Sorry for the long delay!

So sorry to my American friends, and all of you others. I am still alive, and have been super busy in the last couple of weeks. I spent the month of September chilling and helping my mum with garage sales etc. September 24th Tyler and I left the Island for a little trip. We stayed in Vancouver the Thursday night at Jer's new flat. It is a pretty cool apartment in Richmond - nice balcony, big rooms, high ceilings etc. We left early the next day for a small road trip. We headed south at about 8am and drove for about 16 hours until we arrived in San Francisco. We seriously only stopped to get gas and switch drivers. It was pretty tiring and intense. But we made it eventually and I had to parallel park on a nice steep hill at midnight after all that and only had a few troubles doing it.
We explored San Francisco for a few days with Chris and Nicole. We walked to a market along by the ferry terminal, went up to Twin Peaks, drove around, saw all the cool parts of SF. Tyler and I did the touristy thing and saw Fisherman's Wharf, Ghirardhelli Square, etc. It was a good time. When Nicole finally had some time off work we drove to Napa/Sonoma Valley for some wine tasting at a winery called Artesa that Chris belonged to. Some good wine - so good that Tyler even liked it and we bought some. It was some good times with good friends.
We left Tuesday and headed south on our way to Mojave. We took the 101 along the Northern California coast and got to see some magnificent views. But at some point we had to cut across the state to get to Mojave. We arrived in Lancaster around 6pm, just in time for the VIP party for the X Prize launch. And how convenient, we had VIP tickets. We enjoyed some free food and drinks thanks to the VIP tickets that Ollie and Nick got us. It was tres cool to hang out with important and rich people. But more importantly, we got to hang out with Ollie, Nick, David V., and Brooke. We slept on Ollie's floor at the hotel and got up at 4am to drive up to the Mojave airport. It was still quite chilly, but we filled ourselves up with the VIP breakfast, courtesy of Champ Cars. (sorry for so many VIP mentions, but it was super cool to be a VIP for once!). Other that the coolness of being a VIP, the launch was awesome. (oh ya, we ate breakfast beside James Cameron) It was great to be a part of such an important event - changing the world and witnessing history. It was totally worth it! I just wish we could have been there for the second launch as well but we had to get back to Vancouver by Thursday night and it was now Wednesday morning. We headed back on the road with a guy from the Space Generation Congress as he had to get to Vancouver as well. It took us about 20 hours but we spread it out over two days so it wasn't that bad. We arrived fairly late Thursday night by the time we got back to Jer's. Completely exhausted.
So then it was time for me to go to the Space Generation Congress downtown Vancouver. I was taking part in the Moon Mars Workshop and got to see some interesting lectures, most of whom I had already seen at ISU. But the best part was meeting some interesting people from all over the world. There were a couple of Mexcian delegates there whose goal was to start a Mexican Space Agency. I also met a fellow life science person from Calgary and a guy doing his PhD at MIT. Some smart people. It was informative, but exhausting, as I was trying to do other things at once, like hang out with friends and go out for my Aunt's birthday dinner. Actually we went out to this really good restaurant on West Broadway called Feenie's. The best food of my life and for reasonable prices. Highly recommended.
Monday was the start of the annual International Astronautical Congress held this year in Vancouver. I got to see Bhavini, Doug, Oliver T., Jeph, Mark and Ruey. We also met each other's friends so increased my circle of space friends. The technical sessions were interesting, especially those given by my friends. The plenary's were good as well and my Aunt came to some. I went out a few times with friends, but couldn't do too much as I had to get up early for a breakfast for Canadian students with Canadian space industry reps. Thursday afternoon I caught the ferry back to Victoria to go to my French class (aren't I a good little student?). But Tyler and I got up and caught the 7am ferry back on Friday so we could hang out with the ISU kids once more and go to IKEA. Ruey's parents nicely took us all out for Chinese food Friday night and then we went out to an Irish Pub afterwards. Saturday we spent the entire day trying to get back to Victoria. There were 3 sailing waits as it was Thanksgiving weekend. Ahh!!! But we knew it would be busy. But sucky.
The rest of the weekend was all good, we went to see the Egyptian exhibit at the Museum on Sunday and had a tasty dinner with Mark and Melissa. Monday Tina and I went to the gym and then shopping. I made my first LuLu Lemon purchase, as I have been trying to avoid it as I think the trend is ridiculous. But I caved. Comfy though.
Today I started work at the Plant Centre. I basically spent the morning filling out papers for the third time for the CPH. Ah government. But it is nice to be working again, and will be even nicer when I start getting paid.
OK that's too much writing. I must send some emails and get to the gym. I hope everyone is doing well - keep in touch!

Nothing new

So I have been home now for a few weeks. Not much has happened. We went out for boots of beer for Jer's birthday shortly after I arrived. Tyler and I were mostly just hanging out during the day, trying to catch up on 8 months missed.
Last weekend was the long weekend and we had a nice BBQ at Jer's house. We through some yummy beer-soaked shrimp on the grill with some fresh corn and had ourselves quite the feast. Ty and I stayed at Tina's house that night as I don't have a room at my parent's house anymore as we now have a tenant here. And my Aunt was in the guest room. Kinda sucks to not have anywhere to live, but that will change soon. My grandma leaves on Wednesday for England for 2 months and I will at least have her place for that time. Then it's apartment hunting for Ty and I.
Sunday we had yummy pancakes at the Woodburn's and then I had a nice dinner at my house for my Grandma. Tina and Mark got home that day so it was nice to see them after such a long time too (they drove across the country and to New York). Monday Tyler and I went shopping, on a holiday?!?!?!? Craziness - for a new bathing suit and cap for me cause I've been swimming every few days at Gordon Head Rec. Then we watched Office Space as Ty has never seen it for some reason and had a nice Greek-style dinner at his house.
So not a very exciting weekend, but it was nice none-the-less. I am happy to still be relaxing after all the travelling in the summer. Today is a beautiful day and I am so happy to be at home where we have wireless internet. I sat outside with my laptop and did some much needed work on the computer while getting a tan at the same time! Ahhh....
But it's back to work for Tyler and back to school for some this week. Sucky. I think I will enjoy the weather and maybe go for a bike ride or a swim later. I've also registered for an advanced French class at UVic, which is towards a diploma program and it starts in a couple of weeks. And an adult ballet class which starts Sep 29th, of course the day of the Space Ship One launch so I will be in Mojave. Oh well.
I'm looking forward to seeing as many of you space cadets as possible at IAC and hope you will skip a couple days to come see Victoria (I'll be heading back Wed afternoon for my 2nd dance class and my 3rd French class on Thursday). Let me know if you are coming!
Sorry for nothing exciting just yet!

Home Sweet Home

Yes I am home, sorry for all of you who were worried that I was still trapped at Heathrow Airport. I got home late Thursday night and my family was waiting for me with Tyler and a dozen beautiful red roses (sorry long stemmed roses). Friday was spent doing laundry, yeah clean clothes!, sort of unpacking, sleeping, and going out for dinner with Tyler to Sook Jai Thai as he had taken the night off work. We came back to my house and Tyler fell asleep at 9pm and then I did too. Saturday involved the weather being crap, I think I would like to go back to the 40 degree weather in Greece thank you, so we didn't go mini-golfing with Jer. But we did go to the Ratskellar Restaurant and drank boots of beer for Jer's birthday. Then some of us headed to the Red Jacket club for some dancing. It certainly was nice to not stink of smoke when we got home. It was nice to see friends, but weird to hear only old music - I'm not sure if that is a Red Jacket thing or a Victoria thing, hmmm...
Sunday involved shopping, ya shopping on a Sunday!!!!! Ty had to buy new cleats for soccer and I bought a new pair of Diesel kicks that were listed at $149.99 for the low low price of $10!!! Who cares if one shoe is a 7 and the other a 7.5???? Works for me. They are blue and sparkly! But I know I can't really afford to do any more shopping but all the shoes I bought in Europe I can't really wear in a lab here, which is where I will be working, starting in October. So you see, I had to buy shoes :) Tyler even encouraged me.
Tyler's off to work now so I have to entertain myself. Lots to do though. I'm planning on signing up for dance classes of some sort - probably ballet, French classes, I want to read some new books, figure out where all my stuff is, you know, real exciting stuff. For the moment I am living downstairs at my parent's house, until the new tenant moves in Sept 4th, then I will go upstairs to the guest room for a few days and then over to house sit at my Grandma's until Nov. 22 as she will be away travelling in England. After that, who knows? I was hoping to maybe rent a flat right away so that I could have somewhere to unpack, but I think we've decided to save those 3 months of rent for travelling later this year. Got to get to Nick's wedding in Texas in June, Cancun in April and I have all sorts of other travel plans in the works. For the moment, I am hoping to drive down to San Francisco mid to end of September to see Chris and Nicole and then see the X-Prize launch on Sept. 29th at Mojave. I'm supposed to start work Oct. 4th so I will have to drive back pretty much right after that. Then I have the IAC conference in Vancouver that week so I will need time off work to attend that and see some more ISU friends. So much to do all in the same 2 weeks!!!
Anyways, I will keep y'all posted as to my plans, where I'm living etc. I hope everyone from ISU made it to their destinations safely and I hope to see you soon. You are all welcome to come and stay at my house in Victoria during IAC if you need a little break from the conference! For all you Victoria friends - call me, I don't have much to do until the end of September!!!!

Hello from Heathrow!

After two large traffic jams, Bill and I finally made it to Heathrow airport at about quarter to one. I now will be sitting around waiting until 3pm when I may be able to board the plane. Then 6.5 hour flight to Toronto, 2 hours there, 5 hour flight to Victoria then home!!!! So basically I am now just killing time. I bought a sandwich in the name of Conrad and will eat it shortly.
I went to Milton Keynes yesterday with Bill to pick up stuff that Dinesh had left in Bremen - most importantly all my CDs with my documents and pictures on them. And my hair dryer!
Let me know what's up everyone! Send me your new addresses and keep in touch!

