Virtually Home

 A few weeks ago, we drove two hours to the Dryandra Woodland, hoping to see a numbat. Numbats are squirrel-sized, bushy-tailed, striped critters that eat termites. They're pretty adorable, but also rare, endangered, and shy. We cruised slowly along a dirt road through the woodland, looking out the window. Within the first half hour, I saw one out the window. I shouted at Jacob to stop the car, and described where it was -- a few meters off the road, over my left shoulder, hunched under a bush. He had time to get a clear look at it before it disappeared. We thought it maybe went into a hollow log. We stood and stared at the log in question for nearly an hour, but it never did come back out. Once, some people saw us staring and stopped to come look at whatever we were looking at, making a ton of noise in the process. Maybe that's what scared it off, or maybe it just fell asleep for a bit. Maybe it wasn't in the log at all. In any case, we didn't see it again. Still, we b...

Baby, it's Halloween And we can be anything - "Halloween" by Phoebe Bridgers I've been furiously working on job applications. Pitching my research in all the myriad ways it can be situated within the field(s). Shoehorning my work into each possible Venn diagram niche. Imagining all the places I might live next. Projecting my life into a dozen cities I've never visited before. Picturing autumn, in the most North American sense of the word, on as many college campuses as I've ever visited. I hate this part. There are too many possibilities to grow attached to. A lot of futures that will never happen. A lot of uncertainty. Just mostly vulnerability and waiting. And also I miss home. I never really appreciated the fact that my three favorite holidays are the 4th of July, Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and that leaving the US means missing all of the above. Living through the US's total failure to manage covid means no visits to or from home for the duration of m...

When we moved here, I had to learn how to drive on the right-hand side of the car and the left-hand side of the road. I found the right-hand side of the car to be the bigger problem, really. I kept trying to switch gears and instead reaching my right hand directly into the driver's side door, when I was meant to be moving my left hand toward the gear shifter. I frequently turned on the windshield wipers instead of my turn signal. I often walked toward the wrong side of the car to get in -- only once did I actually manage to climb in on the passenger side, just after filling the car up with gas (I still hope no one saw me). Virtually every time I got in on the passenger side on purpose, my right foot reached in vain for the brake pedal that wasn't there. There were definitely deeply ingrained neural patterns associated with the conventions of driving in America. Because Australia drives on the left side of the road, they also bike on the left side of the bike path and walk on th...

In a lot of ways, 2019 was a dumpster fire of a year in the US and the world. But on a personal level, it was a pretty good year, full of growth. Jacob and I both leveled up at cooking baking. I read a decent amount and spent much more time exercising than last year. We made a bunch of new friends. We saw a lot of new places and generally expanded our horizons. We missed our families. The distance is hard, and the extremely different time zones don't make it easy to talk with people in real time. Nevertheless, our first full year in Australia was an amazing experience. Here's more about my year in review -- happy New Year to you. January  We rang in the New Year on a relatively chilly summer night, watching the fireworks display on City Beach, Western Australia. Living in Australia was still new and weird -- we spent a bunch of time at the beach and in natural areas and national parks in our area. There was a surprise album dropped by two of my favorite musicians, Conor Obe...

For the most part, living in Australia is very culturally comfortable for an American. I'm not sure how to explain the sort of general unease I felt living for a year in France, where every outing for a long time felt like a challenge. Will I know the words for all the ingredients on the restaurant's menu? Will a stranger ask me for something I won't understand? Will I end up on the wrong bus? Am I going to hit my head on the chandelier in my landlady's house again? What is the difference between these three unfamiliar dairy products? Almost none of that is a problem for us here because we speak English and likely because Australia and the USA share descent from a recent common ancestor. Australia is also a young country spun off from Britain and built and bolstered by immigrants. But there are some things. The other day I said "chalk talk", referring to an academic exercise in which someone gives a lecture without prepared slides, and people heard "c...

I used to dread September because it was truly the end of summer, academically but especially seasonally. September was like staring at an oncoming train and knowing it was going to hit me. I resented living in Minnesota, where I cringed to think of several upcoming months of not spending a second longer outside than I had to. Planning my bus trips around ensuring there was no way I'd have a missed connection in a place that left me exposed to the cold and the wind. Darkness when I woke, and darkness when I got home from work. Winter-induced asthma and dry skin were a constant irritation. My social network still largely consists of North Americans. As they publicly lament the end of the summer, Western Australia is in the full bloom of spring, which apparently arrived early this year. Flowers and trees are blooming and the weather is beautiful. Yesterday it hit 90F for the first time, but the highs have been in the low 70s all week otherwise. The arrival of fall in the northern h...

I moved to France during President Obama's first term as President. I was proud of having elected him, but dismayed to find that upon meeting me, many French citizens immediately wanted to me to explain what had been up with George W. Bush. My nation's embarrassing, belligerent recent past followed me across the Atlantic. This is a million times worse. Last night I wanted an Aussie rules football (Australian Football League, AFL) match. During the 2.5 hour broadcast, there were no fewer than three  advertisements centered around Trump jokes. Trump and his party have made us such a laughing stock they're using casual Trump jokes to sell fried chicken, among other things. The idiocy of our leadership and the cruelty of our economic and social welfare policies come up often. Yesterday at lunch, I was talking with coworkers about the interaction between cultural evolution and geography. For instance, countries as large as Australia or USA have very consistent cultures acr...