HOL Ravenclaw

Art Time!

Having to travel from pole to pole was a slightly terrifying notion for Gary to flap his brain around, but once travels begin snowballing forward, some of the tension lifts and he finds that he’s actually enjoying the unexpected adventure quite a bit more than anticipated! In spite of how nervous he is at being so far from the safe and familiar territories of the north, what a treat it is getting up close and personal with such a variety of new things and places across an exhilarating journey such as this.

Task:
Create a Signature & Avatar to use along the trek of this activity! Sizing specs are 250x100px for signatures, 100x100px for avatars.

Alternatively, tell us in 100 words or more about an adventure you’ve been on where you were put in new and unfamiliar situations, or generally got to soak up a different world!

Post your Signature and Avatar, or your alternative task, below by January 31st at 11:59pm HOL time to earn 10 beans.

When I was 12, my dad took me, one of my brothers, and a couple family friends on a road trip up to Maine and back. It took two weeks and we visited a lot of historical landmarks along the way. One of the places we went to was Fort Ticonderoga in New York state. It sits near Lake Champlain and has a star-shaped formation of its walls. It was barely used in the American Revolutionary War. Since it’s been restored it feels like being back in the late 1700s when it was built and used. The cannons were stolen to be used in Boston during the war but were replaced by the ones cast in England to be used during the war but it was over before they could be shipped. Walking around the fort really gave me a sense of how old it was and that while it wasn’t significant in the Revolutionary War, it did have troops and battles there.

[OUT OF CHARACTER]
In January 2012, I was invited to take an eight month assignment as a "Tutkijatohtori" (which literally means "research doctor"; essentially it's a postdoctoral position) at a major university in Finland. This meant moving my very cold blooded self from California, known for mild winters, to a country known for extreme cold. But first I stopped off at my parents in Maryland, where I was bundled up for freezing temperature (ironically, when I landed in Finland, it was warmer than it had been in Maryland)!

Even though I had loved Finland from my previous visit there (in the summer of 2007, for a conference), this was an entirely different experience. But I started with a weekend at the hotel I knew from that conference, soaked in everything I remembered loving about the city, and was able to orient myself a little bit when my postdoctoral mentor met me at the hotel to take me to my apartment (and then to the math department). By then, winter had truly set in, so those clothes became necessary... and of course I spent most of the first week simply getting lost everywhere!

Eventually I got my internal compass in order, falling in love with the way the city was planned (very well heated buildings, easy to get around and hide from the element, amazing public transit, great views of nature), making an impression on my colleagues, and even improving my Finnish! It's been over a decade, and I still miss Finland... but not enough to want to spend another winter there!

I wish I could say that I travelled the world and got lost in some exotic country, but the truth is, I've only traveled around the United States. When I did travel I was always with someone to hep rely on to found our way around... BUT, the one time I was really on my own was when I got married and moved from NYC to upstate NY, to the suburbs of Guilderland, NY. Now, being born and bred in NYC I could travel around the 5 boroughs of NYC but put me in what I considered "the country" I was absolutely lost at first.

I knew how to get to the in-laws, a couple of supermarkets and my place of work, but others... I knew nothing about the lay of the land. Now mind you this is before the days of cell phones and having GPS that you could just pop in the address and BAM... there is it on a screen! And at first there wasn't even Map Quest that you could print out directions to get you someplace, but even with that when it came along, if you made a wrong turn your paper didn't "recalculate"... you were lost... that is until you turned around and went place to the area you made that wrong turn.

It took a while, but I did find my way around and now this place is home.

And GPS still is a life saver sometimes!

Done

Done! I had a blast making my avatar!
https://i.postimg.cc/bv9p1WvH/My-HOL-Avatar.png

This is a great segue from my previous post, as I have never experienced anything as novel and unfamiliar as moving to Japan.

When I came here, I could barely speak a lick of Japanese. I was thrown into a new world as a research student, trying to amass as much knowledge as I could in my field (Law) in as little time as possible. I had to not only learn the language and the customs of the country I decided to move to, but also a completely novel legal system and new forms to interact with those who were around me.

However, more interestingly than that was the process of self-discovery. I believe that being thrown into unfamiliar scenarios bring up our true selves, or at least help us develop what could be construed as parts of our personalities that are just waiting to erupt. In Brazil, I was commonly perceived as an intellectual that was described by little other than that simple trait. When I moved to Japan, things changed drastically: I prided myself much more on being unique and disrupting social expectations, as well as having leadership traits, to the point these became the characteristics most would use to describe myself nowadays. In a sense, moving to a different country is a blank slate for rewriting our story, and there is nothing more novel than deciding who you want to be when given free rein to change your reality.