Athens 2004

So we went to a football match Sunday night which was tres cool as it turned out to be Iraq vs. Costa Rica. Who knew there were so many Iraqi's in Greece? The stadium holds 25,000 people, about 12,000 were there, and I'm sure at least 11,000 of them were Iraqi. It was kinda cool. They went mental even before they Iraq team scored, and when they did score, they all jumped onto the field and ran around with their flags like crazy. It was so exciting. And there was an American guy behind us filming the game who was with the Iraqi team and interviewed Chris and Nicole on their American perspective of the game. Pretty cool.
Yesterday we went shopping for a long long time, mostly because of Ruey wanting to buy all of the Olympic souvenirs possible. We had real gyros in the city centre that were damn tasty after hours of shopping. I tried to find Jer a dirty greek t-shirt for his birthday, but with no luck as the shops were closed for the afternoon, maybe in London tomorrow. Then we headed down to the ocean for a beach volleyball match. This was the first event we went to that was almost sold out - there were no cheap tickets left so we had to pay a whole 35EUR to watch these matches. First was men's - Sweden vs. Germany, then Greece vs. Portugual. The Greeks went mental as well. Then there were women's matches - Greece vs. Australia and finally USA vs. Canada. The whole event was a gong show, lots of people drinking and partying and skanky girls dancing in between sets. Everyone was totally into it and we did the wave, chanting etc. It was fun. Unfortunately, both Greek teams and the Canadian team lost :( but it was still good fun. The Canadian game was really close and good to watch, and we seated ourselves with the family and friends of the athletes, so we were shouting Allez Canada in our best Quebecois accents!
All in all, the Olympics are much more exciting than I thought and I've had a good time. I'm looking forward to going home though, I need some clean clothes, good pillow, my car, and of course my friends and family.
Thanks to Elias and his family for putting us up at his house for a week. I would like to take his mum home with me - no offense to my mum, but she certainly doesn't make me breakfast and awesome lunches everyday (and for my friends)!!!
Next post.....home.

Olympics!!

So if you haven't noticed, the Olympics in Athens started Friday night. We were back at Elias' in time to watch the Opening Ceremony on TV, and could sort of see the fireworks out the window. Tres cool. Saturday night we went to see the middle weight boxing event, which was pretty cool although the stadium was pretty empty. This morning we went to see tennis as we wanted to see some sort of event in the Olympic complex where the cool stadium is with the track and swimming events too. We just picked tennis as it was cheap and we could get tickets. However when we showed up, it was Venus Williams playing a Hungarian girl. Venus won but it was really cool to watch her play. Then next up was Andy Roddick versus a Brazilian guy who was ranked 81st in the world (Roddick is 2nd) and it was actually a very good match. It was quite close for a bit and there were some awesome plays.
We came back to Elias' house for a wonderful lunch - his mum has been making us the best meals - and we have been siestaing ever since. Tonight we are going to a football match, not sure who is playing though. I would really like to go see beach volleyball, and maybe when some Canadians are playing too. Tonight there is also a DJ Tiesto set somewhere which I am trying to find out about - he played a 90 min set at the opening ceremony too.
Chris and Nicole leave tomorrow morning, but I have plans to drive down to San Fran in September to go see them. And of course I want to get to the X Prize launches at the end of September as well in Mojave and Saskatchewan.
2 more days in Athens then off to London. Man will I be glad to be home to smogless Victoria. I will be staying in the guest room of my parents for a bit, then maybe house sitting at my Grandma's for a couple of months. I start work back at the Centre for Plant Health (where Ty now works) sometime in October. I will work there until at least the end of March, then who knows what?!?!? However, I am looking forward to coming home and not living out of a suitcase. I had to buy a shirt today so that I had something clean to wear! Best of luck in finding jobs to all the ISUers, and see all you Victorians on Friday night!!!!
Any last minute requests for things from Athens, Olypmics, or London????

Alive and Well

I am back in Athens, after a wonderful week long boat trip on a 42 foot beauticul Catamaran. We went to Aegina, Poros, Hydra, Spatsa and a few other tiny islands for beach bbqs along the way. Last night I slept under the stars on the deck of the boat. It was awesome. A few more days in Greece - some Olympic events, shopping, and sightseeing - then back home Thursday night.
Hope all is well all around the world.
Happy Belated Birthday Will!

Alive and very well!

Just a quick post to say I am alive. I went to a farm in the south of France with Ollie - and organic farm and I played with the sheep and chickens for a day or so. Next stop was Cinque Terre in northern Italy and I hiked between the 5 towns along the coast - awesome, one of the best places in Europe. Then I spent 2 days travelling from there to Athens. I arrived here at 8pm last night after taking 8 hours on trains, 19 hour ferry, and 5 hour bus.
Today we went to the Parthenon, it was tres cool. Very Exciting. Tomorrow we take off on our 7 day boat tour of the Greek Islands. I can't wait!
I'll be home August 19th!

Master of Space Baby

So I graduated, with a Master of Space Studies - hahaha! Awesome!
Tonight we are partying and I leave tomorrow for the south of France with Ollie for a couple of days, then Italy, then Greece. So probably not too many posts in the near future, sorry. But I will tell you all about it once I get home!
Love you and miss you all!!!

Back in Strasbourg

So I made it on the train from Bremen to Strasbourg on Sunday, treked with all my stuff to ISU, left half of it in a locker there, checked email, printed my report, and ran back to the train station to catch a train to Paris. I eventually found my hostel late Sunday night and fortunately ran into Elias, so we made plans to meet for breakfast in the morning and go to COSPAR.
I spent Monday all day and evening at the COSPAR conference - went to the opening ceremony and understood all of the French in the presentation!
Tuesday Cari and I walked around in the morning - went to some shops (of course), to Palais des Invalides, Alexander Bridge, Pont Neuf... I went to the conference in the afternoon. That night we walked around with Elias a bit, had some drinks and almost went up the Arc de Triomphe - but it was only open for 15 more mins, so we decided to wait until Wednesday.
Wednesday Cari and I were going to go to Mont Saint Micheal, but the car was going to be too expensive to rent so we decided to just walk around Paris some more. We went first to the Catacombs - where they stacked the bones of all a whole load of exhumed bodies that they dug up because the cemetaries were overflowing in like the 1800's. We then went to the Pantheon, tried to listen to a tour in French, that got hard to do after 15 mins, then did the rest on our own. We then walked over to the Jardin du Luxembourg and sat in the sun for a bit. We then walked to the Louvre and found the other H&M for a bag for Cari. Then we went to Sacre Coeur and Mont Matre, Moulin Rouge etc.
But now I have to go watch more presentations, so there will have to be a PART II.

Last Day Of Work

I have just handed in my thesis, entitled something like "Integration of AquaHab into Advanced Life Support Systems for Human Explorations of Extreme Envrionments". With that, that is the end of my ISU work. If all goes well, in 2 weeks time, I will have a Master in Space Studies Degree!!!! Yah me!!!
 
But since this is my last day of work, it is also my last day of daily internet access, until I return home. So don't expect regular updates. I will hopefully check my email every couple of days in Paris, everyday in Strasbourg, and who knows after that??? So I am now moderately accessible to all those who wish to reach me. And in August I will be extremely unreachable, especially while laying on my nice little catamaran for a week, until August 19th. So enjoy not being able to hear from me!
 
I've really enjoyed my internship here. I think that I indeed accomplished something and enjoyed working with the people that I did. Too bad the weather wasn't nicer. Oh well. But as sad as it is to leave, I am now off on a new adventure. And I'm excited.
 
I'll see all you ISUers next week, and all you Victorians (not counting Val and Chris) in about a month!!!! Can't wait!!!

Quiz Anyone?

I've been reading Cari's blog and lately she has had a new quiz or something everyday - no wonder she isn't done her report!!! Anyways, I took this Ecological Footprint Quiz, and came up with some pretty scary results. If everyone lived like I do in Victoria, we would need 5.8 Earths!!! However, if everyone lived like I do in Bremen, we would need 2.3 Earths (a little better, but still not good). I know that this is because of my lack of a vehicle or two here, and also because I eat less meat. Something to ponder....

Also, Happy Bastille Day. Too bad I'm not in Paris now as I could celebrate. Well, maybe we will celebrate remotely, as we did for Canada Day and Independence Day.

My report is done!! So now I am making a pretty presentation and enjoying my last few days in Bremen. Although it is still raining and I have been absolutely freezing cold all day. I need my snowboarding jacket back!!! Grrr...

Five days left in cold, rainy Bremen

Yes, I am excited to leave Bremen. But mostly because the weather is much nicer in the places that I am going to. And also to see my friends and eventually family again.
I have only 3 days left of work - wow, that went fast! And therefore, 3 days left to put the finishing touches on my report and make my presentation. Lots of time....

Friday night, we were lazy and didn't go out to a club. We rented Zoolander instead, which was just as good (Cari and Dinesh had somehow never seen it!!) Saturday, we cleaned house then went out shopping again...dangerous. But mostly for Cari. I just spent the rest of my birthday money on things that I had been wanting for a while - a bag, some wicked 3.5 inch heels, a shirt and some belts. Not too shabby. Cari on the other hand is single-handedly supporting the clothing economy of Bremen. But that's okay, she probably didn't buy as much as me in Strasbourg. So after all the spending on Saturday, we watched another movie - this time "Along Came Polly", which was surprisingly funny. Mostly because Ben Stiller was an organized planning freak like me :)

Sunday morning Cari and I got up early and got picked up by Matthias to head to the North Sea, near Cuxhaven this time. It was about an hour drive and when we arrived it was of course raining. But we ventured out onto the beach. And then took our shoes and socks off...Cari and I were getting worried at this point...and proceeded to walk out into the water. But it was low tide with a large beach - like in Parksville or Long Beach, but bigger. We saw all sorts of cool things - clams burrowing back into the sand, worms, crabs - but were very cold. The wind was blowing so strong that we couldn't tell if it was raining or if it was water blowing off the ocean. Needless to say, we were soaked and our feet numb. It would have been much better if it had been warmer but was still a cool area. The had horse carriage rides out to an island about 3km away - that's how much the tide was out! We were also going to go on a crab fishing boat, but we were too cold to wait until 7pm to do it so we had a hot chocolate and returned to Bremen early.

Sunday night we watched Schindler's List. Which wasn't nearly as depressing as I expected and had heard. It was a very good film, and in fact inspirational. PS We rented so many movies as we are very close to getting a free rental, which we had to do before we leave!

So this week involves report editing, presentation preparation, packing up etc. Lots to do in the next little while. But I am looking forward to seeing everyone again and enjoying some sunshine.

Technical Note:
After July 16th, I will no longer get email at my work address. You will have to reach me either through hotmail or my school address. I will also not have a phone or an address until I return home on Aug. 19th. If you can't get me by email somehow, I will be reachable at ISU in Strasbourg from July 23-30.

See everyone soon!!!!

A Most Excellent Birthday!

