Gratitude to you all for 2023
(Long post! If you’re short on time, you can scroll for the photos!)
This past year was pretty spectacular. Some people say that about every year (except 2020). Some people say every year sucks (especially 2020). Most years we experience a mix of joy with other things – sometimes really difficult. But I feel lucky: this past year brought so many people into my life, and I need to acknowledge how much of an impact they have all had on me.
So, for my 2023 reflections, I decided to share with you all a photo collage of all the people that sweetened my life this year!
The problem is that when I started combing through my photo collection (which contains thousands from 2023 alone), I suddenly found myself with nearly 50 photos that I felt I HAD to post. That’s way too many for one blog post! So as you scroll through the people that made my life amazing in 2023, please know that this does not include everyone!
There are some people who didn’t appear in my photos this year even though they have a place in my heart (hello, Colorado friends who never end up in any photos!). Some people popped into my life for a day, had an impact, and then moved on again. There are people who have been in my life a long time, but whom I didn’t get a chance to see this year. There are many, many people who have impacted my life in other years – who I only get to see on the occasional Zoom call (lookin’ at you Homeward Bounders!)
If you are reading this blog, you are someone who has an impact on me (even if you don’t show up in the photos below), and I want to extend my gratitude to you for following my adventures and supporting my writing – just by reading!
Adventures in Foreign Lands
I went to Vietnam because I wanted a challenge. I wanted to learn about climate change in other parts of the world and work with others to do our small part in creating a global community that can respond to global challenges. I also knew that I had so much to learn from my Vietnamese university colleagues about how we approach environmental issues, and how we approach university teaching in the era of instant communication and artificial intelligence.
Arriving to stay in another country for several months always involves a certain degree of overwhelm and culture shock. But I was grateful for the many people who eased my transition. Environmental Science student, Ms. Đan Linh, took care of me when I arrived right at the start of the Tet holiday in mid-January. She invited me to dinner with her family, took me picking strawberries, and helped me begin to feel comfortable riding around on the back of her motorbike. (This made it possible for me to use motorbike taxis later on – which was so helpful!)
Prof. Hau and Prof. Nguyen and their family also made me so feel so welcome by sharing many meals with me and by helping me better understand life as a professor in Dalat. And of course, my Fulbright cohort of colleagues became my support group, even though we were scattered throughout the county. I’m especially grateful to Susan De La Paz for coming to visit me in Dalat during Tet, and for all our wonderful adventures together during our time in Vietnam and Singapore.
I can’t imagine what my experience would have been like without the support of the Fulbright Vietnam staff at the US Embassy in Hanoi (especially Ms. Phuong)! Our three-day orientation in January gave us a feel for the US mission in Vietnam, and the trip to Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta gave us a chance to get our feet muddy (I have another post detailing my adventures in shrimp fishing!)
I’m grateful to my wonderful colleagues at the University of Dalat, who introduced me to amazing food, helped me understand the educational system and culture in Vietnam, and took care of me and generally looked out for me. They invited me into their homes, their offices, and their laboratories, so that we could learn and work together. They are an amazing group of people who deeply care about their students and about making the world a better place through science. I felt so honored to work with them.
I was thrilled to get to know the science students at the University of Dalat. Like students everywhere, they face complex, multi-faceted challenges of living in the modern world – going to school, working, supporting family, and dealing with endless digital distractions – but they also have conviction that they will make the world a better place, and that gives me hope for our future.
My time in Vietnam held a lot of unexpected connections…such as the one with the faculty in the Department of Social Work and Sociology – I can thank my Fulbright colleague Trevor Gates-Crandall for that introduction. They re-inspired me to find ways to work across disciplinary boundaries to address climate change.
I am also grateful for time in Singapore, and the invitation from Nanyang Tech to give workshops on teaching climate change and supporting women in science. Every workshop and every presentation I give is an opportunity to learn from everyone else in the room, and I’m so grateful to have had so many opportunities during my Fulbright to present on so many new things for me – to hear so many different perspectives, and to chat about so many different ways to integrate cross-disciplinary work.
Dalat was such a beautiful place to live for awhile. The city is full of sweet cafe’s, pubs, restaurants and some strange, but interesting tourist attractions (Google: “Dalat Crazy House”). In pre-COVID times, Dalat was a haven for Western expats. While the visa situation still made things complicated for expats in Vietnam last spring, there were still quite a few expats and travelers in Dalat. I had great fun hiking with a local expat group through the forest on the edge of town, and also summiting nearby LangBiang Peak with an Irish lady (and the help of our Vietnamese guide).
