The final leg of my trip – heading home to North Carolina after 6 weeks of travel! While I am looking forward to that, I am also somewhat frightened by the prospect of all the things that needs to be done to re-set to life in Carrboro. Beyond the typical reorganization of things (unpacking, doing laundry, going through the mail, filing paperwork, catching up with all the work I’ve willfully neglected over the past few weeks and cooking again), there is also the required changed in mindset of exploration of the unknown to be refocused on specific tasks, which is a mental shift I struggle with the most.

Our time in Atlanta was somewhat unstructured the first 2 days or so before the conference. We stayed with some friends and their 5 years old son in Decatur (NE of downtown Atlanta) for a few days over the New Year’s. It was low-key and provided us with some windows of opportunities to catch up a little bit on some work, although we also did play and hang out a far amount with their very bright 5- year old (he reads very well for his age, and we had some funny conversations). We were exhausted during our arrival in ATL on Dec 31^st because of the various layers of security both in Paris and on the US side, which resulted in multiple delays and spending too much time in lines. So, we didn’t bother with any countdowns to the New Year and slept through the transition to 2010. Marc & I ventured to Stone Mountain Park on New Years Day afternoon. Neither of us knew anything about Stone Mountain, but found a parking spot in the historical village by a trail which led us into the park. The rest of the run was up a very steep gigantic stone, which appeared to be a local attraction. It being a holiday, there were many couples and families hiking up the stone to the apex. I was unable to run the whole thing and walked at least ½ of the way up. It wind-chill was quite impressive (wind-speed was ~20 miles/hr) and very uncomfortable up there, and we were fortunate we were heading up with the wind on our backs and heading down with the wind in our face. Marc ran up the whole thing by running zig-zag up to ease the gradient, and got some amazed looks from others. The view from the top of Stone Mountain was rather astounding, but it was difficult to stay up there for long between the very cold temps and high winds!

We then spent 3 days in downtown Atlanta to attend the AEA (American Economic Association) conference wasn’t as chaotic as we had both envisioned and we both found many (but not all) of the sessions we attended interesting. There are some researchers doing some really good work, which makes me feel both inspired, but also very inadequate and to a certain degree rather ‘lost’ and overwhelmed.

My time in DC has also afflicted these same feelings. I was in DC to lead a group of 21 Nutrition MPH (Masters in Public Health) students on a National Nutrition Policy course. This involved some prep work and exercises I made them do back in Fall, but the capstone of the course is this trip. With the help of a nutrition consultation group based in DC, we had lined up a number of speakers representing legislative staff, lobby and interest groups, regulatory bodies and also researchers to cover an array of various pertinent nutrition issues over the course of 2 ½ days. These speakers come from very diverse and interesting backgrounds, sometimes starting out in areas barely associated with nutrition, but somehow found themselves in roles where that is the priority. Most of them are very well accomplished and clearly have learned how to navigate the very challenging world of policy-making.

From an educational point of view, beyond the slew of complex information to process, it was interesting to read between the lines of what people were saying and how they were stating the positions. Many of the speakers had to be very careful about their language because of the groups they represent, and some things were far more nuanced that it would appear on the surface. As they say “you can take the science out of the politics, but you can’t take the politics out of the science”. I learned a lot from this trip and am gaining better appreciation of and admiration for the skills necessary to work and survive in the political world, and upon reflection, I find myself severely lacking in many angles of these skills set.

Well, that’s it for a while probably. At some point I’ll post of photos from our trip(s) online.

~ Shuwen