In the midst of our holiday madness, we are also prepping the house and ourselves for our next trip overseas. The fact that we leave in just over 2 weeks (2 weeks!) is both exciting and overwhelming. So far, we have:
– Arranged for a sub-let from a fun UK family with a precious two-year old girl and another little girl due soon!
– Have reservations in a local hotel for the night we arrive (the flight comes shortly before midnight; we’ll meet the housekeeper at the house the next morning)
– Paid half our rent up front by electronically transfering money to their account in Indonesia (where they used to live!)
– Have a housekeeper (fairly standard in these parts)
– (Almost) have a nanny — just a phone call left to confirm
– (Almost) have a private spanish tutor — just have to arrange some logistics
– Are reading all that we can about Peru (history, culture, art, travel, etc.)
The faculty I’m working with assure me that getting an assistant (for transcription and assistance with interviews) will be no problem, so that is great. We’ve got a list of contacts and organizations and will brainstorm further once I’m there. The idea is that this is just an exploratory trip. I have a bunch of potential research questions to expand into a disseration… the idea is to talk about the issues and questions within the field, gather some observational data, then return home, run models from DHS and other data sources to compare, and develop a final research question and disseration topic from all of the information. Then I can write the prospectus, which sort of lays out my plans for a disseration and serves as the “background” — sort of like the first few chapters — and apply for formal disseration funding. Because I am interested in an academic career, it is important to me to both collect my own data for at least part of my disseration and obtain outside funding to do so. This is first step towards that end. I am excited and a bit nervous to sort of be on my own, which is what getting a doctoral level degree is all about.
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