Small victories

Saudi King Abdullah sacks conservative adviser

[post from 14 May--still relevant!  More to follow...]

So, I've definitely been lax this weekend with regard to blogging.  I've begun to revert to my old ways, which includes staying up late and sleeping in in the morning.  Nevertheless, it is a sign that I'm adjusting to my life here!

I spent the latter part of this week finishing a manuscript that I will present at PRIO on Wednesday.  I am grateful to have gotten a solid critique of it from one of my professors, and as a result it has improved substantially.  I think I may have a decent submission before the summer is over.  To be honest, I am looking forward to getting to work this morning to continue work on it. 

Several noteworthy, unrelated events have occurred these past few days.  For one, the House of Representatives has passed an amendment excluding political science from NSF-funded projects.  Bear in mind that my work here is funded by the NSF... For a concise and articulate response, click here.  The professor with whom I am working while here also had a baby this weekend.  Whatismore, Ben and I planted seeds at the apartment so that we could have something to enjoy watching.  The seeds, which are Icelandic poppies, spouted this weekend!  In all, these are a series of small victories and a minor (hopefully temporary) defeat.  

On Saturday Ben and I slept in and went to a sculpture park called Frogner park.  The weather was chilly but beautiful, and the park was quite nice.  We walked around until 4pm, when I was to meet some coworkers.  I volunteered to run for the Centre in a city-wide relay race, in which an estimated 40,000 people attended.  From the institute there were two teams of 15 people each, one team representing the Centre for the Study of Civil Wars (CSCW), and the other representing the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO).  I ran 800 meters for my leg.  It was short, but the air is so clear here that I felt as though I had been running a much longer distance.  It was really neat to see so many people in the city gearing up for a physical activity.  Let me tell you, people took this race seriously.  I was perhaps one of the only people not in running pants (I ran in swimming trunks, actually).  

After the race we joined our colleagues for dinner and then attended our first house party.  The house party was thrown by one of my coworkers, at which we spent most of the time on the terrace at the top of their apartment building.  We got a nice 360-degree view of the city, and we stayed out there as we waited for it to get dark, except that it never did.  Saturday night was the first night that I realized that the sun wasn't completely going down.  In truth, we arrived home at 3am and it still wasn't completely dark!