The first month of my journey was pretty eventful: family visited from out of town, our nanny was gone for two weeks, we took David to the ER for stitches (just 3 months after the last trip), Kate caught a cold and it passed through the whole family. It was also a transitional period. Kate finished school and hugged goodbye to her friends. We moved out of the house for a few days to have the basement asbestos tiles removed. The heavy use of sunscreen announced the impending arrival of summer, along with its humidity.
Given the unexpected sickness and loss of childcare, I had to take two weeks off from research. During the days I felt so miserable with a sore throat, I was in pure survival mode: nap, eat, Lego, and repeat. At least, I was not utterly unproductive.
Progress report:
Research: I started an empirical project on how the type of childcare affects development in early childhood. I will be using a restricted dataset that follows more than 6,000 kids from birth to kindergarten. So far, I read through the data manual and files, picked and cleaned the needed data, ran some preliminary regressions, had a meeting with a colleague who is an expert in empirical work, and formed a clear direction for the paper.
French: As we wrap up the French book we studied for a year and half, Aisela and I are switching to Coffee Break French. This is a great podcast for language learning. We have listened to the first 2 seasons (free version) already, and now purchased the member version of season 3 for its texts and more comprehensive lecture material. So far, I studied the first two episodes and have most of the texts memorized.
Reading: 3 books finished: All Creatures Great and Small; Mere Christianity; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. They can’t be more different from each other. The first book is wholesome and pure. It puts a smile on your face, and you get quite a few good laughs. The last book is so odd in a good way. It reminds me of my teenage years when I was so into Sci-Fi stories that I even wrote one myself. My favorite out of the three books has to be C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I was simply blown away by his intellect. In this book, he broke down some hard concepts in Christianity into pieces that are so easy to understand and apply in life. He did it with clear logic and clean writing. He did it with an ease that almost makes you think it is easy to do. I know I will be reading more of his work.