Just a quick update for those of you who care. I'm on a parabolic flight campaign team and we are submitting an experiment to be flown on an airplane in zero gravity. If we are accepted we get to fly on it at the end of April.
Here's the website if you are interested: www.estec.esa.int/outreach/parabolic/index.html

Late Merry Christmas

Sorry, I haven't written much lately, we've been pretty busy.
Christmas we had our usual yummy breakfast and I opened my stocking - Santa found me here :) Then we decided to go for a drive and ended up in Baden-Baden in Germany. Nothing was open, but we did get into a coffee shop for a hot chocolate to warm up. Not a very exciting day.
Boxing Day we tried to go shopping in Strasbourg, but absolutely nothing is open. Apparently, it's the exact opposite of Boxing Day at home, nobody buys anything. So we just hung out and walked around the Marche de Noel as some of it was still open. We then went out for pizza, courtesy of Fabio. It was a nice dinner and yummy pizza. I think my parent's know that he is crazy but have at least seen that's he's a nice guy and not a pyschopath!
Saturday we got up early and braved Auchan at 9 in the morning. It wasn't so bad, we could actually park! I thought that the first day it was open in 3 days it would be crazy, but not so bad early in the morning. We were going to go into town to do some shopping, but by that point I was exhausted, so we sat around here until I had to go to work at 4. I went and worked the Irish Times for a few hours. It was fun again and lots of people I knew were in. My parents came in for a pint just before I got off work too and then we took the tram home together.
Today we got up at 4am to drive to Frankfurt to pick up my sister. I slept most of the way so it was all good, but I feel for my dad who drove 2 hours there, and turned around and drove 2 hours back. But Tina made it safe and sound and is resting now. I work again at 4 today and I think they will go into town to look around the market.
Tomorrow we are off to Switzerland - Lucerne and Basel I think.
These holidays are going by super fast - my parents leave in 3 days! Then just me and Tina for a few days, then she takes off and leaves me here all by myself to start school again. It will feel really lonely once everybody is gone. So Tyler, hurry up and get here!
Thanks to everyone for all the presents and cards - it's great to get surprises! I hope everyone had a very good Christmas and is still enjoying the holidays. Happy New Year's to everyone (in case I'm not back on before Tina and I head to Paris). Miss you all!

Merry Christmas Eve

So sorry to my Canadian/American/European/etc. friends, I have not written much lately. My parent's arrived safely Saturday night, although I didn't make it home in time to greet them. Unfortunately, they had to honk the horn outside and wake Fabio up to let them in. I was over at Mark's drinking "Special Pizza" wine and playing a horrible card game where people kept putting burnt cork marks all over my face. Anyways, I thought my parents were on a later flight than they were, so that was half the problem. But they made it, and Fabio didn't even scare them away.
On Sunday we slept in a little and then headed into town to walk around Strasbourg. We walked around the Marche de Noel, looked in the Cathedral and had some lunch. It was very chilly and windy outside. We had some yummy chicken for dinner at home and my parents met Will before he took off to Paris to meet his family. I had started to feel not so good at this point so we crashed and went to bed.
Monday, I felt even crappier, I was running a low-grade fever and had some serious stomach pains. But since I am so tough, we decided we would go on a road-trip to Germany (very far away). We drove through the Black Forest and ate some Black Forest cake, yummy. We went to Triberg, where they make tons of cool clocks. After going in about 5 stores, my parents decided to buy a cuckoo clock from an older German couple who ran a little shop. Pretty cool. And we were in the cutest little German town, it was snowing, it was perfect: winter wonder land. But I still felt pretty crappy.
We drove back to Strasbourg, ate dinner, and then decided to go see Lord of the Rings. We went to this massive Silver City type theatre that had 30 theatres!!!! It was crazy big and only cost 8 euros, or 4.5 if you are a student. Tres cool. Anyways, the movie was wicked, and long and I had my fever back by the end of it, but it was all good.
Tuesday I slept in like crazy and we didn't leave the house until at least noon. Ahh, vacation is great. We were attempting to find the IBM building in town for my dad to go into work for a bit, but we got lost and found IKEA instead. That was cool. But alas, we had to leave and eventually found IBM and left my dad there. My mum and I wandered around town for a while, while he slaved away at work. We made reservations at a cute little restaurant by the Cathedral to have Christmas Eve dinner at (tonight 7pm). Then we headed south, bought groceries at a new giant supermarket (Rond Point, I think is better and cheaper than Auchan, but unfortunately I need a car to get there), and found the Harley Davidson dealership, of course. My dad had to buy a t-shirt and I stood there drooling over some of the very cool Buell's. Some very nice paint jobs on some very nice bikes. However, but that time I wanted to die but I still had to eat dinner and work at 9pm until 2:30am. I ate something, slept for an hour and let my dad drive me to my doom. However, it was super dead at work and I was working along side fellow ISUer and Canadian Kelly so it went well. I basically stood around all night eating nachos and drinking a few drinks with lots of water. Not bad. Except my dad had to get up at 2am to come and pick me up - thanks dad!
Today I slept until noon to recover from last night, but I felt 100x better when I woke up. I was actually hungry and could eat food!!! And no fever, wicked! So we headed out to explore Alsace. We went to Mt. Ste. Odile, which is where we went as a class earlier this year for a field trip. And we drove through and explored some of the smaller older towns in the area. But it was damn cold. I was happy to get back to my warm house.
We are going out for our Christmas Eve dinner now, and I'm hoping that it will be good. It involves duck and traditional items, so it could be a little scary. But I hoping for tasty.
That's all for now, sorry it's so long.
Merry Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas Everyone if I don't get a chance to say it personally!!!!

