyday life

Ryan and I are back home in Cali, settled into our new apartment and studying during the new school year. Oisin is with us, and though I occasionally miss the excitement of going a new place every day, I'm still somewhat giddy to be back going through the motions of my every day routine in Davis. Cooking my own food is a wonderful task, as chasing around a toddler, for the most part. He's back in day care during the week and so far seems to be enjoying himself immensely, which helps.

I'm back to teaching and class and research, and keep finding wonderfully interesting new papers. I'm going to try and write about the most interesting things I find, and the interesting parts of being a graduate student, but they're fewer and farther between when I'm not in the field, so once the beginning of the quarter calms down a bit, I'm going to try to post some of the stories we didn't get to tell yet about the summer. For now, I leave you with a second video of dog sampling, this one of me taking the blood, so you can see what we're talking about. As a note, the calm reaction this dog has is the standard reaction we got--even the dog in the last video was this relaxed once we got the muzzle on.

Final stats from the summer

[guest post by Ryan]

36 flights
12 time zones
257:45 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
64,374 travel miles
22 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
17 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Number update

[Ryan here]

At the end of sampling, we've sampled 691 dogs (corresponding to 19,384 spreadsheet cells Cori and I had to fill in---and the spreadsheet was detailed enough that by the end dog colors such as "reddish tan and black with white chest and tips" were being autofilled). Anyway, more numbers (and these aren't done yet---we're still in Delhi waiting to fly home):

31 flights
11 time zones
208:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
50,574 travel miles
21 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
17 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

FINISHED

I sampled my last dog of the summer today, a caravan hound named Rani, our 183rd Indian dog. All told, I've taken blood from 691 dogs this summer, and I gotta say, I can't wait to get home. India was lovely, if whirlwind, but I'm tired, really sick of airports and hotels, and miss my son. Tonight at 2am dehli time we board our first flight home, and in 33 or so hours, we finally make it to my mothers house, hallelujah. We'll of course keep posting this summer's stories on this blog, if only to tell the story of the Indian SIM card procurment adventure, the worst driver ever, and a few other tidbits from our travels. But I think I've finally got Ryan so he enjoys blogging, and his enthusiasm keeps me writing too. We've got loads of stories to tell and loads more adventures to have, so eve if we're eager for this one to come to a close, we'll keep you updated with whatever comes next.