So even though I am far far away from home and the majority of my friends, I still had a lovely birthday. It started off by my sister calling bright and early in the morning, and it was nice to talk to her since I haven't in a long time as our schedules pretty much clash. Then, when I got to work, I had a huge yummy looking cake waiting on my desk for me, from my boss's girlfriend, who really should work in a bakery. It was a very cool and yummy cake!! Then my parents called me at work - my Dad even stayed up past 11pm to call!!! That is crazy for him. The day went well. I did brainless stuff at work like inserting editing changes and fixing references. So I made sure not to work too hard on my birthday.
Then I took my cake on the tram and went to meet Cari, Dinesh, and Matthias for dinner and drinks at Enchilada. Unfortunately I showed up on time for my own birthday party (with my own cake!) and had to wait a bit, but it was all good. We found a table inside and proceeded to have a nice night of Mexican food, Brazilian cocktails (Caprihinas?), Mexican cocktails (something Playa & Margaritas) and tequila shots. Yes, and Cari kept up with my drinking!
I received some nice pressies too - books about Bremen from Matthias - so we will have to explore this weekend. Two tank tops and a belt from Cari and Dinesh, with one of the tank tops saying "BITCH" across the front. Hmm...why do people keep giving me these shirts? Should I be taking the hint? Cari and Dinesh also gave me the cards from my parents and sister that had arrived the day before and I didn't know had. My parents and sister were very sad that I didn't get them on time, so at least now I can blame it on Cari and Dinesh! Tina sent me some cute earrings as well - thanks everyone!
So it was a good night, spent with good food, good drinks and most importantly, good friends. We crashed at home at like 10:30, cause we decided we would save our energy to go clubbing tonight. Hmm...so tired and old right now...must find energy for dancing....Maybe I will have a nap first.
Saturday's plans are for shopping, swimming or running, perhaps watching some movies and enjoying our last free day in Bremen. Sunday, Cari and I are going with Matthias and others from the Uni to the North Sea for the day. It should be cool, and cold, and probably rainy. Hmmm. But fun as well - hopefully.
I only have 5 more days of work, 9 more days in Bremen, 14 days until back in Strasbourg, 4 weeks til laying on a boat in the Mediterranean, and 41 days until I am home! Can you tell that I am starting to get excited? It is a mixed excitement though. I am excited to see friends in Strasbourg, but it will be sad leaving them all again so soon. And I am excited to travel obviously, but, wait no buts on travelling. I am excited to be home, but I know that I am probably going to miss living in Europe - and will be a snobby European who can't be happy in silly little boring Canadian Victoria! Well, I will just have to shop lots before I come home so that I have enough European clothes to last me until I make it back here then!
So see everyone soon and have a good weekend camping all you Victorians!!!

Finally Some Sunshine!!!

So after never ending days of rain and thunderstorms, it looks like we might have a nice day today, and perhaps tomorrow as well! How exciting! I have decided that my vitamin D is deathly low and if I don't get some sun soon I might just curl up and die. So I am very happy for this weather, even if it is temporary, and am even more happy as the number of days until the Mediterranean decreases!
The weekend was filled with BBQs, shopping, swimming, and eating American flag cookies that Cari made. BBQs were very tasty and good - they definitely like their meat here. I went to the first one on Friday at the University and then spent Saturday evening at my boss's lovely house out in the country. Very cool indeed. Cari and I went mad shopping at H&M on Saturday, as there is no H&M in Strasbourg, but at least 3 here. How convenient, when they are out of your size in one store, you seriously just walk down the street to the next one!! Beautiful!
Sunday we slept in and relaxed mostly. It was rainy and crappy so I didn't even go for a run. We made blueberry pancakes, American flag cookies, and curry. So sort of a 4th of July BBQ! But it was all good anyways.
Last night Cari and I saw Shrek 2 finally. And I loved it, not that I expected not to. It just opened here and it is quite difficult to find English movies so we had to rush out and see it. They are also playing Spiderman 2 this weekend in English so we might see that too.
The big news is that Madonna will be in London the same night that I will be there!!! Destiny! However, the tickets are all sold out and I can only seem to get my hand on sets of 2 tickets - which wouldn't be that horrible except that the cheapest I can find them for is $180 USD! Ouch! So if anyone knows of anyone who has a spare single ticket to sell, or if anyone wants to join me on Aug 18th at Earl's Court in London, let me know! I would love to finally see Madonna, and we rarely have the chance in Canada outside of Toronto - damn Ontarions! (no offense)
This week I am madly trying to finish up my report, there are just so many little things, but I am glad that I already have 45 pages done. I only have 8 days left of work then I am off to Paris and Strasbourg. Cari is coming to Paris for a bit too, so that will be fun - and Elias will be there too. Cari and I might head to Mont St. Michel for a day, which is supposed to be quite the sight (a castle city on an island off the coast of Brittany). It is on the list of 1000 things to see/do before you die. Cari bought this evil book, which has suggestions of things to do before you die, and so far I am at 89 of the 1000 things! And some cities I have been to, but haven't been to the festival that you are supposed to go to. So I hope to break 100 by the end of my year in Europe, what with going to Italy and Greece it should be easy.
I hope everyone had a good Canada Day and 4th of July! See everyone soon!

Flic Flac!!!!

Last night was Flic Flac – the acrobatic circus that I have been talking about. It started at 8:30pm, and we arrived just in time to pick up our second row 15EUR student tickets. We walked into a black and yellow actual circus tent – just like they show in the movies – that held maybe 500 people or so. So pretty damn small. But it was awesome.
The first act was a man dressed as the invisible man running around the tent and then grabbing a girl from the crowd (part of the act) who could do all sorts of bendy things with her body that you really shouldn’t be able to do. It was pretty amazing. There were all sorts of cool acts, I won’t describe them all, but here is a list:
Ventriloquist with a parrot puppet, who then proceeded to get a real live dog to move its mouth as well, and then people from the audience!
Guys riding motorbikes inside a metal sphere cage,
Tight rope walkers who would jump over each other and skip with a rope along the line,
Trampoline acrobats,
Guys who could do capoeira style moves in slow motion while holding each other up in the air by only their heads or one hand,
People hanging from a rope, swinging around the tent, holding another guy up with only his teeth,
A juggling team who had a strip juggling contest – they took off their clothes while still juggling,
An acrobatic girl who was wearing a white suit who jumped in a tank of water repeatedly so that she was soaking wet and slippery and see through and still performed her acrobatics high above us (yes, this was called Flic Flac Unsensored),
Guys on a giant vertically spinning bar with two cylinder cages on each end that would run around and do flips on the outside of these cages while it was spinning (the top of which was a good 10 stories in the air perhaps),
Good German music,
A comedian juggler, who was still funny even though we understood him saying only that he had one ball in his hand (that is about the extent of our German, the three of us put together)
And other acts that I’m sure I am forgetting, but were pretty damn cool.
As you can tell, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was good for a laugh and for the missed beat of my heart when the tight rope walker feel from his line into the crowd. Oh ya, there were no nets or safety lines for any of these tricks. Not allowed in North America I wouldn’t think – and they probably wouldn’t like all the striping and swearing at home either!
Yes it was good times and 15EUR well spent. However it made it a late Wednesday night and a tiring day today at work – yes I have to work on Canada Day, how horrible!!! Have a good day off everyone!

Reminder!!!

This is a selfish reminder to everyone that my birthday is next week - and yes you should know the date!
For all of you in Canada who wish to send me presents or cards - see Tyler or my parents for my address :) And you may still have time to get those wonderful things you are sending here as a package only took 4 days last week!!

And if I don't post again before Thursday - Happy Canada Day! I feel like I should get the day off here as well, but that would just involve me having to work 8 hours overtime to cover it, and that is no fun since I still have 3 hours overtime to do to catch up on when I went home. But I will be wearing red & white, thinking about all you guys enjoying your long (maybe?) weekends, your Canadian beers, and the sunshine, ahhh. So jealous.

For all you non-Canadians - Canada now has a Liberal minority government. And the Green Party got official party status with 4.6% of the popular vote (but still no seats) - go Green! But the thing that makes me angry is how the people in BC could see the results of the election before their polls had even closed. Something needs to be done.

Anyways have a great week celebrating Canada! And make sure you do celebrate - you won't realize how great a country it is until you move away for a year and learn not to take things for granted!

So what have I done since my last post, hmm, let's see. I went swimming on Wednesday and again on Friday morning before work - which was nice since my goggles and bathing suit had arrived from my mum. She sent the package Monday evening, my time, and it arrived Thursday in my mail box. German mail is fast, well actually any mail not being Canada Post is fast. I sent a package home the same day and they probably won't have it until next week as it's sitting in some sorting facility in Van.
Anyways, to then Saturday I got up nice and early and went with Matthias to Bremerhaven Science Day 2004, about 50k north of here on the North Sea. He was setting showing his Closed Biological Research Unit fish tank thingy at the Science Day. When we arrived it was damn cold and windy and I was not prepared for the event to be located outside! But it eventually turned into a nice day and I enjoyed sitting by the ocean smelling the fresh air and listening to the waves of the North Sea. I also enjoyed a pint of local brew with my boss and then headed back the hour drive to Bremen.
Saturday night I chilled by myself as Dinesh was off with some friends in Oldenburg and Cari was still in the US. So I finally rented "Chocolat" - and it was good, but not THAT good. But it did make me want lots of chocolate. I think I drank 3 mugs of hot chocolate during the movie. Oh and I rented Vin Diesel's "Extreme Rage", which turned out to be "A Man Apart", which I had seen before - oh well.
Sunday I cleaned my room as I'm getting excited to go back to Strasbourg - I'm already mentally packed. And I went for a 10km run in BurgerPark. But I'm feeling it a little today. This morning I swam before work again, and I can feel the improvements in my technique and speed already. It's awesome. I have decided that I will do a triathlon next spring, wherever I may be. And maybe a half marathlon, but don't hold me to that one as that is a bit more harsh on my poor knees.
Today at work I finally did my mid-term presentation that has been ready for 2 weeks now. And it is not so much mid-term anymore as I only have 3 weeks left of work! Craziness.
Tomorrow is dragon boating as usual, Wednesday we are going to see a crazy acrobatic circus with no animals called Flic Flac. Should be an interesting week and it will likely pass quickly. And it looks like the weather might improve as I've seen the sun at least twice today!!!

First Commercial Human Launch to Space

So for those of you who read this in the next hour or so, please turn on your TVs to CNN or hit the following website. You will watch history in the making. Scaled Composites, an American team competing for the X Prize, is making it's first launch into space (100km). This will not count for the X-Prize as the rules require a launch of 3 people, and a second launch within 2 weeks with the same vehicle. But it will make history. I hope all goes well and give a shout out to all my friends who get to watch this awesome event in the Mojave in California, I'm so jealous!

