Snail migration

My last days at the boat have been a mad rush of packing and completing renovations. On the way out the door the first (and nearly last) day back, I realized I had forgotten my lunch, but I was already running late for a team project meeting. Noticed a pretty little snail moseying across the path and avoided stepping on it - wish I had my camera ... no time. Made it to my bike, thought I better send a text to let my team-mates know I was en route ... and realized what I was about to do.

And walked back to the boat, got my lunch, the camera, took a few photos of the snail and got back on my bike at a more rationale pace.

Result: I arrived a whole 10 minutes late for the meeting. (I've done worse when I'm in the building!) Lesson learned.

I've migrated with my new lower speed lifestyle to my new life and new blog at die Schnelle Schnecke. Note that is not French.

Au revoir!

The French Pace

I finally settle into the slow pace of shuffle-hopping down the hall after only a day with crutches. It seems to go with the territory - everything in France is just a bit slower, more laid-back, less hurry-scurry than Vancouver. The store line-ups that don't move, the drivers that daydream at a light, dining on escargot à la escargot. C'est la vie. Whatever will happen will happen when it will happen.

And now that I'm settled into the snail's-pace - our team project is ramping up ...


We raced through another TP meeting this morning in record time.

We flew through initial research for our Delivery System Group.

We rocketed through an outline to meet the report editor's deadline.

But we still weren't as fast as the French train system.

Click pic for "live" footage.

It's bound to happen ... C'est mathématique!

Reporting live from the trenches, your wounded-in-action reporter,

Renee

The Darwin Award for Multi-tasking

Excellent weekend to start with - nobody worked a full day Friday and half the class played hooky to go on a road trip to Prague. KJ twisted my arm to meet Ziggy and girlfriend at the Cine-star where we saw "Namesake," a Bengali-American film with depth and brilliance. (I was so laid-back about leaving the boat that I just about nailed a duck on the way - heavy foreshadowing here.) I couldn't tell you what I did Saturday, but whatever it was didn't start before noon. After laundry and a little shopping spree in the gourmet section of Monoprix, I rolled by C&B's apartement for a 6-hour Pride and Prejudice marathon, which is worth it for so much more than any literary sense.

So you've probably been waiting on tenderhooks for my progress in French lessons: I just found a new context for the word "noeud" (knot) - "je suis en un noeud avec mon vélo" - a handy phrase when you need to explain why you can't get off the road. I learned beaucoup de nouveaux mots today, including: soutures, radio (x-ray), and fracture, which look marvelously like the English but sound completely posh when spoken in French. Also "Ne bougez pas" (don't move!).

I am loathe to admit the following, so it will be largely en français, which the impatient may translate online.

I'm up to complete sentences that prove very useful in an emergency like: "Monsieur, merçi mais je ne peut pas marcher." oh and when asked "Comment avez-vous tombé avec votre vélo, madame?" with my newly acquired fluency, I could respond confidently "J'ais essayé de faire un message avec mon mobile le même temps que j'etais allé sur mon vélo." At which point they stopped addressing me as "madame." And "Est-ce que vous êtes Canadienne?" "Mais oui, monsieur, mais toutes les canadiens ne sont pas si stupide."


Luckily today was "Foot Day" at the Clinique St. Odile - I was one of 4 consecutive foot injuries in the emergency room, and the guy following me (who was also the only one speaking any English since the accident, or maybe I hit my head harder than I thought) was kind enough to drive me to campus since it was his left foot he sprained.

So here I sit, nursing my broken foot, stitched head and other aches and pains and doing what I finally planned for the day: updating my blog. You will be happy to know that I am taking my plans more seriously from now on and less likely to make a mad dash to catch the train for Baden-Baden next time someone suggests going for a relaxing day at a spa.

whups - just spilled water all over the computer... excuse me while I electrocute myself. Sorry, just a sec while I clean that up ...

Have a nice day, or as the French say, "Poisson d'Avril!" - Renee, candidate for the Darwin Award

2PM is the new 10AM

Lovely to sleep in, but it was too nice a day to waste. Sam Suffi bobbed insistently from the next berth, and I had the perfect excuse to entice crew: Simon has had to make the ultimate choice and defer Module 4 and the team project for extended pre-training and preparations for his Mars Analog Expedition this summer. Unfortunately, his last minute packing meant the dock was empty at our planned departure.

