One month and counting!

When you first find out about something really big in your life, it seems like it's forever away and you can't wait for it to come, until all of the sudden, it's right around the corner. That's how I'm starting to feel with my fast-approaching move to England in mid-September. I am at once completely ready-to-go yet utterly unprepared, terribly excited but equally terrified. I guess that's usually how it is with big life changes--marriage, first child, buying a private island--but having never experienced any of the former, these opposing emotions seem to hit me (with some frequency) like a ton of bricks.

For those who don't know, the reason I'm moving to England is to start a Ph.D. program at the University of East Anglia's Sainsbury Research Unit in Norwich (pronounced "Nor-itch"). Norwich is a large city (around 130,000 people) very close to the North Sea and about two hours northeast of London. It has the second largest 12th century gothic cathedral in England (behind Salisbury Cathedral), and an outdoor market that has been operating in the same location for over 900 years!

At the SRU, I will be working towards my Ph.D. in World Art Studies, which is basically an interdisciplinary program in Art History, Anthropology, and Archaeology. Given my research on contemporary Maya woodcarvings and "tourist art" in Yucatan, Mexico, this is an ideal program for me considering that many of the faculty and graduate students are investigating contemporary ethnic, "non-Western," or "tourist" arts in different areas of the world. Here's the SRU's homepage if you're interested in learning more:
http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/index.php

Hope you enjoy what's to come in my Adventures in England...