I can't think of a title

Last Wednesday Metallica was in Bremen for a concert. They were playing at the open stadium down by the river and apparently you can go down and sit outside the stadium and listen to concerts. I headed down there afterwork and felt very out of place in my non-black, non-leather work clothes. I was also one of the youngest people there. Well, I waited and waited for them to come on and finally gave up after an hour and a half as I was freezing cold. So I walked back into the city. Five minutes after I started walking I could here them start, oh well! I used to hate Metallica and only recently enjoy some of their music so it wasn't that big of a loss.
Friday night I got to ride in a Jaguar JX8 (or is it XJ8?) on the Autoban to Cologne (Köln). Arta and her friend picked Cari and I up as they were driving from Denmark to Köln. It was a pretty sweet ride and you could barely feel the speed at 220km/h. Very nice car. Handles very well, I would recommend one if you are looking for a high-class unaffordable car.
Anyways, the point of the trip was to visit Chris & Nicole in Köln. By the time we got their Friday night it was pretty late so we just went out for something to eat/drink. Saturday we spent the entire time shopping!!! Great sales! Mango was 50-70% off. I ended up buying a nice white linen suit for only $125, tank top for $7, dress shirt for $17 etc. And I can claim the tax back when I move home!!! So not so bad. We also walked around the city a bit, but mostly shopped.
We watched Germany tie their football match Saturday night and then went out for ice cream dessert and drinks. It was a good night, but we didn't get home til 3am and Chris had gotten us passed to go visit the European Astronaut Centre (where he works) at 10am on Sunday. And it takes an hour to get there - so that was a little hard.
But we made it there; tram to downtown, train, bus, 20 min walk. It is a very cool facility. All brand new and hardly used. We got to go in the neutral bouyancy pool room, see the gym where the astronauts (and Chris) work out, see the Columbus and ATV simulators, etc. Very cool. Just like Russia (and I'm sure NASA), but much newer, much less used, and much smaller. It certainly was nice of Chris to go to work on the weekend for us though.
The rest of the day we ate lunch at a steakhouse, walked around the Dom (cathedral), walked down the Rhine River, glimpsed at the Chocolate Museum, and walked around some more.
It wasn't a tourist weekend, which was nice for a change. It was just a good chance to hang out with some good friends...and shop :)

Not Much Happening

So it seems to me that there isn't anything much to write about, but I'm sure I will find something.
Let's see...Friday night I got home from work rather late after playing with fish at work. Then Dinesh and I decided to go downtown and check out why there was a fair in the square outside the church - yes a fair - giant ferris wheel, food stands, beer stands, candy stands, etc. So we went down and walked around and found out it was for the 600th anniversary of Sir Roland freeing the city of Bremen (I never figured out from who though). Bremen is now proud to be the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. They like that. So we wandered around the stands and over to the dance stage. There a radio station was bumping some tunes and throwing out condoms to the crowd. They announced at 10:40 that there would be some sort of light show. So they turned off their music and we all looked to the buildings where it was supposed to be projected on, and we waited, and waited and waited.
20 minutes later a count-down flashed on one of the buildings. 10 minutes later the show actually started. It was typical crazy German - but with an artsy twist. There was an image of Sir Roland projected on a building and his eyes were doors that people came out of - they moved their arms around like his eyes were moving. They flashed up some guy walking through grass and then making the buildings of Bremen. They also had the 4 Musicians (of course), but they were all born from eggs for some artsy reason. And then people leaned out of windows saying things - none of which I understood except "Freiheht" - freedom. They said stuff about the French Revolution and then about the Berlin Wall coming down. And then the weird part started - a giant pink 3 pronged alien hand inflated out of one of the windows. Then these other tree like inflatables popped up in the sqaure. And then a white one out of another building which proceeded to poop helium balloons. So that was interesting.
After all that, a guy announced that there would be a grosse spectakle down by the water, and grosse fireworks. So we headed on down there, and waited, and waited. Finally some people in costumes on a barge entertained us by laying in bathtubs and saying random things. We thought they might have a race, but then they just left. Then another boat had an orchestra playing on it. We were wondering where the hell the fireworks were at that point, so we asked some nice security guards. They told us that a 500 year old boat was going to have some lights on it - boring - so we left just before midnight. Unfortunately, we found out the next day that the fireworks were held between midnight and one and we had just missed them - oh well!!!
Saturday I went shopping and bought some shoes for only 7 euros!!! Super comfy too. And then we went to my coworker Matthias' birthday BBQ at his parents house on the outskirts of Bremen. It took us an hour to get there, but it was a really nice area and cool to see a different part of Bremen. We ate lots of grub, including tons of tofu hotdogs that I had brought back from Canada for Dinesh (send more!). We had a good time, but had to leave before Matthias actually hit 30 as it was going to take us another hour to get home. But it was fun!
Sunday I learned how to make curry thanks to Dinesh. And I got to bake cookies for the first time in ages as I brought back baking soda from Canada. They turned out a little thin and hard, but better than nothing. Ohh, to have the proper ingredients and tools once again!
So I guess I did have stuff to write about. Hmmm. I missed dragon boat paddling tonight as I wanted to finish off some work I was doing. And I forgot my socks too. It's turning out to be a nice evening so perhaps I will go for a jog instead. :)

Email

Sorry to anyone who has been trying to reach me by email or msn. The Internet at work has been crapping out this week. Hopefully it will be fixed soon, but in the mean time you can give me phone call if need be!!!!!!
I am aware that my pictures page is also not loading, but because I don't have the internet on my computer, I can't quite fix it yet. You will just have to be patient to see pictures of lovely Victoria from last weekend.
So sorry ~Beth

Canada, eh? (48 hours travelling, 81 hours at home)

So sorry for keeping this a secret from all of you, but it had to be done. Thursday morning I left Bremen bright and early (5 am) to endure a 26 hour travel day to get home to Victoria. I flew the hour flight to Frankfurt, waited an hour to board the 7.5 hour flight to Montreal, rushed through customs as my almost 50kg of luggage (plus the 12 crystal wine glasses and laptop I was carrying on) was dead last off the plane, ran to my flight to Toronto, hung out in the TO airport for 6 hours, and flew the 5 hour flight to Victoria. All to walk into Tyler’s room at 11:30 that night and surprise him!
Tyler graduated from UVic on Friday and I wanted to be there to say congratulations and show him how proud I was of him. He was super excited, and as Jer said, his head just about flew off. Jer had told Ty that Tina was coming over, so when I walked in and kissed Tyler on the check, he thought it was my sister for some reason. He looked up at me, said “hi” and then did several double takes! He didn’t say much for the next hour as I think he thought he was dreaming and didn’t want to wake up. But the next morning I was still there so he realized it was for real. It was so cool to surprise him, and everyone else (only my parents, Grandma, and Jer knew I was coming home). Tina was pretty excited at the airport when they picked me up as she had just found out as well. It was pretty cool to surprise everyone!
Friday was the grad ceremony, and I got to see lot of friends finally walk across the stage and get hit on the head (Val, Louise, Tyler, Monica, Lisa, Barry, Heather, Jen, I hope I didn’t forget anyone). I enjoyed the ceremony much more this year actually watching it and listening, instead of sitting up on the stage sweating to death. And it didn’t even seem that long. We enjoyed the reception afterwards and then chilled out until the party at Jer’s house later that evening. I got to see most of my friends (where were Erik, Ben and Nadine????) and party and hang out for a while. Good times. It was just like I hadn’t left at all. Nothing had changed even though some people are now married and pregnant, the boys still got up to the same trouble.
Saturday was quite a girly day I guess. In the morning I went to get my hair cut by my fav hair dresser and waited in the mall while my mum got her hair done too. My family had lunch together, and then we split up for shopping. My dad bought a BBQ, while my mum, sis and I bought clothes and make-up. I was so excited to shop at regular prices, but unfortunately I’ve turned into a Euro Snob (or Euro Trash = ET, as Tyler likes to call me), and I couldn’t find much that I liked. It’s amazing how different a lot of it is. The trends are similar but the stuff is slightly different, I think it’s classier here and definitely more laid back on the West Coast. Anyways, I bought a few things and had fun shopping so that’s what counts.
That evening, there was a graduation celebration BBQ at Tyler’s house with all his family and mine as well. It was good to hang out and see how proud everyone was of Ty. We escaped at 9:30 with Tyler’s brother and sister to go and see Harry Potter. By that time I was getting pretty damn tired even though I hadn’t really experienced jet-lag at all (I’m just sooo used to travelling ). So I had to fight to stay awake through a lot of the movie. It was good, but not as good as the first two, but obviously, it had to be seen.
Sunday Tyler and I spent the day together. We went to the new Old Navy store, watched the episodes of 24 that I had missed, went out for dinner and went to the beach. We just went to Red Robin for dinner, but it is amazing how used to European service I have become. I found it almost annoying that the waiter kept asking us how we were doing and if we had decided on our food yet. I felt rushed as we only spent an hour at the restaurant! I am used to taking my time to decide on the food, eating it slowly and then enjoying conversation after the meal. I figured that if we had ordered coffee we could have stretched our stay out another 30 mins, but definitely not to the 3 hours that I am used to! So Euro I have become! After the dinner (which I couldn’t finish – no wonder North Americans are overweight!) we drove down through down town to the water. Tyler gave me a nice tour all the way from the breakwater up and around through Clover Point, Cattle Point, Uplands, Ten Mile Point, and to Mt. Doug. We went down to the beach at Mt. Doug for a while and enjoyed the wonderful smells, sounds and views. Ohh, I miss it so much. The first thing I noticed when I got off the plane was how absolutely good it smells in Victoria – so fresh and clean, full of moisture and plants – and this is at the airport, imagine down at the beach! We got to enjoy the outdoors some more when we took Ty’s dog Maddy for a walk with Tina and her boyfriend Mark. Such a beautiful place Victoria is.
I had decided that I wanted to live in Vancouver, but now I think Victoria would be good as well, as long as I could find a job. I wanted the big city with lots of activity, plus the mountains, ocean and parks, but now I think I could handle Victoria for a little while longer. Anyone know of any space companies in Victoria  ????
It was a wonderful weekend, and totally worth the travelling hours and the money. I loved seeing how happy Tyler was to see me. I loved seeing my family and friends again, and it was nice to come back home to the familiar things. Victoria is such a beautiful place and so many of us hardly take advantage of it. Go to the beach once a week, go up Mt. Doug and enjoy the views, go kayaking, go to the lakes, ride your bike, roller blade – do all the things that are the reason you live in Victoria. You will miss it once you are gone.
I left at 7am Monday morning on a flight to Toronto, then to Frankfurt, and arrived in Bremen at 10am Tuesday morning here. I came directly to work and hopefully I will be able to stay awake most of the day. I am not really jet-lagged with the usual sick and tired feeling, I more am just lacking sleep from all the travelling over the last few weeks.
My internet was not working this morning so hopefully this will be posted sometime Tuesday. Thanks everyone for everything on the weekend – I had a great time – love you all – only 2 more months!!!

Praha!

