19th of October 2016 – What I got:
- a visa stamp
- a campus card
- a student ID
- an affordable apartment in the Bay area
- a social security number
- American health care for my family
- an American bank account
- a talk at UC Berkeley
- a talk at UC Davis
- a talk at WSL
- getting to know the best microbial genomicists at a local conference
- living in a van for more than 3 weeks
- living without a car in California
- PIT tagging a juvenile rainbow trout
- Driving alone on a 4-lane American highway
- getting the phone number of 4 new people I like
- getting a key to my office
- learning to recognize the most common plants and animals in this state
- swimming in the Pacific Ocean
- getting everything ready for my first own scientific experiment
- finding a lab to do molecular genetic analyses during my fieldwork session.