I puttered about doing laundry and tidying, but couldn't quite force myself to go to campus. The water was a magnet though, and while I hung my laundry out in the spring air, I was hallooed by 2 classmates biking by who were easy to shanghai and not long after a third texted me to see if he could come too. Not an hour later, I took novice helmsman Isra (Mexico - photo to come) and classmates Marianne (Nova Scotia) and Alex (Québec) on a leisurely cruise up the Ill River.

On the way back, we stopped in at the restaurant by the stairs to the canal to meet Scott1 and Dave and place an order for barbecue fixings and Simon for dinner. Dave and Scott2 managed to drag Simon to the harbour by the time I'd steered Sam Suffi back to the berth, Marianne set up the table and Isra made fire. The impromptu feast fit nicely between a day on the water and an evening at the Irish Times Pub battling for supremacy at Quiz Night - hopefully a night that Simon will remember while he is in self-imposed isolation on Devon Island this summer.

Simon is gone, but the show, you know... must go on. Team project is about to engulf our weary class like a tidal wave. And Colin Firth and his wet-shirt awaits the next weekend.

I'm learning to "go with the flow" and keeping a more French schedule these days. I don't think I'll even bother setting a departure time next excursion ;-)

Over the rainbow

End of another week - another set of milestones gone. Personal assignment in on time (unlike +/- 30 other students ;-), presentations went well today - very cool to see what everyone else is working on.

At least 10 sprouts in my indoor garden - thyme and dill for dinner someday soon.

If the rain lets up, I'm going for a cruise Sunday. It's Simon's last chance, since he flies home Tuesday, leaving the Masters behind for now to concentrate on his trip to Mars this summer (analog base, that is). How cool is that?

swamped in discoveries

The torrential rains yesterday didn't manage to dampen a grand tour de Strasbourg with Liliana by bike (we hit all the highlights, from laundromat aka laverie to kebab shop to ISU computer lab). Today looks like June - we discovered magnolias in full bloom along with many flowering trees I haven't identified along the canal. The Sun is illuminating grass so green it looks radioactive.

This week is devoted to personal assignment, first, last and only. Starting off of on precarious footing with a late night farewell dinner and philosophical "save the world" stroll along the canals last night with Dave and Liliana, but parted ways to get a good night's sleep. Best-laid plan waylaid by discovery that my bike had been blown over by the Devil's Breath by the cathedral - worse, while fixing the derailed chain under the gaze of gargoyles, I discovered the back wheel was twisted grotesquely. Fortunately, there was still room at the Auclair-Kuveava-Haslam-MacThee Inn, so I made a bed out of a futon cover, but it was yet too early to bed down at 02h30 as the next crisis needed averting ... Finally fell asleep after receiving text message at 5AM from hospital assuring us that roomie was going to survive.

This morning, I trundled into ISU to start the new term at 11h00 for 10h00 module-4 orientation, only to discover a critical impromptu TP meeting about to start. So much for PA-first-foremost-and-only. Never despair, I remain optimistic as always.

Eureka! I just found out via T.A. we may get an extension till Monday :-) And now I know how to upload video of multi-axis shaker with test subject (Moscow train with giraffe-bot)! Wait for it....

This is a declaraion of intent to fully produce updated blog next weekend.
Really. I mean it.

New French words so far - "copraculture", "bacterio salmonell" (well - Latin, maybe), "douleur", "médecin traitant" (attending physician). Great French concept - the "house call". And this morning over decadent gourmet breakfast complete with praline-coated cocoa beans at la chocolatier Christian overlooking la Place de la Cathédrale, "acidité des fruits, goût poussant de cacao vénézuélien et cannelle" - a menu describing one of 8 flavours of hot chocolate.
Merci et bienvenue de nouveau à Strasbourg.

Star City

- placeholder - Energia trip

Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Star City

We bussed out to Star City this morning, through the old Russian villages with varied colourful clapboard designed houses.

Star City is a real working cosmonaut training centre, complete with real live cosmonauts. I couldn't believe it when Alexander Lazutkin, the cosmonaut on board the Mir space station during a depressurization collision walked by!

Microsoft Office designer Charles Simonyi was in the neutral buoyancy tank training for his April 10th blast-off for the ISS.



This afternoon, Liliana, Richard and I managed to find the monastery, but the museum was closed for the day. It's a UNESCO world heritage site that has mostly been restored - strange to see a building so old that looks so new.



more to come...15 minutes almost up.