Like you said, Salsa, Wales is stunningly beautiful. But would I like to live there? It is pretty remote. No big towns for shopping or symphony concerts. But then again, I now live only an hour from London and I've been there three half days in the three years I've lived here but always complained about the lack of hiking around here. Hmmm....perhaps Wales would be good.

As for the job, I waver between panic and excitement about it. I didn't get a good look around the departement when I was there because I was only there for a half hour interview and a half hour talk, but what little I saw was good. The few people I did meet seemed nice and the facilities good. And they are getting huge influx of funding for a new building and a restructuring of the entire curriculum which would give me as the teacher of animal behaviour a lot of freedom to design those courses. It is only a one year post to start with with focus on teaching that first year, but they want this to then merge into a more traditional lectureship post with a mix of teaching and research and from the dept heads description of the situation, what mix of research and teaching I would get after that first year was largely dependent on what I wanted. I think if I decide I want a job in academia, this would be a very good opportunity. But is that what I want? and is Wales what I want? Who knows?!