by Kaylee M Roupas
The past two weeks have been the craziest, most exhausting, and downright chaotic weeks of my entire PIRE experience…in a completely good way. I believe I last posted while I was in the process of running participants, transcribing BNTs, and assisting in the International Child Phonology Conference preparations. So to start with the conference…
The conference went incredibly well! In regards to the planning, everyone involved did a phenomenal job in making things run smoothly. Sure, we had long days of setting things up, taking things down, and managing everything in between, but it was a fun time just getting to know each other and feeling like we were contributing something to the program here. ICPC was the first conference I’ve ever attended, so going into it, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. (I was also a little nervous because all of the people attending and volunteering had a background in language acquisition, whereas I have only taken one course on the topic.) It only took one coffee break and one session of talks for me to realize that getting involved in the conference was probably the best decision I’ve made during my PIRE experience. I made friends with other students, met so many brilliant people, and learned a lot of new things about language acquisition. Everyone was so open and easy to talk to, and when I didn’t understand something (especially during the poster session!), they were all more than happy to explain things in more simple terms for me.
And then there was the pancake boat experience…
For dinner after the second day of the conference, we had access to unlimited pancakes and a ball pit (yes, the crew allowed us to be kids for the evening!), and enjoyed an evening of mingling and cruising on the beautiful river.
After the conference, I had one day of down time before it was off again for more adventures…SPAIN! To keep this short, Spain was a much-needed break from the cold, rainy Dutch weather. The country was beautiful, everyone there was just so happy, and it was refreshing to be able to understand a lot of the language. Not to mention, I got to spend a lot of time with my fellow PIRE cohorts, and got to know them better than I did at Penn State. We went to the beach for a day, hiked for a few hours in a small mountain town, and hung out in Granada. I also got to spend a few extra days there because of a minor issue with a bus to the airport, causing me to miss my original return flight. It was inconvenient, yes, but there are worse things than being stuck in Spain for a few days!
Now I’m back in the lab for my last week, trying to get as much work done as possible. On Sunday, my mom and sister will fly in to meet me in Amsterdam, then we’ll travel around for a little bit. This is my sister’s first time out of the United States, and I am so excited to show her around!!