DONE!!!

Well the exams are done and now I am at school at 3:30 in the afternoon and a tad wasted. I don't know how that happened as I only had two glasses of wine, but I'm super hot and it's a little hard to type. It's probably a combo of stress and not enough food though. But I'm glad it's all over and that my school feeds me wine after exams, does yours do that???
Anyways, off to see Lord of the Rings this afternoon and then some more drinking later tonight. Rents get here tomorrow so I'm pretty excited.
I'll update this later when somethine more exciting than exams has happened!!
PO

Boring

So my life has been absolutely boring the last few days. I haven't left the house since Monday afternoon when I went to school. I've been studying and working hard so that I can kick these two exams' asses. I've got a 4 hour 14 question exam tomorrow afternoon and a 4 hour one essay question exam friday morning. But then my rents get here and hopefully they will be bearing presents.
So I'm back to being boring but should party hard Friday night.

PS I hate that stupid dog next door, I think I may kill him.

Congratulations!

This is an official congratulations to Tina for stopping smoking. It's a good thing, or I would have to kicked her ass eventually. I wanted to make it official so that everyone knows and can be proud of her for quitting and kick her ass for me if she starts again.

Also, congrats to Ty for finally being done his horrid and hated degree! Well wicked.

ISU Christmas Party

So last night was the ISU Christmas Party. We were all absolutely exhausted after finishing our team project work (see below). I just felt like eating dinner and going home to sleep. But since it was a Christmas party we had to play all those silly games etc. It was actually pretty fun and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. We had some of the fairly older professor's up there dancing with us. Prof Tolyarenko was up there full out doing the Jail House Rock. Man, I can't even move like that and I'm only 23! It was pretty crazy. But eventually the music started to really suck and I realized how tired I really was and how much studying I had to get done today before heading off to work again. (and you can see how much studying I'm getting done today, it's noon and I haven't even started yet, oh well)
It was a good end to our team projects, but unfortunately we now all have to get our asses in gear for the next 5 days, and then we can really party!
Happy Christmas All!

Thank you for the cards and presents Val and Rhiannon!!!!

Team Project - Human Mission to Europa & Titan

So we handed in our 200 page literature review on time Thursday morning. It was a lot of work and the editing team did a great job putting it together AND getting it in on time. We also were successful in our hour long presentation on Friday afternoon. I was a presenter for Human Aspects, and that's why I had to be at school so freaking early Thursday morning (see below). But overall our presentation was very professional and motivational. Surprisingly enough we didn't get nailed with extremely hard questions in the 30 minutes question period. We did pretty well. Go TP2!!!! Well done!

I'm now a bar star...

...Well, not really. But I had my first shift at the Irish Times on Wednesday night. I was waitressing. It was pretty fun, but the smoke just about killed me. Man, I love BC! Long live the no smoking laws. It took me forever to get to sleep that night as I was just breathing in smoke from my hair. I'll have to shower every night after getting home or I won't be able to stand it. The only problem was that it was 3am and I was at Bavs' house and I had to be at school at 9am. I just wanted to sleep. Oh and ya, I was fighting the flu at the moment too. Good times, good times.
But all in all, it's a good place to work. It's very international and the people are friendly. I even met a few Canadians and a Swedish guy who was moving to Canada in 2 days to be with his girlfriend, ahhh.
So, I am a working girl again - what was that? Almost 4 months without a job? Craziness! That's the most time I've had off since I was 14!

