After an endless streak of hours flying, navigating airports, and substituting real nutrition with vending machines, I finally landed in Melbourne. My first few days were mostly about getting settled and pretending I knew what I was doing. I “learned” the train system, got a gym membership, explored the city, and slowly adjusted to the fact that Australia is both very familiar and just different enough to make me second guess basic tasks without seeming painfully American. Cr

After Mont Blanc, hitchhiking across Europe, and an extremely unplanned weekend in Amsterdam, I expected the trip back to Melbourne to be the calm part. It was not. My flight from Shanghai was delayed, I had to wait for a replacement flight around midnight, and after finally landing in Melbourne, I got stuck in customs long enough to miss my meeting with Dr. Zengin. After several weeks of mountains, glaciers, and questionable transportation decisions, Australian customs someh

This week began at roughly 4,500 meters with my guide falling into a crevasse and ended with me partying in Amsterdam after hitchhiking across Europe for three days. Which is a sentence that becomes increasingly less responsible every time I read it. During our Mont Blanc climb, we were traveling across glaciated terrain when the snow beneath my guide suddenly gave way. One moment he was walking in front of me, and the next he disappeared into a crevasse. There was no dramati

Week 3 This week, my project officially entered the stage where every answer created three new questions. The basic idea was to examine whether medications with possible effects on bone, muscle, balance, or fatigue were associated with physical inactivity, falls, or fractures in people with MS. That sounds manageable until you realize that medications do not politely affect one body system at a time. Corticosteroids may affect bone remodeling and muscle tissue. Antiepileptics

After spending my first week learning how to exist in Melbourne, Isabel and I decided the logical next step was to immediately leave Melbourne and drive 9hrs to Sydney for the long weekend for a holiday that sounds made up (King's Day). Very efficient settling-in strategy. Seeing Sydney Harbour in person was nothing short of surreal. The Opera House is one of those places you have seen on screens so many times that it almost feels fictional. Then you turn a corner and it is s