2012 Itinerary

 So here's the plan for the rest of 2012: six months of elsewhere. For starters, New Zealand. I got awarded an EAPSI fellowship by the NSF, which means I'll be spending roughly two months at the University of Auckland doing phylogenetic research on the Austronesian languages (computer modeling of language evolution, more or less), eating lamb, and making hobbit jokes. In the middle of that I've got two weeks at Australian National University (ANU) to continue the same research and make dingo jokes, and a week in Bali to lie on the beach and while I'm at it present a paper at a conference. The life of a grad student... I fly out for New Zealand on Sunday afternoon June 10th, and thanks to the Fly America Act and my gov't funding I land in Wellington for orientation eons later, with stops in Atlanta, LA, and a 12-hour sightseeing layover in Sydney en route. I get to Auckland on the 15th, and get to work soon thereafter. Back to the States on August 12th, with a three-week intermission to repack my suitcase, buy some DEET, and reassure my parents I'm still alive before I head off again.

Act II of the year's peregrinations starts roughly September 1st, assuming the visa comes through. Plane tickets have yet to be bought, but the plan is to spend four more months in Manokwari doing the bulk of my dissertation fieldwork. I'll be getting back around New Years, and staying in town for the spring semester. There will likely be sanity trips to remote tropical islands, lots of diving (hopefully with sharks), and hopefully a trip with my aunt to someplace interesting (Borneo? Vietnam? Myanmar?) on my way home. If you don't hear from me for a while, it's probably due to either dengue, a tsunami, or just somewhere pretty without much internet. Either way you'll hear about it after.

(Map from Lonely Planet)