Travel in Europe

So I always wondered why people who lived in Europe didn't travel all the time because everything is so close. And the train system is so great and there are cheap airlines.
Oh was I wrong.
It is a nightmare to get almost anywhere in Europe, and you can be sure it won't be cheap. Even if you get a cheap Easyjet or Ryanair flight, it is impossible or very expensive to get to the airport that they fly out of. As well, trains are rarely on time and often you get charged a random supplement on the train!
I had an interesting weekend in Luxembourg, Strasbourg, Baden-Baden, London, and Bath - read below:

Luxembourg & England

So Friday we drove on a miniature bus for three hours to Luxembourg to visit SES Global, an enormous satellite and telecommunications company. If any of you have satellite, it is possible that you get it through SES Americom of SES Astra.
It was quite the crappy ride on the way there. I was sitting beside Femi, who is well over 6 feet tall, and he was having some major pain issues with the lack of room for his legs. I was even uncomfortable. I guess they just don't know how to make large vehicles here.
So once we arrived, we were welcomed into a crazy fancy room with drinks, coffee etc and handed security badges. The CEO, yes CEO, gave us a presentation about the company that lasted a good hour and a half. I even managed to stay awake the whole time. Then we had a nice little lunch sponsored by the company with little sandwiches and cute tasty desserts. After that we got to go outside and check out all the satellites - crazy. There were at least twenty 10 m dishes and probably quite a bit more. We got to check out the control room where the people can sit there and watch all the TV they want on a crazy wall. It was pretty cool.
Unfortunately though, we were running behind schedule and I had to be back in Strasbourg to catch a train at 7:40pm. It was a three hour ride and we hadn't left by 4:20 so I was starting to get a little concerned. So trusty Jill (who goes on all our field trips with us) forced people to stop asking questions and herded us into the bus. It was an interesting ride back as I wasn't sure if I was going to make it.
But I convinced Jill to drop me off at the train station, and I had about 10 minutes to spare, which is plenty in my books. So I bought the 8 euro ticket and double checked that I didn't need reservations. However, after I changed trains on my way to Baden Baden, I got nailed with an 11 euro supplement fee on a 15 minute train ride - sucky!!! Once I got to the train station in Baden Baden, I had to figure out how to get to the airport. I knew that Ryanair had a taxi/shuttle to the airport, but unfortunately I didn't know that I had to call ahead and book it. So I had to take a regular taxi which cost 25 euros. I was thinking that this was turning out to be a very expensive weekend.
I got to the airport in time to walk through security and wait no more than 15 minutes to board my packed Ryanair plane to London. The flight was all right, it actually left on time!! But I was super exhausted from all the travelling during the day, but it wasn't over yet. Once I reached Stansted, I of course had to take the 45 minute Stansted Express into London. I was smart and called my cousin Mark once I got to Stansted and left a message on his phone saying that I would be on the 11:30pm train. (The phones in Stansted take euros!!! I thought that was really cool and lucky for me as I only had British notes) Mark had been sending me text messages saying to go to his house as he was out partying and he would meet me there later. Well, first of all, he was sending them to my Canadian number that no longer works, and second of all, even if he had sent them to my French number, my stupid French phone had no service there!!! So I was almost in trouble, but it worked out as Mark was waiting for me at Stansted, although a little drunk. We took a taxi to his flat and I crashed, while he went back out to try and get into a club, but ended up going to McDonald's instead.
He got up early and drove me to the Paddington train station on the other side of London (he's great, he always gets up early to drive me places, I felt so bad again). So I was on the 8:15am train to Bath. I arrived only 15 minutes late (amazing for British rail) and walked to my dad's cousin Naomi's in the damn cold. I got to catch up with her and her husband Phil as well as their toddler Oliver, who has grown quite a bit since May. I went out for lunch with Naomi and had a delicious meal (hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, baked beans, toast, etc!!!) We then wandered around the Christmas market that they also have there. It was pretty cool too but ended this weekend. I bought a cool belly button ring, but succeeded in losing it somewhere between there and London. The rest of my time in Bath I just chilled with them and played with Oliver, it was good fun.
I took the 6:22pm train back to London and proceeded to find a pub that Mark had described to me over the phone. The Bedford somewhere in south London (zone 3 - I've never taken the tube to zone 3). I got off the tube and thought "what the hell kinda sketchy area has he got me coming to?" as there were cops everywhere. But I found the pub safely and eventually realized he was upstairs in the comedy part. It was a good show and I even got some of the crazy British jokes. I had a good amount of beer during the show and proceeded to have a good deal of everything else after the show when the comedy club turned into a dance floor club.
We had a most excellent night, and I can even remember some of it. I remember seeing a fox in a parking lot on the way to find a taxi, which I thought was totally crazy. I remember learning some dirty British words, but unfortunately I can't remember any of it now. Ahh, that's alcohol for you.
So I spent all of the next day on Mark's couch, watching British videos and TV as I couldn't do anything else. I was pretty damn hungover. But hey, that's what I came for, right? I didn't even get out shopping as I had hoped to. I can't believe I wasted a Sunday when stores where actually open, crashing on a couch, oh well!
So I eventually rolled off the couch and made it to the train station to go back to Stansted Airport. We gave ourselves plenty of time as my last experience trying to get to Stansted airport was horrific. The train was on time, but the line up to check in was crazy. I barely had enough time to run to my plane, and then stupidly got stuck in security with scissors! I had the sneaking suspicion that I had them in my make up bag, but since I hadn't been stopped on the way to London, I was pretty sure that I must not have had them. Oh no, I was wrong. So then the security lady had to go through all my stuff for like 10 minutes. I ended up having to run to the gate, still hungover, eating my sandwich (first food of the day) at the same time. The TV's said my plane was boarding so I ran like hell. However - once I got there they kindly told us that the plane had not yet arrived from it's origin and would not likely arrive for over an hour. Now how come they didn't know that earlier?? How the hell did they say it was boarding when the stupid plane wasn't even here??? I was very confused, but at least I had run off much of my hangover. So I called home and studied for an hour and a half before the plane arrived and we could board it. The pilot got us there in 1 hour instead of 1.5, which was super nice. But by that time it was 11pm and I was super tired. And poor Ollie, who nicely agreed to pick me up as no trains ran back to Strasbourg after 9. What sucks even more is the two of my professors were on the plane and were driving back to Strasbourg. If only I had know before I got on the plane I could have called Ollie and told him not to come. Oh well. He didn't seem too angry, even though I didn't bring him Irn Bru. But hey, he went to IKEA without me this weekend :)
So all in all, it was a great weekend, but I am paying for it now. I'm fighting a bad cold due to lack of sleep and exhaustion. And tomorrow night I get to work until 2:30am at a pub, fun for me!!