One of my favorite places to relax in Dalat was the expat Australian cafe, One More Cafe. I have the owner, Lorelle Champion, to thank for giving me an English-speaking refuge whenever I needed it, for inviting me to her expat dinners, and for helping me understand better what life is like in Vietnam.
My work also gave me a chance to travel a bit within Vietnam. I had Fulbright support to visit the University of Can Tho in the Mekong Delta, where I met with students working on projects to build local climate change resilience. I have so much gratitude for their hospitality, for introducing me to their city and their campus.
A Fulbright meeting took me to Hanoi in late May, and, amazingly, that coincided with my friend Lizzy’s visit to Hanoi for her nephew’s wedding. We spent three days adventuring in Lan Ha Bay, known for it’s quiet turquoise waters and limestone cliffs (so that you don’t feel envious seeing those waters, I will mention the absolute sweltering heat as another feature of our adventure: 95F and about 90% humidity. There were a couple of moments on our trip where we basically melted).
I know I sound like I’m gushing, but I have so many fond memories, and I’m grateful that I had a chance to meet so many wonderful people. I’m especially grateful to Vice Dean Giang Nguyen and Dean Diep Trinh for their hospitality and for arranging my visit and my time there, and to Prof. Hau for working with me to teach their students in a short course in tropical meteorology and climate. I feel like I learned so much from everyone – learned that we all face similar challenges as college professors – and what we do comes from that same deep space of motivation inside ourselves.
Renewed purpose in Colorado
I arrived home in mid-summer, and I was happy not to have to jump back into my regular work schedule, but there were adventures of a different sort awaiting me.
My students are at the heart of my motivation for everything I do in my work, and it’s such a thrill when I get to see them years later – especially the students who I last saw on March 13, 2020 (that’s you, Jacob, Grace, Jonah) when we had an impromptu graduation in our meteorology lab, afraid that we would not get to have a real graduation ceremony if the plague came to town. (As you all know, the plague came to town and we never got to have that real graduation ceremony in 2020).
Fortunately, graduations are back on!! And it was so much fun to greet Kenley and Joseph after they walked across the stage this December. I don’t ever get tired of these things (but my black robe is getting a bit worn).
My work has taken on some new energy this year with funding from the National Science Foundation! My UNC colleagues Sharon Bywater-Reyes and Chelsie Romulo and I are trying to find ways to connect UNC students and faculty with community groups to work on projects that build local climate change resilience. We have a great team of professionals and students to help us. What’s exciting to me is that this work is very interdisciplinary, very social, and (we hope!) impactful. Clearly, it moves me far from my traditional scientific work running numerical climate models, but it feels like this is the work I need to be doing at this stage of my career – and, possibly, for the rest of my life. We understand the science of climate change. We don’t yet know how to get everyone to work together to deal with it.
Circling back home
Nothing that I’ve written about in this post would be possible without my inner circle of support from my family. I have so much gratitude and love for my partner, Graham, who may roll his eyes every time I mention another potentially harebrained grand global adventure that I want to jump into (there have been many!) – but then offers his unconditional support. I’m so grateful to him for traveling more than 30 hours one-way (across 11 time zones) to spend the last two weeks in Vietnam with me.
I’m grateful that we still have our Guinness-kitty flitting about the house, offering daily doses of unconditional love and cuddles. He’s almost 16 and was diagnosed with kidney failure and hyperthyroidism a few weeks ago. So he may not be long for the world. We are giving him IV fluids every day, and he’s made a bit of a comeback. As long as he’s still enjoying life, we will keep him happy with lots of petting and whatever food his is willing to eat.
In December I made my first visit to my hometown of Hollister, CA, in many years. I had an early Christmas celebration with my brother/best-friend, Ryan, and his girlfriend, Michele. My dad and his partner, Linda, also happened to be on a break from their global travels and we filled the oven with Christmas cookies.
While in Hollister, I was also so happy to reunite with my adopted Irish family, including Debbie Parga, and her mom (my Irish mom!), Joanie Perreira. All those many decades (feels like lifetimes) ago when Joanie’s daughter, Connie, invited me to have lunch (and be her best friend) during our sophomore year of high school, I could never have imagined that was the first step toward bringing me into her family. Connie has been gone for many, many years, but we all still feel her love and her impact on our lives.
Last, but certainly not least, in this past month, I’ve been so grateful to my Uncle Jerry and Aunt Catherine…and to Scott…for helping me gain a deeper connection to and understanding of my Mom, who left this earth more than nine years ago, and for helping me arrive at deeper insight as to how all the things that happen before we’re born play a big role in shaping our lives. To say more on that requires another blog post, and we’ll save that story for later in 2024.
Happy New Year, Everyone!