This is my first recently post! I plan on writing roughly monthly about what I've been up to, what I hope to be doing, and occasionally other things on my mind.

We've been living in Luzern, Switzerland for one year. It's a beautiful town and has great access to nature, which we've been trying to take advantage of as much as possible. It's been extremely foggy for most of the past two months, making it all-the-more tempting to get above the clouds.

It has been difficult to meet people, but I have a good network of friends around the country to rely on. This has been nice for planned visits, but spontaneous meet-ups or encounters have definitely been lacking.

To help with this, and for other reasons, I've been taking German classes twice per week with Lingoda, an online language course platform. Progress is slow, but I've recently been able to understand simple questions and can sometimes slowly reply. Twice per week should have me progressing at one CEFR level per year. I previously tried in-person classes, and might return to them in the future, but I currently like the flexibility of online classes.

Coding has been very fun and enjoyable recently. Hacking away in a Jupyter Notebook or building a simple web map has become easier, which has allowed me to (slowly) turn the infinite list of project ideas I have into reality. For example, here's a map of all water fountains and toilets (on OSM) in Europe GitHub repo. I do still rely on ChatGPT to make these, especially to start projects. However, I can now iterate with ChatGPT much more effectively because I know what to ask for, and can usually tell if its response is the most appropriate or not.

I was lucky enough to go to India recently for a work trip. We stuck around for an additional week to take advantage of the opportunity. It was an eye-opening experience. I was particularly impacted by the stark, visible divide between the rich and poor. Unimaginable wealth would be right next to unimaginable poverty. Life was on full display in all regards (good and bad).

Of course, the food was phenomenal. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the food scene in the regions we visited, whether it was local, national, or international cuisine.

Travel and weather have taken a toll on my exercise routine. I've been running much less often these days. I hope to do more indoor workouts and do more yoga.

Looking forward, I'm excited for the holidays, snow(sports), projects at work, and coding opportunities, and enjoy the routine I have for learning German.