Class and ATR

Wednesday June 30
Three hours of class in the morning followed by a seminar on the European Union. Tried to organize ultimate frisbee but everyone bailed because 80 degrees is just too hot. Clearly they've never been through a Texas summer. My tennis buddy from Michigan was up for a match though so we played two sets of singles and then faced off against two other Michigan students in doubles. Had a lot of fun playing legit tennis for 2.5 hours. I'm usually opposed to cold showers but this one felt really nice. Fell asleep early again after watching some Arrested Development.

Thursday July 1
Three hours of class in the morning followed by a visit to ATR in the afternoon. ATR is a regional airplane manufacturer based in Toulouse. It's a joint subsidiary of Airbus and an Italian aerospace company.
Here's a look from the cockpit of their airplane.


Hook Em.

Felt inspired to watch Euro Trip and then set up Super Troopers on a projector in one of the auditoriums. Super fun watching with about 20 of the people on the program.

Tech Visits and Return Trip

Monday June 28
Visited Messier-Dowty and Turbomeca today. Both companies are part of a giant corporation called SAFRAN Group. Kind of a brutal experience because I'm getting the illness that's running around our program and I felt like I was going to puke for both two hour bus rides and part of one of the visits. We ate tomatoes, cherries, sandwiches and chips in a nice park for lunch which surprisingly made me feel better for a couple hours.
Messier-Dowty produces landing gear for the A320 and helicopters from a lot of different countries. It seemed like the bulk of their interest was in materials processing. Shocks are apparently pretty simple and really landing gear just needs to be made out of the lightest material that can support an airplane during landing. Turbomeca was really interesting. Their plant produces engines primarily for helicopters but also for some airplanes. They took us around the facility and gave us an awesome behind the scenes look at a lot of the stuff they produce.
I got really worried when they were showing us a titanium gear for a compressor worth $45,000 because it's so difficult to manufacture. I don't know if dropping something that's designed to power a helicopter would damage it, but the fact that the lady was holding over a year's wages in her hands was kind of crazy. We also got to see their engine validation center where they spend 14 hours hooking up an engine for testing and 8 hours running tests for one engine. They actually took us in the room and showed us the engine a couple minutes after their tests finished. Super cool acoustically and thermally shielded room.
Drove back, took a Sudafed (which made me feel much better), ate pizza outside and then went to a local casino. I spent pretty much the whole time watching and learning roulette and blackjack. Lost three Euros on the slot machines which was a lot less than most of the other people.

Tuesday June 29
Four hour bus ride back from the beach and then lunch followed by three hours of class. By the way I felt a lot better today. Apparently my immune system owns because some people have been sick for over a week (though not nauseous). Tried to take a rock wall climbing class but it's closed for the summer. I decided to go for a run instead. The weather was great and it felt good to stretch my legs. Kind of a long day so I went to bed after watching a few episodes of Arrested Development.

Saint Jean de Luz

Sunday June 27
Late morning because of the late night. I must be getting more French because I took an hour and a half breakfast without even realizing it. After piddling around on the internet, I jumped on a bus with the program and went to Saint Jean de Luz. This is another beach about a half hour away from Biarritz. It was a nice combination of Cassis and Biarritz because it was big and had nice sand but it wasn't as dirty.

We hiked up to a hill with a cool view of the beaches around. This video is after we hiked back down to the water

After this I swam out to a barge they had tied up about a hundred meters offshore and did some dives and a flip. We only had 3 hours which was unfortunate because the city looked like it would have been fun to explore and there wasn't a lot of time to lay out on the beach after the hiking and swimming. Went and got seafood for dinner and then watched a beautiful sunset.

The sun was lighting up the windows of an old church and it looked amazing. Notice my future chateau on the right side of the photo:

I'm definitely coming back here at some point during my life to spend some more time on the beach and touring. Skype with the family for an hour before bed.

To Biarritz

Saturday June 26
Called it...we lost two people on the train because they didn't get off in time in Bordeaux. Luckily, one of the hosts driving to meet us in Biarritz was able to pick them up at the next train stop on the way. I like traveling by train because you get to watch the countryside but it's a lot smoother than a bus.
BORDEAUX TRAIN STATION

We had a two hour wait for the connection. Bought a panini and chocolate doughnut and thought about wandering some, but I didn't want to drag my bags around. Played gin rummy on the train from Bordeaux to Biarritz, got second place. Biarritz is really cool, we went down to the beach after getting of the train and checking into the hotel. Of the two beaches we've been to, I preferred Cassis because the water was cleaner.

