I must said that those were some of the hardest months that I recall, and even if it doesn't sound like me, I wouldn't have made it through without my parents (you know you are getting old when you start needing your family again, I guess. They are the only ones left when you spend too much time jumping from one place to another and have the social skills of an E.coli...).
But then the days became longer and sunnier and I started to be called for interviews. Murphy's being always there, at some point I had to make the choice between doing an interview for a Fulbright scholarship or another for a fully funded PhD which happened to be on the very same date and time with no possibility of changing any of them...And well, having La Caixa scholarship as a back up for the project that I proposed to the Fulbright, I travelled to UK for my interview...and it worked!!
Long story short, in a matter of months I had a formal offer for a fully funded PhD studying genetic relatedness and social complexity in macaques! (not without a lot of paperwork confussion, rifi-rafes que te cagas en las bragas de mafalda, and so on).
So, in September I flew back to UK and started my PhD! Months of paper reading, paperwork, seminars, research questions seek, and way too many socials, a little problem kept to be unresolved...where to carry out the project? The thing is that I was supposed to study my beloved Moroccan macaques, mais pas de autorisation mon amie! So we searched for some alternatives and reduced to one...with loads of drawbacks as well. Perfection, as real as a unicorn...and probably as practical.
But, in anycase, it seems that I finally have a next field site to think of...while getting the visa, the permit, finishing the data collection protocol, all the paperwork and so, so, so on...but whenever I get tired and overwhelmed, I'll look at pictures like the one of the guy down here, and remember that the pleasure of their company worths it all! Selamat tyndall
