Arrival in the US

Hi people, this is the first entry on the blog. Whoop whoop! This is kicking off the start of the BOULDERING Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global fellowship funded by the European Union (thanks again!). But, first, if you want to learn more about a Marie Curie postdoc, please have a look here. This fellowship will last for three years, two years at Stanford University, and the last twelve months at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Oslo. I am not sure how those three next years will go, but I am motivated and will do my best to share the evolution of the project with you along the way on this blog. So let’s start this fellowship (as the European Research Council likes to call this postdoctoral research position). I secretly like to think about this fellowship as the fellowship in The Lord of the Rings. I hope I will manage to throw the One Ring in Mount Doom at tne end of those three next years!

It is now time to move to the Bay Area, more precisely to a place close to Stanford University. Stanford is located about 45 min by car southeast of San Francisco, in the southern part of the Bay Area. I have been planning the move from Norway to the US for those last few days. I lived in many places in the past (South of France, Svalbard, Oslo, Berlin), but I have been mostly living in Oslo for the last ten years. New country, new colleagues, and the pressure of doing a good job make me feel both very excited and scared at the same time. The departure date is the 14th of October 2021. My wife Siri will be with me to help in the transition from Oslo to the Bay Area! She is currently doing a postdoc in botany at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (close to Oslo in Norway). And therefore, she will be traveling a bit back and forth between the two countries. We will stay at a hotel for the first ten days in Menlo Park, just 5-10 min by car from Stanford University. The goal of those first days is to fix as many administrative tasks as possible and, most importantly, find a place to live! The next blog entry will be from the US. I can’t wait. Here I come.