approaching the end of the first week of ISU

School continues to be good. All the classes are full of space. The library is full of space books. The faculty is all space people. There's this whole theme thing... of space. It's exciting. The library, especially, because I actually have time to read books. It's this whole wacky thing.

After the "treasure hunt" yesterday, we had a reception from the mayor's office in the Hotel de Ville with a welcome address and then local wine, beer, and breads (kougelhopf, bretzel). Because we're in France, and there's lots and lots and lots of bread, all the time.

Then we went to dinner at a local tarte flambee (flamenkuch) place and had all we could eat tarte flambee (which are kinda like pizzas except they're made on tortillas, there's not tomoto sauce, and they come with cheese and sour cream-ish sauce on them... this place serves mushroom ones, sauer kraut ones, cheese/sour cream ones, and another kind that has something that might be ham on it). Point is that they're delicious. Then we went out to a couple more local bars in a group of about 20, and I was home by 1 am. Because the trams stop running at 12:30 and classes start every weekday at 8:45 am, so you gotta watch the time. If you miss the last tram, it's a 15 euro taxi ride or a two-hour walk from the centre of Strasbourg to Illkirch.

Oh, classes! At some point I should talk about them. The structure goes like this:
8:45 - 9:45, lecture 1
10:00 - 11:00, lecture 2
11:15 - 12:15, lecture 3
12:15 - 14:00, lunch
14:00 - 18:00, random things like another lecture, info on assignments, language classes, meetings with our advisors.

So far the lectures we've had have been: Political Rationale of Space Activities; Why and How Do We Go into Space; The MSS/MSM Programs, History of Space Activities I and II; Space Mission Definition and Architecture; Space Economics; Electromagnetic Spectrum; Strasbourg Environment; Intro to Satellite Applications: RS, Telecom, Navigation; Cosmology: Origin and Fate of the Universe; Intro to Military Space Applications, and Intro to Space Systems Design.
Tomorrow is Space Mission Reqirements and Trade-Offs; Space Business; and Sources of International Law.

It's been very interesting, and exactly what I want... an introduction to every aspect of space.

We've had two group assignments that are due in the next couple of weeks; our first presentation is on Tuesday and is about Emerging Countries and space involvement, and our project is on Kazakhstan. The second is an educational outreach thing called "Physics on Stage" and we have to come up with a way to convey the topic of radiation and space for high school students in a fun and interesting way.

Yeah, so that's what I've been up to the last couple of weeks.