I had an awesome time in Prague, although my bank account doesn’t think so. I spent so much money that Citibank thought my credit card was stolen!!! Whoops! Most of it was presents for people, and I should get some of the money back on the beautiful Bohemian crystal wine glasses that I bought for my parents at least. So ya, we shopped.
We took an overnight train on Friday night which involved finding our couchettes at midnight in Dortmund – the room had two other people in it who had the heat cranked way up, it was like 30 degrees, so I fixed that quickly – and then stopping in the middle of the night at all the major trains stations in Berlin (there were about 5 stops in 2 hours and I woke up at every stop and start). We arrived in Dresden at 7 something in the morning and changed to our Praha train, which got us there about 10:30am. Unfortunately for us, we got off at the first train station, where everyone else seemed to get off too. We thought it was the main train station downtown, but after walking 3km to get to our hotel only 600m away, we were pretty convinced that it was the wrong station.
We spent Saturday walking around the Old Town and some of the New Town. We looked in some clothing stores, as I was all excited about buying cheap clothes. Well that sucked. The clothes were more expensive that in Bremen. So that idea went right down the drain. Cari ended up finding a load of clothes though and she wasn’t even looking for them! We had lunch in the Old Town – I had a crazy Prague sausage that looked like it was a hot dog that had exploded in the microwave, and that’s pretty much what it tasted like too. (see my pics) I also tried out the local Pilsner as Prague is apparently the home of Pilsner. It was all right, considering I don’t really like Pilsner, and damn cheap – like a euro for 300mL. The rest of the day we spent exploring, searching for an army store Cari had been in last time, finding it and not finding the flasks that we wanted, finding the flasks in a tourist store and realizing they were about 4 times as much as they were in Russia, etc. etc. Oh ya, we also saw the Astronomical Clock go off at noon. Apparently it was supposed to be exciting, but it sucked ass. I mean the one in Strasbourg was 100 times better, this was just boring and about a million tourists were standing around being totally impressed by it! Obviously they hadn’t been to Strasbourg (or Vienna). Speaking of tourists, I’m pretty sure all the tourists in Western Europe decided to descend on Praha last weekend. There were so many people there, you could barely walk. No wonder I had to search about 150 hotels to find one that had a room. However, the view from the top of Clock Tower was pretty cool.
Saturday night we just chilled and ended up watching a swing/jazz band play in the café of our hotel. Sunday we decided to make our way across Charles Bridge and over to the area near the Prague Castle. Again, it was super busy, but I can understand why. The weather was absolutely gorgeous the city is very pretty and full of life, and the food and drink was pretty cheap. We hiked to the top of the Castle and paid our 5 euros to get access to all. We walked along Golden Lane, which consisted of teeny tiny houses that had actually been occupied by people up until the 50’s. We looked at the shop in the Powder Tower, and all the other shops they somehow managed to squeeze into a castle. We got to go inside St. Vitius Cathedral, which was impressive, and then climbed over 250 stairs of a tiny spiral staircase up to the top. The climbing wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been a separate staircase for those wishing to go down, however there wasn’t and we had to squish by hundreds of people to get up and the same going back down. I’m sure that was some sort of fire hazard. It would have really sucked had either of us been claustrophobic. But is gave us another great view of the city. Then we went into the Palace and by that time we were starving.
We ate at a Czech restaurant that Chris, Nicole, Ruey, Mara, Nick and Cari had eaten at last time. It was tasty and enjoyable until a whole tour of older Italians decided to join us on our cute garden terrace at the back of the restaurant. Oh well. Damn tourists!
The rest of our trip was spent again wandering the streets and spending money. I ended up buying myself a beautiful set of wine glasses as well – I have no idea how I am going to get all of this stuff home though! That will be quite the trick.
Sorry for the long blog – it was a nice relaxing trip and a change of pace from the 3 countries in 3 days of the previous weekend. PS. I am now at 24.5 countries (the 0.5 is the Hong Kong airport – those are my family rules).

Dragon Boat Paddling

Last night was a rather exciting night.
I had the chance to walk around a cool old area of town called the Schnoor district. It is full of little shops and restaurants, and as well an Irish pub that I will have to try (especially since a pint of Kilkenny is only 3.70 instead of the 5€ it was in Strasbourg). I will have to explore it a bit more one of these weekends.
Then I met up with my friend Bent who works for OHB and did ISU last year. He brought two ISU alumni friends along and I brought Cari. We then headed down to the river to try out Dragon Boat Paddling. Bent was the only one who had done it before, so we were a little nervous, but everyone was super nice and obviously spoke English, because they are German. They welcomed us and taught us a little bit of the technique, the calls (some of which were in German) and we warmed up.
By this time the weather was beautiful, the sun was out and the river was just gorgeous. It was hard work, but very enjoyable to be out on the water, exercising. It was great. There was even a festival going on on one side of the river, so we could hear all the music from it. I guess we spent about an hour out on the water, and by that time my back was pretty sore and I was just a little wet. We cleaned up the boat and then Cari and I headed over to the festival for some Danish hot dogs. Yes, I know we were in Denmark last weekend, but for some reason we only had Danishes there, not hot dogs. So we enjoyed our hot dog, bought some bulk candy, and walked around the festival until I was so cold we had to go home (my sweatshirt had gotten a little wet in the boat and was more cooling than warming).
We made it home, had some Bailey's and hot chocolate and crashed into bed, already feeling the pain in the muscles that I haven't maybe ever used. Ahh, such a good feeling.
Today, I'm not in too much pain, mostly my ass hurts from sitting on the little wooden benches. And I can feel my shoulder muscles a little - but pretty good considering. But I bet I will feel it tomorrow while I am walking around Prague!!!!
It was great fun, great exercise and I definitely will be going back next Tuesday and Thursday. I suggest it to all of you in Victoria and Vancouver.
Have a great weekend (long weekend for those of you in the US and Europe)everyone!!

Canadians....

....please vote on June 28th. I know this is a strange thing for me to say as I've never really been that politically involved, however I have always voted.
I am requesting this from all of you because this year your vote actually counts. Each vote that a party receives earns it $1.75 for party spending. We still do not have representation based on percentage voting, but this is a start and this will at least allow parties to receive our tax dollars based on how many Canadians actually support them. No matter what your political beliefs, your $1.75 should go to the party that you support.
Consider this when you go to vote this election, don't not vote for who you want just because you don't think they will win, they will - your $1.75. And we all know that money is power.

OK, enough good deeds for today. Tonight I'm going to try Dragon Boat Paddling. I know it's kind of strange to try it in Germany when I have lived in Victoria and Vancouver for 14 years, but okay, I'm finally trying it. Should be fun, especially if the weather ever warms up here and stops raining.

Demain, je vais partir au Praha. Cari et moi, nous allons prendre un train de nuit demain soir. Alors, nous explorerons le ville jusque lundi quand nous rentrerons en train a Bremen. Dit-moi si vous voudraiez quelque choses. Dinesh vas rester ici et il vas avoir un bon weekend sans nous!

Pics

My Scandinavia pictures are up - enjoy!




I'm off for a tasty Bavarian dinner with my boss tonight, yummy!

School Stuff (See below for Scandinavia trip)

So I forgot to mention a long time ago about our parabolic flight stuff. As you may remember we were rejected as a team because we were too good. Then we were asked to be a spare, which we said no to. Now we have been accepted for a professional flight. I don't really know much more than that, but I don't think that I will be able to fly all the way back over here to do it. But who knows? It could be very cool.
Also, our abstract entitled "Enabling Human Missions to Europa and Titan" got accepted for the International Astronautical Congress 2004 in Vancouver in October. We won't be presenting, but we will get a poster. So that's cool. A whole bunch of other ISU students also got accepted, and some even as presenters. Congrats!
And I finally registered for COSPAR in Paris in July. This is a conference on advances in space research and should be very cool. My boss is presenting three times and I hope to get to all of them.

Comments?

So I am doing the same thing as Jeremy - requesting comments so I know how many people are reading this and how much time I should waste typing this thing up.
Also, let me know if you look at my picture page too. I will add Scandinavia pictures tomorrow (see post below).

Scandinavia

Well it was quite the trip. We did over 3000 km in 4 days and saw 3 capital cities. It was good fun. Here is a brief recap:
So we started out early Thursday morning, I felt like crap as I had managed to get a cold, so I ended up sleeping all the way to Denmark. We drove over a nice 32€ toll bridge that was pretty cool and arrived in Copenhagen at about 1pm. We went directly to the tourist office to find somewhere to sleep and to find out what we should see in our limited time there. Our priority was getting a bed as they are difficult to come by for cheap in Scandinavia, so we first went to the hostel. Then we set out to explore the city. We walked around, went to a church that had a spire with 400 steps to the top so got an awesome view of the city, went to the Royal Palace, walked down the main shopping street (but everything was closed as it was a holiday), then did a cool boat tour. We got to see the city from a canal boat and saw the new library, opera house, the museums, the boats, the Royal apartments, and of course the infamous Little Mermaid (which is a lot smaller than you would think).
We ate dinner along an old boating area called Nyhven which was quite nice in the sunshine, but a little too cold for our liking (none of us have our winter jackets anymore). We then went by the Little Mermaid with the car before packing it in.
The next day we found real danishes from a bakery, filled up, and were on our way to Sweden. We crossed the new bridge into Sweden for another 32€ and headed up the West Coast of Sweden towards Norway. The scenary was really gorgeous. It reminded me a lot of home - either BC or Northern ONT. It was awesome. Oslo looked like the gulf islands but with a cute city put on top - very cool.
Once in Oslo, we did the same thing - headed right for the tourist office. After figuring out the important details we once again explored. We had arrived at about 4pm so we didn't have quite as much time as in Copenhagen. We walked up to the Royal Palace and harassed the guards - which were very friendly. We walked by the Parliament, down the main shopping street and down to the old castle by the docks. By that time I was starting to feel really bad again and was starving to death so we headed to good old TGI Fridays for dinner. Whoops, have I failed to mention how there were so many more American companies in Scandinavia? There were even quite a few 7 Elevens!!! Craziness. Dinner was tasty, except for the fact that they didn't have a single vegetarian item on the menu! What kind of chain restaurant is this? I know we were in the land of cold and therefore meat, but still, come on, Oslo is a decent sized city, and a capital tourist destination. So Dinesh had to sit there while we ate, and he got an enourmous pizza afterwards.
By that time it was almost 10pm, but still totally light out. We then went to this really cool statue park - called Vigeland Sculpture Park. One artist had created 200 sculptures of naked people. I know it sounds creepy, but it was really very cool. And the people all depicted some sort of emotion or scene very realistically. I enjoyed it a lot. We watched the sun set at about 11pm and decided we should kit the sack so we could get up nice and early to head to Stockholm.
Well Cari and I somehow managed to miss nice and early and we didn't leave the hostel until 9 or so, oh well. But that put us in Stockholm at about 4pm. It was a beautiful drive across the country of Sweden - again, so much like Canada.
We parked near the train station to go to tourist info, but I sat in the car so we didn't have to pay for parking. An hour and one "Le Petit Prince" read later, Cari and Dinesh returned. They had found us a hostel finally after calling about 20 places. And it was on a boat in the harbour! Coolio! And it happened to be right beside a Harley Davidson-Buell boat. I never quite figured out what that boat was for, but it was cool anyways.
That night we wandered around the old town - shopping streets, Palaces, Royal Apartments, Hotels, Museums, boats, parks etc. Very pretty city once again. It consists of about a gazillion islands, and is much like Venice (so I've heard). Not as pretty as Oslo as not as much green, but still nice. And hey it's Sweden - home of meatballs, IKEA, and hockey. By the way, we saw the biggest IKEA in the world, the headquarters and the central distribution center. Ahh...IKEA.
However, Stockholm was very cold, and Dinesh was freezing to death as he didn't even have a jumper, and just had a light jacket. So we returned to the hostel, chilled with a hot cup of chocolate and passed out. Next morning we did a Royal Canal Tour of Stockholm, which kinda sucked. The one in Copenhagen was much better. But oh well, we still got to see the rich area where a member of ABBA lives. And some pretty parks and scenary. Then we indulged in veggie burgers for lunch/breakfast! Yes, veggie burgers. I know it may not sound that exciting, but since I have been living in Europe for 8 months, it was. Poor Dinesh was missing them too as for some reason they are only readily available in the UK, Canada and some areas of the US. Not France, not Germany. Oh and veggie dogs are impossible to find - please mail some over for Dinesh!
But I haven't got to the best part - we did a little shopping, yes shopping on a Sunday!!! This is my kind of place. They actually had real stores open on a Sunday! What craziness! I think that was the tip of the iceberg that perhaps made Scandinavia my favourite place in Europe - if only it weren't so freakin expensive. And I mean expensive. I thought mainland Europe was expensive, man! It was bad converting it into Euros, and then I saw the Canadian exchange rate - and I couldn't bring myself to buy anything! Gas was over $2 a litre, chocolate bars were over $2, a meal at McDonalds for the 3 of us was almost $40! Hostels were $40 a night....oh well, it had to be done.
Then we spent 15 hours driving back from Stockholm to Bremen, crossing two whole countries and arriving home at 2:30 am. Then getting up nice and early for work today. I'm surprised I'm still awake enough to type this up. However, I do not have enough energy left to post pics - that will have to be done tomorrow.
I hope everyone is enjoying their Victoria Day Weekends at home - I get another long weekend this one - to Prague it is!!!

