a lot of people here probably know that I spent most of this summer in sunny Eilat, Israel, where I worked at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Science (which everyone calls the IUI). A quick shoutout to MIT MISTI-Israel for their support in this process, from helping me find this opportunity to financing my stay. I’m very fortunate to have access to these resources, and I would encourage anyone else who does to take full advantage of it. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be back in the U.S., taking a short break before I move to Pasadena for grad school. I’m looking forward to visiting family and friends as I prepare to take my quals and start my PhD!
this post is the first in a two-part series, in which I want to document some of my experiences and longer thoughts surrounding international travel, homesickness, and summers before grad school. I’ll start with my reasoning for undertaking all of this travel: for those who’ve known me for a while, you might know that I spent a long time debating what I wanted to do with this summer. There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there—for many people it’s the last time for a long while that you’ll ever have so few responsibilities in your career and personal life, which makes it the perfect time for a break. On the other hand, grad school is a big transition, and it makes a lot of sense to ease into it by moving to the area and starting your work early. I don’t believe in making your work your entire life, but I can definitely see the advantages of having a head start. A third option I considered was to find a better paying job (compared to undergraduate research assistantships!) and to save a bit more money before grad school. I still think all of these choices would have been really sensible, which is probably why I found this decision so difficult.
ultimately I chose to take a bit of a break, and to pursue something different from what I had done in the past. I knew that I wanted to work on something no matter what, and by chance came across a MISTI email advertising research opportunities on the Red Sea. Miraculously (or so it felt), I was accepted as a summer intern at the Laboratory for Computational Optics and Light in the Ocean Realm, affectionately shortened as COLOR Lab, where I’ve been working for the last two months and a bit. I also thought it was convenient to merge MISTI with my other international travel plans, and took a bit of a detour through Asia before arriving in Israel. Looking back, I feel like this was a great choice, although I strongly believe that I would feel the same way had I gone with either of the other options. I’ll reflect a bit more on this later; for now, I’ll summarize my first (extremely busy) week, which comprised my journey to Israel before settling into Eilat.
pre-travel
I want to preface my experiences by saying that this was the first time in my conscious life that I had ever flown internationally. Technically I traveled to China and back when I was about two years old, but prior to this summer I was totally clueless about the differences between domestic and international flights. For the most part I think this enhanced my joy at experiencing everything for the first time and made it a more valuable experience, but I also almost missed one of my flights due to not giving myself more room for error to make it to the airport in time to check in.
I am thankful that I decided beforehand to only bring one carry-on, along with a backpack and travel pillow. I ended up acquiring a few new items in Israel, which I’ll have to cram in (fingers crossed) so I can bring them back, but the first two weeks were so hectic that I was glad I traveled relatively light so that I didn’t have to lug around a giant checked suitcase. Other than packing, which was also part of the process of moving out of my apartment, I felt like I didn’t really go out of my way to prepare. I did end up buying a new camera, a secondhand Fujifilm XF10, which is now my favorite travel companion and which I’ll probably write another post on later.
tokyo
we budgeted three and a half days in Tokyo, so it was a bit tricky to figure out what we wanted to prioritize seeing. It was also rainy season in Japan, which made me a bit anxious since I didn’t want to pack a raincoat just for those few days, but it ended up only raining for a few hours total during our trip. We stayed in Asakusa, which aside from having lots of good food was fairly quiet at night and a relatively easy trip to and from the airport with a direct express train. Some other things in Tokyo that stood out to me, in no particular order:
breakfast at the only place nearby open before 8am, Cafe Tomorrow Asakusa
a surprisingly good chashu taiyaki + yama-budo (mountain grape) ice cream from this one stall on the corner of the street
TeamLab Planets, which was better than I expected and the best-executed example of an “interactive art exhibit” I’ve seen
kitsune soba at Gensoba Roan, a little out of the way but worth it to experience Shimokitazawa, which reminds me a little bit of Brookline with its small shops. We visited on a rainy evening and like most of the Google reviewers were the only tourists there. The staff came out to tell us there was a thirty minute wait in Japanese, and I managed a very, very shaky response. The food was good, but I think the cutest part was the handwritten note they brought to our table after we had finished our noodles, explaining how to drink the soba water. I grew up drinking dumpling “soup” after every celebration dinner, so this felt like a perfect end to our night out
making it to the airport with just about ¥3,000 (roughly $30) remaining. It turns out some changes to the IC card system had been implemented just before we arrived, making it very difficult to get one as a foreigner without a Japanese bank account or credit card, so we paid in cash basically everywhere
overall, I really liked visiting Tokyo, and could definitely see myself returning or even living there for a while. I especially noticed and appreciated how clean the city was, which made the streets feel very comfortable despite being very narrow by American standards. And Asakusa is beautiful at night—practically begging to be shot in Kodak Gold 200 (this was shot and edited digitally though):
singapore
I only spent two and a half days in Singapore, since one of the main reasons I visited was for the wedding of a friend-of-a-friend. I spent the second day finding ways to entertain myself, since most of the people I knew were in the bridal party and I wasn’t. Instead of min-maxing, I decided to relax and go with the flow, which meant getting some reading in but not having time to visit Marina Bay Sands and soak in the infinity pool. I did indulge in some simple pleasures:
the Gardens by the Bay, which are spectacularly well designed. I’m proud to say I’ve now visited the largest greenhouse on Earth!
Hainanese chicken rice, which definitely lived up to my expectations—a pretty high bar since I also love other poached chicken dishes like saliva chicken (口水鸡)
Tea Chapter, a tea shop where they teach you the gongfu tea ceremony (工夫茶) method of brewing tea. We tried their signature Imperial Golden Cassia, which is a lightly fermented and fragrant oolong tea, and which I liked more than the other Chinese oolongs I’ve tried before (mainly variations of Iron Goddess)
lots and lots of fresh fruit, courtesy of my hosts. If anyone knows where to find green guava in the U.S. (especially near Pasadena), please let me know!
concluding the East Asia leg of my trip and leaving for Israel was a bit bittersweet, in part because I didn’t know many people in the MISTI program to start out but also due to other factors that were difficult to articulate before living in Israel: for various reasons, Tokyo and Singapore felt fairly comfortable and also somehow familiar, even though I had never visited either place before this summer. In hindsight, this might seem obvious—the flavor profile of the food was relatively similar to what I grew up eating, and because I’m also of East Asian descent, I never received any remarks on my ethnicity or weird looks from people on the street. I was only asked where I was from once, in a casual conversation with the nail tech who did my nails for the wedding, perhaps because she was surprised by my English or Chinese accent, or some combination thereof. Living on my own in Israel was a very sharp contrast, and for that reason I think it was a really important experience for me to have. At the same time, I’m glad that that I started with the (for me) easier-to-navigate East Asia circuit and not the other way around in my international travels.
ahhh missing an intl flight,, def one of the experiences of all time
that handwritten note sounds so cute