A lot of people out on the beach today, once again pretty lax clothing standards. There was some live music right next to the beach which was cool. We had awesome Mexican food for dinner, we've been looking for weeks to satisfy our craving and luckily not only found a place but found a really good one. Washed off the salt water and then went to a bar to watch the USA Ghana game.
We had a ridiculous number of opportunities but Donovan is unfortunately the only one on our team who could capitalize. I feel like we dominated most of the game and got beat on a couple of speed goals. To their credit, Ghana was crazy fast, but we had a ton of crosses and open shots on goal that we couldn't put down.
I can't tell if we get extremely lucky or if the visits are planned around parties, but we went to another awesome outdoor dance on the boardwalk. Since we were right next to the beach, we went down and wandered around towards the end and then called it a night.

Futuroscope

Friday June 25
Quiz was difficult but not impossible, nobody seems to think they did well but I don't think it was too bad. Went to Futuroscope in the afternoon.


It's basically MGM studios at Disneyworld. We danced with robots, which was basically being put through a washing machine with disco music on. We also watched a film about Hurricane Katrina and Apollo 11 so it felt like I wasn't even in a French amusement park. The best part was climbing up a rope Eiffel Tower. All of us commented on how a lot of the kids stuff wouldn't fly in the states because of liability. Nobody was monitoring people climbing 50 feet in the air...basically a lawsuit waiting to happen. Everybody was pretty tired after walking around for 6 hours. Missed the bus by 2 minutes so we had to wait over an hour for it to come back around town. Traveling to Biarritz by train tomorrow, should be an adventure.

ENSMA Classes Part 2

Wednesday June 23
I've now been in France for three weeks, so I'm halfway done with my program. Time is absolutely flying. Today was interesting, spent the morning discussing combustion and the afternoon calculating flame temperature. I never thought chemistry would actually be useful, but it helped me get through the stuff we went over today.
More epically though, class got out early which allowed us to watch most of the USA soccer game. We watched the first half with a laptop connected to the classroom's projector, then we heard it was on TV down in the school's bar. The game was extremely stressful, on top of the fact that a ref screwed us out of another goal. Soccer really needs instant replay. When Donovan scored, we went wild and started chanting USA! USA! I wish I had pictures or video, but I was too distracted with American pride. Interestingly enough, we decided to celebrate the American victory with Indian food. I really enjoyed it, I had a sausage appetizer and lamb curry for dinner with a honey dough dessert.

Thursday June 24
Played with a lot of fire in the afternoon:

We were studying fuel/oxidizer ratios, flame structure, air effects on gaseous products, etc. Also, I was inducted into an elite potato cannon firing squad after training on the Potator.

Notice how he's cringing from my battle cry and sheer manly power (seriously these things were loud, they gave us ear plugs but we were scaring people walking by 600 meters away). We mixed propane in the chamber and it was ignited by a filament. This was actually the subject of a legit university study. Combustion quiz tomorrow.

First Classes at ENSMA

Monday June 21
Quiz went okay, a lot of true false, which is the bane of my academic existence. The new campus we're studying at is called ENSMA and it's really cool. It has a lot of futuristic architecture and is situated next to an amusement park which we will be visiting on Friday.

We studied detonics in the afternoon and then rode back in a bus to our hotel. My room at the hotel has a cool view of the town square:

Apparently since today is the summer solstice, it means everyone in France who can play an instrument hops out on the streets and goes for it. We saw digeridoos, accordians, rock bands, trumpets and trombones, and some African style drums. It was really entertaining. In the evening we went out into the square next to our hotel and there was a big dance concert with a DJ. All of the American students worked their way to the front and we fist pumped and jumped around for about an hour straight. I was too exhausted after this to move on to the next dance party, but they were going all night based on the music that woke me up at 2 in the morning. I've decided the US needs to start a reciprocal Summer Solstice Celebration (SSC).
I should mention that my hotel has free room service and really good hot chocolate. Totally awesome. I feel like half of the things I talk about in this blog are food but whatever. I mean seriously, who doesn't love Nutella croissants delivered to their door in the morning?

Tuesday June 22
The sun stays up forever here. It sets after 10 and rises before 6, I know we're having the longest days of the year right now, but this is crazy. Today we had another combustion class at ENSMA. Next to the labs, this was my one of the better classes we've had. It was really interesting learning about flame structure, fuel ratios, etc. for airplane propulsion. We'll be visiting their labs on Thursday which I'm really pumped for. Went on a tour of Poitiers in the afternoon and then walked to a Chinese buffet.
Some pictures from the tour...



We got to the Chinese buffet before it opened, so we walked around a park nearby for half an hour and saw some cool birds and a lot of rectangular trees.
COOL BIRDS

RECTANGULAR TREES

The Chinese buffet was absolutely amazing. I literally did not put anything on my plate that wasn't tasty. If I tried to list everything I ate, it would take a while, so let's just say I lived up to the American tradition of eating until it hurts. I was gonna call it an early night, but I wound up watching the Argentina Greece and South Korea Nigeria games. I seem to have a World Cup bug, but I doubt I'll follow soccer after it's over. It's extremely fascinating to me that countries with such large socio-economic disparity can come together on a soccer field and have competitive matches. This trip has done a lot to broaden my world view.