My first working trip, and in general, the first time in US, the first time in a huge and important conference. Mixing of fear, curiosity, desire to meet and exchange, and also to learn, and know more about the community I am working in.
Long trip, nice clouds from the little oval window of the plane, bringing me back every moment to the question of my study: how rain is forming, how these drops are colliding together to grow bigger and bigger. In which conditions does this happen? What fosters, and what makes this process more difficult?
The plane is flying fast, and in a few hours I land in Boston.
Skipping the description on how amazing this city is, I simply fell in love with it…. the incredible kindness and politeness of its inhabitants, the lovely weather and food, the sea and the wind…
I will just talk about the conference. From Monday to Friday. Very intense, at the beginning a little bit like feeling you are at a meeting between friends that you don’t know, most probably due to the fact that nobody was introducing themselves, and there were no ice breaking sessions or social activities. We immediately jumped into the science. Two sessions, on radiation and cloud physics… I went on for the whole week jumping from one to the other, following a mental path I built in my mind of which one could be the most interesting topics connected with my job.
It was amazing. Tons of interesting work, smart people doing crazy things, relating observations and models, turbulence and processes, radiation and climate… I kept on thinking for a while how to summarise here all the interesting things I have been listening to, but maybe in the end… the best is just to make a picture of all the keywords that are still into my mind, after this long and intense week.
Thanks to my supervisor, I met fundamental contacts for the development of my work. Thanks to my colleague Kerstin, I learnt how to behave, what to do, and how not to feel like a fish out of the water. In the end, the world seems so small at AMS conference... and I met Italian friends now working on the other side of the ocean, and most of all I loved to present my little work to these giants, so easy going and friendly, passing by my poster. Once again, thanks Itars for all that!