And we're off...

Ah a lovely short work week. Actually, not so good as I've been busier this week and wanted to get more done that I actually did, oh well, next week will be 5 whole days of working.
So at the moment we are planning on hitting Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, although Dinesh had some crazy plans about Iceland and Estonia in mind, so we may end up somewhere completely different. But I will definitely recap our adventures on Monday or Tuesday.
Have a great week and weekend everyone!!!

Pictures!!!

I have been working on my pictures website and have made it work. So far I only have pictures from the very beginning of the year and pictures from my trip to Berlin last weekend. I will gradually be adding photos from Russia, Tunisia, Christmas etc. over the next little while.
Enjoy!!!

I have fixed the comments settings so those of you who aren't registered Blogger users should now be able to comment. Sorry!

Sausages, Beer, Love Parade, Old Walls, Recent History - It must be Berlin

Ahh Berlin, one of my favourite cities I have visited in Europe. I don't know what it is about this city, maybe it's the huge amount of history mixed with continuous change, or the nice people in such a huge city, or the party attitude or the numerous American fastfood chains, or the good shopping, I don't know - it's just great. I wish we had been able to stay more than 2 days, but alas, that is the life of a working girl, this time I wasn't a backpacker.
Cari and I woke up bright and early Saturday morning (5am) to take the 3 hour train to Berlin Zoo Station. We arrived a little tired and a little hungry. We ate some yummy pastries from the train station and wandered across the street to the McDonalds (a familiar place, Tina and I ate there). There we decided to join the Insiders Tour of Berlin. Tina and I had done this tour 3 years ago and really liked it. So Cari and I decided to walk around Berlin for 4.5 hours with them. The weather was crappy - cold and rainy and we had thought it was going to be nice. So we had no rain jackets, no sweaters and no toques. But we braved it and did an excellent tour. What did we see? Just about all the major sites in the city centre: Museum Island, the Jewish Synagogue, markets, churches, Hitler's bunker which is now a carpark with no markings, remains of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Reichstag parliament buildings, Brandenburg Gate, the hotel Michael Jackson held the baby out the window from, the Victory Tower, the Jewish memorial.....Most of it I had seen before, but we did get to hear some stories that I had either forgotten or were different from the tour I did before. There were some new buildings up that weren't there 3 years ago, and we got to actually see Brandenburg Gate this time - last time construction was being done on it and it was covered up. Even though I had done it before, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour again.
After freezing our asses off for 4.5 hours, we decided to head out to the ILA Berlin Air Show. It took about an hour to get there so we didn't arrive until 3:30 or so. We spent most of the time walking around trying to find Rob Curbeam ("Beamer"), the NASA astronuat we were supposed to met up with and sleep on his hotel room floor. However, we couldn't find him and eventually just asked if anyone had seen him - apparently he had left at about 3 - so we just missed him. But we got to see some cool planes and the French team (like the Snowbirds) put on a good show. We got kicked out at 6pm when it closed and took the long train journey back into downtown. We went to the tourist office to find out where Beamer's hotel was and discovered it was way out by the airport, where we had just come from! So I also asked where Chris and Nicole's hotel was, and it was just across the street. So we headed there. The Intercontinental Berlin - pretty damn nice. We had a coffee there with them and then went out for dinner to a pub. It was awesome to hang out with them again and to see their friend Scott too.
We finally got in contact with Beamer at 11:30 and decided that it was too much to take an hour+ long train out there to sleep on his floor. So we decided to just stay in a hostel. I called one from Scott's room that was supposed to be 5 mins away - they had beds. So we went there and the guy said, 'no we are full'- I was like I just called you. But there are 3 hostels in Berlin owned by this same company and they all use the same 1-800 number, apparently. The guy on the phone hadn't even said which hostel it was, and I even asked him if it was right across from the Zoo train station, and he said it was - ahh language confusion I guess. So we made the "maximum 15 minute" train journey to the other hostel. An hour later, we arrived. It was now 2am and we were wandering the streets of Berlin, hmm, good idea. But we made it safely and finally fell into our beds at 2:30am.
Next morning we went back to Checkpoint Charlie and to the Topography of Terror at the Wall. We looked for souvenirs and took some pics. We decided to go back to the airshow in the afternoon as it turned out to be a really nice day. There, we just laid outside watching the planes go by. Cari ran into Beamer, but I just missed him again - does he really exist???? I talked to him on the phone, but that doesn't mean anything :) We saw the Swiss acrobatic team and they were really good. We saw a giant Airbus Super Transporter that looked like you could fit 10 planes inside of it, or at least a space station module for sure. There were all sorts of cool planes, but since I don't know anything about planes, I couldn't tell you what they were. Maybe Cari will say on her blog.
After the air show, we went back to Zoo Station and walked past the zoo and into the main park. We hung out at the Victory Tower for a bit, chilling in the sunshine. We ate currywurst for dinner - coke, sausage, and fries for 3€! Oh and we had Dunkin Donuts for dessert. I tried the radioactive orange flavoured one and it was surprisingly tasty.
We caught the 8pm train home and arrived home last night at 11:30 - exhausted but happy to be in out own beds. It's nice to pretend to be a backpacker for a bit, but it's even nice to have your own bed to come home to.
All in all, it was a great weekend, I just wish the weather had been nicer the entire time, and that we had had more time to visit a Museum or something. Now we have a 3 day recovery period before our next trip begins!!!!

Travelling!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow Cari and I will venture to Berlin. We are going to get a 6am train Saturday morning and arrive in Berlin nice and tired at 9am. We will see the sights, check out the Berlin Air and Space Show, hang out with a NASA astronaut, you know, the usual weekend stuff!
I'm super excited because I loved Berlin when I was there before, but it should be totally different as it is a city of constant change. It's too bad we only have 2 days, but that's what happens when you work full time. Chris, Nicole and their friend Scott will also be there so it will be nice to meet up with them too.
However, next weekend should be even cooler. Thursday is a holiday and originally Cari and Dinesh were going to have Friday off and I wasn't. So we were going to travel around Bremen on Thursday and go somewhere after I finish work on Friday. BUT, I found out yesterday that I get Friday off too now. So we will rent a car and take off Thursday morning for Scandinavia!! Denmark, Sweden, Norway, here we come! I'm so excited as it will be a totally different part of Europe and a totally new experience. I'm going to the home of IKEA!!!!! I'm sure it will be an awesome trip too.
OK, enough rubbing in my awesome life. I will now get back to work, yes work, I work 8+ hours a day in a real job, so don't feel too jealous of me.
Enjoy you weekends!!!!

Advertisement

This is a small advertisement for Tyler's new venture. He has started to create t-shirts which are available at Awesome Shop. They are meant to be slightly offensive, so for those of you who are sensitive to insults, I wouldn't recommend the site.
Otherwise, they are pretty cool, enjoy!
PS Tell your friends, as he needs to pay off living in France somehow.

Changes...

As you have obviously noticed, I have made some changes to my blog to go along with the recent changes to blogger.com. I have added a comments section below where you can give me feedback or just post a message saying you were here. It helps to know that people actually read my site.
I hope you like what I've done.
Tschüs
~Beth

Movies, Thai food, football, and science

Last week was all right. I did lots more reading on my project and I think I have a handle on it, at least at the moment. I pretty much have everything settled down now - phone, cell phone, house, trip to IKEA done etc etc. Yes we went to IKEA and I bought some curtains for my room, so now I can actually sleep properly. I'm a little to used to the blackness caused by the French shutters I guess.
Friday night we watched Barbershop, which Tyler and I tried to watch on his last night in Strasbourg, but unfortunately, it was in German back then. This time, it was a DVD and we could watch it in whatever language we wanted. Much better.
Saturday, Cari and I went for a run in Burgerpark - yes, Burgerpark. It is a super nice park with a mini zoo, ponds, bridges, forests, streams, sculptures, etc. I would like to go there on a weekly basis. After our nice little run, we went downtown to check out the festitivies. You see, Bremen was playing a football match for the national championship. It was an away game so they had a huge screen set up in the main square. We tried to get near it, but it was impossible with the thousands of people there. And of course, since they were German, they were all drinking their beers and having a great time. It was cool. After watching the game and shopping (without buying anything, I might add), we went out for dinner at a cosy Thai restaurant. Expensive, but damn good. We kept cursing Will and his cheap Thai food the whole time though. We had some good food, good conversation and then went home and pretty much did nothing on a Saturday night.
Sunday, Cari and I went to the Science Centre at the university. It is pretty much the same as Science World in Vancouver, but it was fun. It was something different to do, and made us practice our German a little bit. We felt like little kids eating our ice creams and playing with all the science toys. Ahh, such geeks we are. Afterwards, we headed to BURGER KING for our first feast in over 8 months. We actually ate some pretty healthy food from their lite menu so it wasn't so bad. It was just nice to have another choice besides McDicks for our fast food pleasure. Oh and speaking of choices, Bremen will have a Subway store shortly, so that is very exciting. Near the train station, so I might just have to pick up a sub on the way home from work - if I can afford it.
Today has been a super long day, so I am leaving work now. I hope to go for a run, head home, and crash. I feel like I didn't really have a weekend, and next weekend will be worse. Cari and I are going to Berlin to check out the air show there - and hang out with an American astronaut. Cool!!!! It helps to live with someone who works at Mission Control!

