I was fortunate to get into a marvelous new graduate school program: The Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology, aka MEME. Its more than just a grad school or exchange program. The other students and I are a hodgepodge of nationalities* with an important common characteristic - we are nerds. We are the weird kids who get excited about identifying insects and discussing the definition of a species. And this little program brought us all together. Over the next two years we will be studying at not one, but five universities: University of Groningen, Netherlands; Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany; Uppsala University, Sweden; University of Montpellier II, France; and Harvard University, USA. The idea of the program is simple yet brilliant: give students a strong and diverse education while facilitating the formation of cross-cultural academic ties.
So that is why I'm here, in Groningen, Netherlands, a place I would never have dreamed of living in a year ago. I am currently getting settled in the city and anxiously awaiting the start of classes next week. Eurotrip 2010-2012 has begun, lets hope its a good one.*The hodgepodge breakdown: 2 Brazil, 1 Belgium, 2 Columbia, 1 Cyprus, 2 France, 2 Germany, 1 Greece, 1 Indonesia, 4 Netherlands, 1 Mexico, 1 Serbia, 2 Turkey, 1 Hong Kong, 2 Ukraine, 2.5 USA, 1.5 Canada (the halves are due indecisiveness, i.e duel-citizenship)
