Asian snacks -- Chocolate biscuit

More Asian snacks from December! These were chocolate-filled little crunchy biscuits. I mostly bought them because I like the box with the woodland scene and cute little squirrels, but the treats inside were pretty tasty too!

These were small crunchy biscuits filled with hardened milk chocolate and they made nice snacks -- I would definitely eat them again. Chocolate biscuits -- the food of choice for small woodland creatures!

Asian snacks -- Almond Pocky

Digging around in my photos a little more, I found lots of Asian snack foods that I ate in Washington, but never got around to posting. Now that my dissertation is nearing its final completion, I am going to try and post more on my blog -- I've been neglecting it a little bit.

Here is Almond Pocky! I love Pocky: biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate. These Almond Pocky tasted mostly like milk chocolate with very little discernible almond flavor. They were good, but not really what I was expecting. I will stick to the dark chocolate-covered Men's Pocky!

Cactaceae fruits

I was looking through some of my old photos the other day and I found some of a couple cactus fruits that Carlos and I had a few months ago. The first fruit is a pitahaya (or red dragon fruit, Hylocereus undatus). We found this growing in the arboretum and I was surprised that no one else had found it first. I was a little let down by the taste, it wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be -- especially compared to pitahaya ice cream that I've eaten in Costa Rica (made from another species of pitahaya: Hylocereus costaricensis)!

The other cactus fruit is a prickly pear from genus Opuntia. These are sweet fruits and I especially like prickly pear syrup in lemonade! When you eat these, they really are a bit prickly so watch out for little minuscule spines on the outside.

Washington D.C.-bound

So, the cool news that I hinted at in one of my earlier posts is official now -- Carlos and I will be moving to Washington D.C. this summer! We are both super excited about this new development. Carlos received a prestigious fellowship from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and will be working there for a while. I don't have a post-doc lined up quite yet, but I am working on it (especially by going to the Frugivory and Seed Dispersal conference in France this June!).

This summer will be really busy with packing, moving, and a couple of travels here and there. My parents are coming down to Miami for graduation in June and after that we are driving north to Orlando for a vacation in Walt Disney World. After that, my mom, her friend Judy, and I are going to France for the aforementioned frugivory conference and some post-conference travels. It is a little hectic planning all of this stuff and finishing up the written portion of my dissertation, but it is all coming together and it is really exciting to be leaving Miami soon for the coolness that is D.C.!

Dissertation defense party

Well, it's been a little over a week (I defended last Wednesday) and things are starting to get back to normal around here. I thought I would post a nice picture of me with my committee at the little party we had in the arboretum after my presentation/defense. It was really nice to be surrounded by friends, fellow grad students, and faculty on this day!

In the picture of me with my committee, my advisor is on the far left. We all had a fun time and I was really glad to be done with my defense!

Done!

Well, it's been a super-busy week here, but it is over and I have successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation! It is a great feeling to be through the hardest part of this degree and now all I have left to do is polish it up, incorporate some suggestions made by my committee, and fill out my paperwork before graduation in May! It is also cool that now I get to call myself "doctor." Haha.

Carlos also successfully defended and we are on our way, planning the next step, which I can't reveal quite yet, but we have good options. Now I can REALLY start getting excited about our trip to Orlando and my trip to France!!