Short Stay Fellowship in Utrecht

I set aside this space to blog about my upcoming stay in Utrecht, Netherlands on a Short Stay Fellowship for Utrecht University. I got this fellowship almost by sheer luck! We were interested in the measurements of another research group headed by Prof. Thomas Roeckmann at the Institute for Atmospheric and Marine Research. They had published their results already in a paper, but they used derived values, when for our research we needed the absolute measurements (I'll leave it at that). My adviser emailed Thomas about these measurements, and he responded with not only some of those results but also an offer for the short stay fellowship to work on some unpublished results! I have never been to Europe before, and it would obviously be a great professional opportunity, so of course we filled out the application. I was then selected as one of the five recipients out of thirteen applicants! So now not only do I get a great opportunity to work with other scientists in the same field as I, but I also get to live in the Netherlands for three months from the beginning of April to the end of June! One of my friends from Berkeley is Dutch and went back to the Netherlands (she's working on her dissertation, though, so she might be busy), and another friend introduced me to his friend in Utrecht over Facebook, so we'll see what kind of people I meet from there. I hope to chronicle some of my adventures in the Netherlands (and Europe) in this blog, so stay tuned once April rolls around. :)