Greetings from Williamstown!

Hello to all of my fellow Ephs!

Ann Rightmire here, reporting from the lovely Williamstown, MA. I’m working for Overland Summers this summer (shout-out to Eph Nordie alum Luke Costley – director of Overland!). I’m part of Overland’s Field Staff, made up of recent college freshmen who are based out of Williamstown supporting local trips, working in the office, retrieving/dropping off kiddos at the Albany airport, shuttling 15-passenger vans with U-haul trailers around New England, and leading trips when needed.

Snoozin at the Albany airport

I’ve mostly been in Williamstown but have led 2 sessions of New England Adventure - a 1-week introductory hiking/biking/white-water rafting trip for 4th-6th graders.

Camp setup in the White Mountains!

It’s been a blast! Sometimes chaotic, sometimes exhausting, but always tons of fun with some great people. 

Soggy Moosilauke summit with the kids!

When I’m not at the Albany Airport or trying a new flavor at Lickity (recently discovered the smoothies/milkshakes - yummy!), I’ve been exploring the great training venues of Williamstown in as many shoulder-friendly ways as I can find. Lots of biking (thanks Janne for the bike!), running, hiking, swimming, etc. It’s been HOT but so much fun – the perfect excuse to end every bike-hike-run with a swim in the many swimming holes Williamstown has to offer! My favorite recent discovery has been the one at the base of Hopper Road. 

Biking! In Pownal!

Taconic Crest Trail/RRR!

My parents stopped by for a quick visit (shout out to Matt and Marg!). We hit up all the spots—three visits to Lickity in 24 hours, swimming at the Clark, looking for bunnies, visiting Cricket Creek Farm pigs, and trying to find the Stone Hill Cows. They were only around for 24 hours, but we saw 14 bunnies, two pigs, and lots of cows (but no purple ones 🙁). 

Lickity!

Stone Hill cow!

Cricket Creek pig!

And I’ve been lucky enough to have some Williams friends and teammates around to share the fun with (when our days off line up, which is rare)! I got to visit Chip and Sage in VT for a bike ride, pond swim, and yummy pizza. Molly, Keelan, and Quinn are always up for a Lickity run, cheffing up some delicious dinner, or other fun adventures. And I even get to see Anni-Cow and Ste-Eph around Williamstown! 

A Williamstown rainbow!

That’s all for now…I hope everyone is having the summer of their dreams! I miss you all!

Lots of Eph Love,

Ann 

Tech, Trails, and Triumphs in Norway

Greetings from Norway! (and thanks to chat GPT for the title)

I have spent the last ~5 weeks enjoying equal parts working and exploring. 

The working part - 

I have been interning at a tiny startup company in Oslo called LiTech. There are about 7 other employees beside me and the goal is to be able to detect and sort batteries in waste streams.  The company is a member of StartUp Lab which is a collective of startups (including at one point Kahoot! and ReMarkable) based out of the Oslo Science Park. 

The building I work in (Oslo Science Park)

In order to sort the batteries we have a sensor that uses electromagnetic induction coils that create and receive a magnetic field. We then take that field and analyze how it changes depending on what is over the sensor using machine learning. The company is in a very exciting phase and it is just starting to test the product at facilities.

Co-workers Joschka and Niklas installing the first sensor in the field

I have found work super interesting and have been doing a little bit of everything: physics- math - cs - and just practical thinking about logistics. Some highlights include learning how to 3D print and touring a circuit board creation factory.

Now for the exploring part!

As I write this I am sitting at my campsite by a lake just underneath Mount Rondaslottet (pictured above). This weekend I have been backpacking my way around Rondane National Park. Today's leg included quite a bit of “trails” on the map which were actually just climbing through boulder and scree fields but I had an urge within me to bag as many peaks as possible. 

Looking back towards the ridge I traversed

The final view of the mountains leaving the park

Last weekend I had a super fun visit to Linden in Stockholm for some sightseeing, a run around the city, and an excursion to the Viking Museum.