Number

+49(0)421-380-3184

Phone

So we have a land line now, but I couldn't tell you what the phone number is. Hopefully I will find out tonight. In the meantime, send me an email or a text and I can call you.

Rest and Relaxation

So sorry to say, but my promise of exciting stories from the weekend won’t be fulfilled. Friday night I went to get money back from Cari’s sim card and tried to set up internet and a landline at home. Well, by the time we had to buy an ISDN phone, a card for my computer, pay the minute rate for both the internet and phone, it wasn’t worth it. So I decided to just go for the landline instead. So hopefully by today we will have a working phone line. I don’t happen to know the phone number, but I plan to find that out soon. Friday night we were pretty relaxed and just hung out and watched DVDs. It was supposedly a crazy night where people were drinking and dancing in the streets to scare off the witches (similar to Halloween), but we were too tired to venture out. Yes, we have become extremely lazy, but I’m sure it will improve once we get more settled in.
Saturday was May Day, so therefore a holiday, and therefore everything was closed. However, my boss had told me there would be a flea market down by the river so we decided to check it out. The weather was absolutely beautiful so we walked around and then lay on the sweet grass beside the river for a while. It actually smelled good too!!! We sat there watching all of Bremen walk by and we were sure we were missing some town meeting or something. We finally figured out they were walking in the direction of the stadium and they were all signing and drinking and wearing the team’s colours. Crazy Germans!
Once we got too hot we walked back through the beer gardens and got a tasty ice cream for only 2 euros! Much cheaper than Strasbourg. And it came with crazy icing flavoured whipped cream/ice cream on top. Very tasty! We walked back home in the beautiful weather and chilled the rest of the night. I have a feeling we will be watching a lot of DVDs. I think we will need to find a video store soon or we will have all of Cari’s DVDs watched.
Sunday I slept in until 11 so we were too late to get treats from the bakery downstairs. Darn! I spent the day reading my French book, watching TV and generally being as lazy as possible. Pretty boring. Hopefully my life will get more exciting shortly!

One week in Germany already

It's Friday, and I'm looking forward to my first weekend off since I don't know when. I have a real job now, where I'm not even allowed to work weekends - how sweet is that? Well, I'll probably end up doing some reading up on life support systems, but that's okay since there will be nothing else to do. Yes, that's right. Nothing else to do. Why? Because tomorrow is a holiday and the next day is Sunday so there is obviously nothing to do on a Sunday. All the stores will be closed; so much for going to IKEA this weekend. But truely, I'm sure I will find something to do. There is supposed to be a flea market down by the river which I will go check out. And I want to find a park or something nearby home so that I can run. So a little bit of exploring to do - and some relaxing: watching dvd's, reading, practicing German and French, hmm...I might be busy.
This week I have gone through all the pain in the asses that are associated with moving to a new country. I tried to get a sim card so that my cell phone would work - first try didn't work so I had to go to another company. But I had to leave the original sim card at the first place and have to go back to get my money today. We will see if they have "forgotten" who I am and don't have my 30€.
Next I tried to get a bank account. I conveniently have a bank right across the street, but guess the hours - Mon-Wed 9-4:30, Thurs 9-6, and Fri 9-2:30. And of course they close over lunch too. So I decided to try to open an account at a downtown branch, but they told me I HAD to do it at the one on my street, fine. So I left work early yesterday to get an account. I arrived at 5:40, should be plenty of time to get up to the front desk before it closes, right? Well it was, but apparently when they say they close at 6, that's when they stop working, not when they stop letting customers in. So the nice lady told me that there wasn't enough time. And then she proceeded to tell me that I couldn't open an account anyways because I didn't speak German and therefore I couldn't sign a German contract. Hmm...I signed my lease that was all German. Finally I convinced them that I had no German speaking friends as I had just moved here and that I didn't really have a choice - I needed a bank account so that OHB can give me my small amount of money each month. But I had to make another appt. for next week - they asked me if today at 1pm would be ok - no you idiots, I just told you I work and can't get here any earlier than 5:30! So I will wait until next Thursday at 5 to hopefully get a bank account. If that doesn't work, my boss has nicely offered to call them for me :)
What else? I hate ranting (well not really), but it is such a pain to move to a new country, especially where you don't speak the language. I keep wishing that I could use French as I know 100 times more French than German. But almost everyone I have asked "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" pretty much always says "Ja" or "ein Bißchen". And they are all pretty nice about, and willing to speak English too - you don't have to suck it out of them like the French.
Enough for now. Hopefully I will have wonderful stories about my weekend in the free Hanseatic city of Bremen on Monday!
My new phone number is +49(0)170-195-5114 if you feel the desire to spend the huge amount of money per minute to call a mobile (or a "handy" as they call it here).
Tschüs for now!

First Day of Work

I have survived the trip to Bremen with Cari, survived getting our flat, and now have survived the first day of work.
I didn't start until 10am so I got to sleep in a bit, however I know I still need quite a bit more sleep. I started the day off with a tour of the buildings and facilities by my boss Dr. Slenzka. We then set up my office - yes, I have my very own office! - with my computer, a phone hopefully tomorrow, desks, chairs, everything :) I have mostly been reading documentation from previous experiments and current ones. But that'S pretty much what a first day anywhere is about (Cari spent the day doing the same thing). I had lunch at the CROUS of Bremen (student cafeteria) so I got to see a bit of the University. It will be nice to be near to other students and to stuff going on. This afternoon again was reading and trying to find a German language class to take. Although, I may pick up more German here than I picked up French in France because I am surrounded by it everyday. Even Windows and everything on my computer is German. (which is ok, until some sort of problem arises - those are hard enough to deal with in English)
So this evening I am going to try and find a sim card so that I can have a working phone. But I don't think I will be able to get internet at home though - just will have to do it at work after work or at the Uni library somehow.
Oh ya, so Cari and I made it after driving all night. We stopped for 2 hours to sleep and arrived at 7:30am. We slept in the car outside the Housing company for 2 hours before we met with our landlord. We did all the paper work and went to the house. Some of you may have already heard me say this, but our flat is pretty cool. We have: washing machine, dishwasher, big tv, cable, dvd player, cd player, vcr, surround sound, balcony looking out onto a courtyard garden, a living room, each our own bedroom, microwave, large (for Europeans) fridge, nice bathroom with hands-free shower! etc. And we live right on the tram line (my bedroom window over looks it) and overtop of a bakery, yum! So it's pretty cool, considering I'm paying 235€ here instead of 420€ in Strasbourg for just a room and a crappy kitchen. So we lucked out considering we took whatever we could get.
OK - I have to stop now so that I can get back into town in time to buy a sim card.
ISU students - keep me posted on your experiences!
Victoria crew - keep Tyler busy!
Everyone - miss you and love you all, see you in 3-4 months!!!

What a Week!

So I've had some serious lack of sleep this week. I stayed up all day Monday working on the presentation and stuff. I slept for maybe 6 hours that night as we had another presentation practice at 9am Tuesday. So Tuesday was a busy day and I was at school until midnight helping the editing team finalize the report. Wednesday morning we had another rehearsal, but half of our team had stayed up all night, so we pushed it back until 3pm and did another practice at 8pm. Thursday was the big day in which TP1 presented in the morning, we had a practice at lunch, and then presented in the afternoon. It went really well - we had some awesome animations and movies to enhance our veyr professional presentation. We all pretty much died after that. We had to run around to finish packing (or start for some people), pick up internship forms, return computers, cancel this, get a new card for that.... I ate dinner by myself at home and then headed into town to the Irish Times at 8pm for one last party.
I wasn't really planning on getting too drunk as I had lots to do today. But the manager of the bar (Jamie) nicely encouraged Brooke and I to have a sort of a race. And the prize was more alcohol. I didn't go to sleep until 5am as Ollie and I came back here afterwards to watch the latest "24". I got up at 7:30 to say goodbye to my dear friends Will and Bavs, and then couldn't really get back to sleep. And I'm hungover. And I miss Tyler.
So I've had about a total of 26 hours sleep since I got up Sunday. Hmm, that's not very much. And Cari and I are planning on driving to Bremen through the night tonight. We have to be there by 9:30 tomorrow morning and we have to return the car there by noon. I think I'm just going to crash all day tomorrow and Sunday before I have to figure out how to get to work Monday morning!
Craziness!
Now I need to move all of Will's and Margot' and my stuff that's getting left at ISU to ISU. I've pretty much done all the cleaning I'm going to do so maybe I will have a nap now while I wait for the car from Cari.
Yawn...
Next post will be from Bremen :) (and sorry if it takes a while, I don't know if I will get internet at home or how much I can use it at work)

My new home...

Yes, so I'm supposed to be doing a lot of work today, but due to my serious lack of sleep, all I seem to be capable of right now is surfing the net endlessly. So I found a link to my new town for you all to check out.
Bremen
Highlights:
550,000 people
North-West Germany
1200 years old
world-ranking seaport

Ok, Ok, back to work for me :)

Reply to Culture Night

We had Canadian, American, Nigerian, German, and Finnish culture night last Friday night. We saw presentations from each country and got to eat some pretty tasty food. The American presentation was funny, but sparked some pretty intense debate. See Nick's blog for some of the commentary.
Here is a response to the Canadian presentation - see above for the same person's response to the American presentation.
Read and you will understand why I am happy to leave ISU and go work in Germany - only 4 more days here!

"DEAREST CANADIANS,

LET ME TELL YOU: YOU ARE ALL A BUNCH OF APPEASERS! I'VE NEVER SEEN A POPULATION MORE APPEASING THAN YOU!!!

BUT THIS IS FAIR TO ME. YOU LIVE DISTANT FROM EVERYTHING AND YOU ENJOY THIS.

HISTORY SHOWED THAT WHEN YOU FEEL A THREAT AS REAL, YOU ARE AMONG THE BRAVEST WARRIORS ON THIS PLANET. I'M GLAD FOR THIS.

I WANT TO TELL YOU, AS FOR THE THANKSGIVING, YOUR PRESENTATION WAS MUCH MORE NICE AND FUNNY THAN THE AMERICAN ONE. YOU SHOWED LOVE AND AFFECTION FOR YOUR LAND. AND A REAL SELF-PARODY ATTITUDE.

