During the week of Nov. 18th, 2024, I attended the 12th IRAM Interferometry School at the Institut de radioastronomie millimétrique (IRAM) Headquarters in Grenoble, France. It was attended by about 50 early-career scientists from all over the world, and over hundreds of applications, I was one of the lucky ones who were able to join this once-in-a-lifetime winter school. Thanks to all the organizers of the winter school, I learned so many things about the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) and how to use it to answer some of the key questions in astronomy, from galaxy formation and evolution and star formation to exoplanet astrophysics. I also got to review my knowledge of interferometry, which is my main topic of interest in my PhD. Aside from lectures about interferometry and the sciences that NOEMA can do, we also had lots of practical tutorials where we learned how to prepare a NOEMA proposal for observing time and how to use several software provided by IRAM to work with NOEMA data. I found these tutorials the most helpful during winter school. Sadly, we were not able to climb up the Plateau de Bure to visit NOEMA as the cable lines were covered with too much ice, so we ended up visiting Vizille, a town near Grenoble where the French Revolution Museum can be found.
I also took the opportunity to visit Paris for the first time after winter school for my holidays (which is also my birthday gift to myself, considering I will celebrate it in a week). I visited the iconic tourist spots and strolled around the streets of Paris. It was overall great, though I found some things in Paris a bit different from what I initially expected. Indeed, the "Paris Syndrome" is real!
Nevertheless, I really owe it to my postgraduate degrees that I am able to travel the world. That is why I always tell my friends who are interested in studying abroad to do it because it will be their main gateway to visiting more countries!
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