Good news

Sorry I forgot to mention that my friend Nick was successful in his return to the US. He got the moon rock there safely and his girlfriend accepted the rock that he gave her. It's a cute engagement story if anyone wants to read it. Go to Nick's blog.

Marche Noel

Wow, the Marche Noel (Christmas Market) here is so cool. I went into Strasbourg after school today to take my leather pants to get fixed (whoops - see Halloween). Anyways, after dropping them off I decided to wander around some more and check out all the stuff that's going on. I went to several markets all over downtown. They sell everything from spices to hot wine to children's toys to crepes to santa hats etc. etc. It's pretty cool, but basically a tourist trap. I could barely walk by the stalls because of all the people, and it's only Wednesday night! Imagine the chaos on a Saturday, or closer to Christmas. I think Christmas in Strasbourg may be a lot like Summer in Victoria - you don't go downtown! However, it is so pretty and makes me happy. There are lights hanging down every street. I even walked down a street today that had at least 10 giant chandeliers hanging from wire over the street - yes real ones with pretty glass hangy things and everything! WOW! Also, near the Cathedral, there is an actual ice rink outside for the Netherlands celebration this year. I had heard the rumours about a cool Christmas here, but this is unbelievable! Through it all, I resisted in buying everything in sight and only bought a Alsace backpack for my little cousin Oliver who I will see in England this weekend. Oh and a black shirt for me, but that's for work.
Work, you say? Well, yes. Since I don't have enough things to do, and I always enjoy being as absolutely busy as possible, I have gotten myself a job. I am now working at the Irish Times pub. My first shift is next Wednesday from 9 until 2:30 am. That's so late that the trams won't be running and I'll have to crash at a friend's house. Oh well. It should be an interesting experience, considering I've never worked in a pub before and I can't really speak French yet. But they are desperate for native English speakers over the holidays as all their regular staff is heading home. And, yes I know my family is coming over here. So I will try it and see. I think I will only work 2-3 times per week so that's not too bad. And they will be sleeping at those hours anyways, as long as they weren't planning on taking me anywhere away from Strasbourg. But it should be fun.
And I am done my portion of the team project, so I have it easy until exams. But they are only 15 days away so I better crack down. We have a field trip to SES Global, a satellite company in Luxembourg, on Friday and then I fly out to London to party with Mark. I'll be back Sunday night if anyone cares. Party hard at all the Christmas parties!!
PS If any of you Victorians have a strong desire to send anything to me, my parents leave next week, Dec 11 :)