MY FATHER (A COOL PERSON) HAS BEEN IN CANADA, AND HE TOLD ME: GO TO CANADA: YOU WILL HAVE MORE CHANCE TO SURVIVE THERE THAN IN THE U.S. OF A.

WE'LL SEE.

IN THE MEANTIME I WILL VISIT THIS PLACE CALLED NORTH-DAKOTA.

I AM CANADIAN! IN A SENSE.

I WISH CANADA AND U.S.A. WILL BECOME FORMALLY (THEY ARE ALREADY SUBSTANTIALLY) ONE THING. SOON."

Now I'm missing a piece of me

I sent Tyler away on a plane this morning. Now I am all alone in France, well that's not entirely true, I do have a few other friends here.
It was absolutely wonderful to have Tyler here with me for 3 months. It made my life so much better. We got to share the French craziness and some wonderful trips (Tunisia, Russia, Paris, Alps, etc.). Tyler got to know all my friends and they became his friends too - they all miss you Babe. We learned to live together, to make new meals together, to help each other with our boredom or busyness.
But now we will be apart for 4 months.
I'm excited about my upcoming internship in Bremen. I believe Cari and I have found somewhere to live and my boss has kindly given all sorts of directions and help. It should be a great 3 months. Then I will be back to Strasbourg for graduation and presentations and then travelling for 2 weeks. I will be home before anyone know's it.
Tyler will get to go home and celebrate being done school with everyone and see our friends he has missed the last 3 months. He will get to buy things at regular prices in English. He will get to be polite and people will be polite back. He can drive, go see the ocean, walk in a park etc. I'm happy that he gets to go back, I'm just jealous that I don't get to right now either.
I hope that both of us will have all sorts of exciting things going on in the next few months to keep us busy: new jobs, old and new friends, moving, graduating etc. But please make sure Tyler is okay and have a good welcoming home party for him.
Miss you all.

PS See Tyler's blog for the craziness for renting a car to get him to Frankfurt airport this morning. We woke up at 3:30am after maybe an hour's sleep and drove there. I sent him through security and left the airport at 7:45 to return straight to school and to a practice of our team project presentation (in which I'm a presenter and really didn't have any idea what I was going to say, especially on one hour's sleep). Now I am home and will nap for a bit before doing more work. Feel for Tyler though, he will be travelling for 26 hours = 2 hours by car to Frankfurt, 2.5 hour wait at airport, 9 hour flight to Chicago, 4.5 hour wait in airport, 4.5 hour flight to Vancouver, 2.5 hour wait, 30 min flight to Victoria, 30 min drive to home-sweet-home

Back from the cold cold land of vodka and space

We made it back safe and sound - no bombs on the Metro, no one robbed at knife point, no one too drunk on vodka to get on the plane home. However, it was still an awesome trip. I will try and recap all the coolness that we got to see - if you want wit and funny stories, read Tyler's blog, he's better at that.
We left early Wednesday morning and took the 2.5 hour bus to Frankfurt were we got on a 3 hour plane to Moscow. We had to wait over an hour to get through passport control, due a couple people in the class having old passports or having new ones with two different spellings of their name on it. Whoops! So that kinda sucked ass, but they eventually let us all in. We got to our lovely hotel "Izmaylova", which was absolutely enourmous - like 10 restaurants, 1000's of rooms, stores etc. We were on the 27th floor! It was much better than I expected for being in Moscow for 50 euros a room a night. Anyways, that night we ventured out for dinner at a nearby club/pub/restaurant. We ate cheaply and drank even cheaper. I think I had 4 shots of good vodka and two meals for like 10 euros. Craziness. And it was fun trying to order knowing no syrillic at that point and the waiter speaking no English. Hmm, it was cool. Oh so I was drunk that night, and I had been drunk the night before and tipsy the night before that - so three nights in a row - that doesn't sound like me at all does it???
Thursday we were up bright and early to go to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. This is where they train the cosmonauts and the astronauts for the Russian modules. We got to see the neutral buoyancy tank, although it was lacking the water, which had huge space station mock-up modules in it. Pretty huge and cool. We also saw the largest centrifuge in the world, which was crazy. The room it is in is like bigger than a gym at home and the thing spins around inside it up to 30g's. It looked like the space ship from 2001: A Space Odyssey too. Wicked. We also saw a museum sort of part which had a mock-up of Mir space station in it which was damn big. I always hear about the small spaces they have to live in, but they look pretty big on the ground.
Next we went to the Rocket and Space Corporation "Energia" and saw their museum there. We had a guided tour of the museum starting from Sputnik through to the Soviet space stations and the Shuttle-Mir program. The coolest part was that we got to see Yuri Gagarin's actual capsule that he went to space in as the first human in space. Very very cool. Oh and ya, this Monday April 12th is Yuri's night. Which means it is a worldwide celebration of human space flight to commerate Yuri's flight on April 12th 1961. It also celebrates the first Shuttle flight too, and all of space flight in general. So if you need a reason to party - I'll be partying here at ISU with space geeks from around the world. Um, where was I, oh ya, we also saw a Salyut station and got to climb in a space flown Soyuz capsule that held 3 people about my size. They should really only send women into space, as we fit much nicer. There was some definite really cool stuff there, and all real!!!
That night we went into Moscow to try and find somewhere to eat and to walk around a bit. We walked by the Red Square, which is hella big and the buildings are beautiful. The Kremlin is a huge wall from the outside and there is the famous basilica with all it's bright colours. We walked around for an hour or so in the f*cking freezing ass cold (it never got warmer than -3 C the whole trip, and it was probably -15C with the wind chill) and realized that everything was ridiculously expensive. We were all starving as we were supposed to get lunch at Energia, but due to security reasons we couldn't?!?! By that time we were past hungry and decided to go back to the hotel to get something resonably priced to eat. We had dinner at a cafeteria type restaurant and then stopped in the 24 hour (yes something that is open all the time!!! - unknown in France - oh but they blast techno music all day and night too, random!) grocery store to buy vodka and snacks. So I was again drunk that night. But the vodka is just sooo good there. Goes down too easy. Anyways...
Friday we went to Krunichev Space Center and got 2 hours of lectures in which most of us fell asleep. They were pretty technical and in Russian so it was hard to pay attention to the translation after blanking out for the Russian. But they gave us coffee and snacks and we perked up. They then took us to the really cool part, where we weren't allowed to take pictures. It was the Proton launch vehicle assembly room. Super cool! We got to see an actual rocket being put together. Can you imagine the US letting a whole group of non-Americans into their integration room to look at a rocket being built??? Not at all. It was gignormous too. We also got a personal tour of the Mir mock-up by the man who designed it himself. Talk about customer service. We also saw the proto-type of the Russian module ZARYA for the ISS. We then saw the mock-up of the Russian reusuable launch vehicle that they made but never really flew due to lack of funding. Then we went for a real Russia lunch for the low price of 6 euros per person. It was tasty and late by that point so we gulfed it all down. Then we went into the center of town to try and get tickets to the Bolshoi Theatre. Unfortunately the ballet was all sold out, but we still managed to get some black market tickets to see Spartacus Saturday night. Others bought tickets for the Opera for that night. Then we went to a street to buy things. Tyler negotiated in the freezing cold street for an hour for a fur hat. I was smart and went into a nearby store to look at the beautiful dolls and jewerlly. I ended up only buying two pairs of earrings after shopping for almost 2 hours!! Can you imagine?
We ate dinner back at the hotel in a buffet restaurant, which was nothing special. We went back to the 24 hour grocery store to get our supply of vodka to bring home and then missed Kevin's birthday party somehow (how did that happen?).
The next day everyone went to Moscow Aviation Institute which is where our Professor Tolyarenko worked for 15 years. Apparently it was pretty cool, but Tyler and I missed it as he wanted to sleep as he was feeling sick. So we slept in and then went to the Izmaylova Park market right near our hotel. It was pretty cool and we spent a good 120 euros! Ouch. But we got a lot of cool things. We tried to catch up with the rest of the group, but they had gone to see the Kremlin. But I met a few people thankfully and we headed to the Bolshoi Theatre to see the ballet at 7pm.
WOW! I was giddy! It was the coolest thing ever and the best 30 euros I've spent on a night out. I mean, I acutally saw a Russia ballet at the Bolshoi! It was awesome. Even the guys liked it. Tyler should have come, he missed out on a wicked evening, and the theatre was amazing too. After the ballet we went back to Red Square as Ollie wanted to get a picture of himself in his kilt (he dressed up for the ballet in his traditional Scottish kilt) in the Red Square. We then went to McDonald's as I was super thirsty and some people were hungry. Apparently it's the cheapest McDicks in the world as you can get a whole meal deal for like 3 dollars cdn. Cheap ass, especially compared to France - and the fries were even like real fries at home, not "french" fries. I know, I know, I went to McDonald's in Russia, but it was still an experience as the Russians there were the happiest I had seen them and some guy threw up over the whole restaurant.
Sunday morning Tyler, Munir, David Buck, and I went to see the Kremlin as we missed it the day before. We paid the extra to get a photo pass so we got some lovely pictures. We saw the biggest bell in the world, alongside the biggest cannon. We saw some beautiful churches that were just covered in paintings all over the walls. We heard 4 people singing who sounded like an organ playing music. It was pretty cool. But make sure you walk on the sidewalks and crosswalks or else you will get whistled at, and then possibly shot:) But we survived.
We went back to the hotel, wandered around the market a bit more to spend our last rubels and then got on the bus for a bus tour of Moscow. We went back to Red Square and got a nice group picture and then stopped near the university so that we could look out over the city. Unfortunately then we had to go to the airport to leave. We had the most unpleasant service at the airport, which made us angry and not want to go back. That sucked, cause they were all so nice and we had such a great time in Moscow up until that point. They wouldn't let Kelly mail a postcard for some reason. And they restaurant we ate at which said it only took credit cards and rubels, would not take credit cards and gave a crap rate on euros (1:25 instead of the 1:35 it should be). The rate was 1:35 in the rest of the airport so they were just trying to rip us off. They tried to charge me 21 euros for a coke and two chicken kebabs (that's like over 35 dollars!). Bullshit. So we got angry and I tried to exchange money to pay in rubels by buying a kit kat with 20 euros, but she gave me euros change. So in the end I left them 17 euros as that's all I had and it was a rip off anyways. But I paid and walked directly onto the plane as it was time to leave. We were all very angry on the plane and drank all of the Bailey's that they had. We actually got cut off as a group! Interesting!
But if we forget that part, it was an awesome once in a lifetime trip. We saw things that most people could never dream of seeing and had an excellent time. Maybe I will be back there one day, but it is probably one of the least likely places that I will be back to. It was definitely an wonderful experience and I'm so happy that I finally convinced Tyler to share it with me :)