From left to right Swedish fika, Viking museum, and run selfie in front of the U.S. Embassy

I also had a brief Janne sighting, well actually an entire Koch family sighting, where they took me out to eat some yummy food.

I am living in an apartment with a few Norwegians around my age and they have been super friendly and welcoming including inviting me on their weekly runs.

A swim mid-run in the river that runs through Oslo

Other weekends and afternoons I feel like I have gotten to know Oslo pretty well through training my way around the city. I absolutely the surrounding woods and how quickly things drop off into beautiful nature with what feels like an infinite number of trails to run on. I have also been doing a decent amount of roller skiing and it is always a bit of a shock to see so many others out doing the same.

A sunny day at my favorite ski called Maridalen

Assorted city views

And then of course we can’t forget about the food so here are a few highlights.

Pølse i vaffle on a ferry, Swedish pastries, and shawarma

Time has been flying by here and it is hard to believe that I’ve only got 1.5 weeks left. Next week I’ll be finishing up at work and then exploring the western fjords with Sage over the weekend. After that, I head home to finish out the summer with a solid block of training in Craftsbury.

Cheers,

Tzevi

Au Tour de France!

 

and I owe it all to my fan

 Greetings to the herd! 

After giving everyone enough time to thoroughly enjoy Linden’s reporting from Sweden, we are back with some blogging action. 

I am writing to you all from our very own Williamstown! After a nice hiatus at home, where I spent some good days on the last bits of snow, I packed up the car with all the essentials set my sights back east.

On campus, I have been busy with my two important jobs: 

1.) proud member of the summer clog supremacy and 2.) working in the environmental analysis lab. These two jobs are, as anyone would have guessed, intricately interconnected.

Fig 2: women + clogs = best results; Ava and I toting around our beloved stream samples.

                            

Working in the lab with my wonderful lab partner Ava, we spend our days tackling a variety of tasks. Our main task is, of course, catering to a fabulous lab atmosphere with 24/7 tunes and ample snack breaks (with a strict adherence to lab safety and protocols). On the side, we spend a lot of time running samples, which we like to do anywhere between one and four times depending on how often we forget a critical step and begin anew (only partly kidding, we are getting pretty good).

What sort of samples are we “running”, might you wonder? Water samples! Which brings us to the most exciting part of the job: going around in Hopkins forest with a variety of forest-minded friends to collect rain and stream samples and check on weather stations. We then take these samples and perform a series of chemical analyses to see what's going on with them. Why? To keep the metaphorical finger on the pulse of the Williamstown atmosphere, soil, plants, etc via water data. It's extremely glamorous. 

 

Fig 2: Aforementioned instances of glamorous tasks: collecting measurements of debris damns in the creek and checking data from a weather station.

Beyond the day job, I spend the rest of my time with fantastic company (including many friends and members of our beloved team) here on campus and enjoying the fruits of an east coast summer: experiencing the sights and smells of all the New England greenery, cooking, picnicking, running, swimming, and generally having a very nice time hanging out. 

some friends and various picnics!

And of course, I owe it all to my mighty box fan; whose ever-constant hum keeps me bearably cool in this New England July.

stay tuned for more eph nordic news! 

-- Molly B

Det finns kor i sverige

 Hej från Sverige!

I'm writing this post over a nice cup of coffee from the KTH kitchen before I set out on a FULL day of lab work. Yep, I've got my own experiments to run and data to collect (notably not analyze, because I have not a clue on what a CV graph tells you). I've sort of moved into the second stage of my internship where I am not learning so much, and instead running controls and experiments to verify that we know what's going on. 

    But let me back up, where am I?!? Well, a little over a year ago, I was perusing an article for a  lab report when I realized the authors were all Swedish! Essentially after tossing the idea around a little bit, exchanging some emails, 6:00 am calls (noon for the swedes), and one fellowship later, I was on a plane to the land of the midnight sun!

