First Anniversary in Italy

Elaina and I just got back from an 11-day anniversary vacation in Villasimius, Italy (on the island of Sardegna). Elaina had a neuroscience conference there, which she attended for the first three days, then we spent the rest of the time celebrating our first year of marriage :)

Trip Pros:

• Sardegna is GORGEOUS! Click here for a quick video at our hotel
  
• Food in Italy is better than most food in America.
• Tops are optional on all the beaches and pools. Here is a non-nude beach clip
  
• We found an empty beach (which we decided was a nude beach)
• The town of Villasimius is 100% pure Italian, no tourist traps or Americans with fanny packs.
• We randomly found an amazing church in the town of Cagliari. Click here for a video
  
• Driving is easy in Italy because nobody pays attention to traffic laws.
  

Trip Cons:

• Some Italians do not like Americans.
• We know about 2% of the Italian language.
• Our airline, Alitalia, stopped flying to Sardegna the day before we left. Figuring this out in Italian was not easy. This also caused us to miss our connection to New York. Alitalia paid for us to stay in Rome with full room and board so we could fly back the next day.
• Driving is hard in Italy because nobody pays attention to traffic laws.

Click here for some pictures!

Congrats to Elaina!

On Tuesday, May 9th, Elaina completed her PhD qualifying exams with an "Unconditional Pass." The qualifying exam is a 3+ hour-long oral examination where Elaina had to present her doctoral thesis to a panel of specialized doctors, whose sole purpose was to question everything she knows about Neuroscience. Ask any grad student -- qualifying exams are much harder than defending your thesis.

A clean pass is rare, and is the highest ranking available :)

She is now officially considered a doctoral candidate, and must complete the experiments she proposed in the exam to graduate. Congratulations!!!

And now for a corny picture of a happy Elaina: