So much has happened in the last few weeks and inevitably this blog has suffered.
Having left my position at the National Botanic Garden of Wales before Christmas, I was then swept off on my adventure to Washington for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival that I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing about.
Well that feels like a lifetime ago now. The day after my return to Heathrow from America, I boarded yet another airplane for an oh so quick 10 day visit with family in northern Sweden.
Barely a moment was spent in the tranquility of our Swedish home before I found myself returning, not to Wales, but to London to begin a whole new life.
I'm on approximately week 5 or 6 of living out of a backpack. I had my first brief visit in what seems like months to my home in Wales this weekend. But today it's finally official, my partner Cameron and I are moving to London for a fresh start and a new job for me (and hopefully Cameron too eventually).
The job, as it turns out, is a surprisingly exciting one though I doubt it would seem so to anyone without a passion for plants and a somewhat autistic approach to filing systems.
I am now working at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew for a small herbarium team which is currently dedicated to finding and recording for the internet every Latin American "type" specimen in Kews vast (6 million specimens apparently) collection. I might go so far as to explain what that means in a future post, but for the time being you can visit this example specimen on Aluka to see the African equivalent of the kind of database records I should be producing in time.
I've been working here for a week now and the job is certainly an interesting one and includes a very steep learning curve. Living arrangements are a little less inspiring and my access to the internet is utterly sporadic at present.
It is for this reason that I add no photos since achieving a quantity of text seems achievement enough without rigging up my camera and starting to upload photos in the corner of this wi-fi pub in Kew.
I do hope I can find a space of my own and get back on track soon!
4 comments:
Hi there great Blog you have there, and great comments on ethnopharmacology, keep up the good work and good luck at Kew
Wow that's a great place to work, I'm envious. I was actually thinking of dropping by Kew when I get some free time to take a picture of the Thunder God Vine.
Congratulations, Kristina. I hope you enjoy the change and challenges!
Thanks for all the well wishing.
The job is going well and there's plenty of interest for me to learn.
My only frustration continues to be my very basic and disorganised living arrangements with impossibly sporadic internet access.
If all goes well with our flat hunting I hope to be back online properly soon!
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