    My dad came with me to help me get through the airport and settle into my lodgings for the summer. I had time before my job actually started so I also got the chance to wander around the city and see what's poppin'. But then the vacation portion of my trip came to a close as I hopped on the commuter line (Pendletåg) for the first time and rode off into the city to that ivory tower, castle on a hill, KTH.

     So my job for this summer is as a research assistant in Dr. James Gardner lab, a group of masters, PhD, and post-doc researchers all working in the realm of metal-organic chemistry. Our host institution is Kungliga Tekniska Högskola (veteskap och konst), the Royal Institute of Technology (science and art). This university is at the very northern end of Stockholm and is "a public research university that conducts research and education in engineering and technology and is Sweden's largest technical university". 

    So far, I've been here a little over a month and it has been amazing; I love working here. Everyday I walk into Teknikrigen 30 and either head to the office to do some data analysis/ reading (either articles or my current self-assigned assignment Electrochemical Methods; Fundamental and Applications") or over to the lab to check our experiments. I've been given full access to the labs and stockrooms and machine spaces and really work on my own time. I feel for the first time that I am really doing research. 

    My supervisor, Mahboubeh, is also super nice and we've stuck a nice balance where she gives me responsibilities, but also is there to instruct and guide me in the process. And this is what really has stuck me since being here. At williams, we are primarily a teaching institution, we are preparing students through lessons and creative thinking, but there is only a soft pressure to get into a lab and DO research. Our facilites pale in comparison to what KTH has and the attitude of the people here is more formal, or at least, more science driven. This isn't to say that williams is bad, I just mean that each one has their own guiding principles. Both of these have been enjoyable to experience and as I continue through this summer, I am learning not only the techniques and ways of conducting oneself in a research setting, but also what it means to be a full time researcher, where that takes over your time as school, or at least becomes the center of it. 

    This is all important to me since I am planning on attending graduate school and aiming for a PhD in chemistry, at some point hopefully securing a professorship position someplace. There are a lot of steps in between those two points though and so I, or really my mom, have to remind myself that I have to take things one step at a time and enjoy the moment. 

    And enjoying the moment I have been! Its been a little hard to balance work + training + having fun, but I find times to go work at different coffee shops, jump in the lake in Stockholm after workouts, go to museums/events. So far, the notable things I have done are going up north to Nörrfãllsviken (or something like that, I don't want to go look it up right now), for midsummer with my host family. There, I was very inspired to really make the effort to learn Swedish, which isn't nearly as hard (or easy) as I thought it would be (there are so many words that have "för" in them and I can never remember them). Also, I feel like the universe is affirming me as a Chemistry and FRENCH major, since my "best" friend here is a born and bred frenchman. Simon and I have lunch together and sometimes go out into the city after work, and he has introduced me to some of his other French acquaintances here at KTH. It seems as if as the swedes all leave for holiday, the French move in. 

Even with the standard study-abroad douleurs (a little loneliness, despondency from time to time, panic at seeing something cost 500 kr),  this experience has been great so far and I am so excited for it to continue as the more time I spend here, the easier the basic things become and the more exciting things arise. 

I'll definitely post again, but for right now, bye/hej då! 

(please excuse any typos or anything weird sounding, I wrote this in one sitting and did 0 proof reading)

On a hike with my host family

With a statue of Magdelena Forsberg

my SL card

Klæbo as a hair gel model, lol

I dropped my phone while trying to take a selfie

The clouds in Stockholm feel more beautiful than in the US

KTH uses robotic lawn mowers,

My favorite Swedish artist

In the Swedish national art museum

I love a "torry"? I think thats what its called

snygg

yum

a lighthouse on a beach run that I went on up north

my on midsummer with a flower crown

A fun drink with the French of sweden

Dorian (L) and Simon (R)

my toxic chemicals sometimes look pretty

me writing this blog post