My last day was today and I am sad to leave. I gave a final presentation of my work conducted at Eawag and am happy to say that it is a solid bit of work – this year was a smashing success professionally. We followed the presentation with an Apéro later in the day and then some time at the local lake for a Bar-BQ.
One thing we talked about in earlier posts is how neat it is that here the custom is for you to bring your own cake for your birthday, and by the same token, you have your own party when you are leaving. Most of the parties at work are in the form of an Apéro – which was great for us because we were able to use lots of food from our Swiss pantry. At the Apéro , I was surprised to have some gifts from the people in my department (UTox). A lovely book of Switzerland from the two group leaders I was working closest with (because they knew how much I loved their country), a recycled water bottle and glass from the department chair (because what is better than that when you work at an Institute of Aquatic Studies?), and a scrap book from everyone.
The scrap book is awesome. Basically, anyone who wanted had a page with a picture they added. For example, Flavio added his famous tiramisú recipe (although it is in Italian and I won't get the translation until next year when he comes to visit!), Adi added pictures of the ICP-MS for me (so I could remember the instrument that he worked so long with me on), and David had a note written in English that he held up in his picture (he spoke Swiss German, and by the end we had worked out our own wonderful way to communicate with each other, it often involved me drawing pictures and one of us running off to a computer to look up a word). There were lots of pictures of activities from the lab and from outside adventures with my closest friends there.
Maybe best of all is the name on the front. It says Les Ambassadeurs. If you’ve been following the blog, you know we called our dog, Fiona, the Ambassador. Honestly, with all the emotion of leaving and stress of moving out, and a touch of sadness still for loosing Fiona, this caused me to cry. I have to say though, that I am honored to be considered Ambassadors ourselves. As our friend explained, not only was Fiona an Ambassador, but so were we – simply put, we gave our European friends a different sense of what an American is. I really really am honored. Thank you.
The lake was nice – it was a place I went in the early spring with some of the PhD students and post-docs to just hang out on a sunny Saturday. It was great to do that one last time with them and with some other friends - this ended up being our last good-bye with many of them.
As Darrell said when I was looking through my scrapbook the next day… it is like I just came back from camp. I made so many wonderful friends, learned so much, and just had fun. Add to that my huge accomplishments with research, new skills I am bringing back to my U.S. university, and European colleagues I hope to work with in the future... I couldn’t have asked for more and will cherish this time and these memories forever.
