C'est le fin!

As of today, my work at ENSIC is finally done.  Most everyone has already left but I'm going to be staying in France for another few days.  I'll be leaving for home on Wednesday.  It's been a great term and has gone by far too fast.  Working at the school has been great but I've still a lot of work to do when I come back to the States - much of my writing in fact.

Tomorrow, I'll be heading over to the nearby town of Metz for the afternoon.  I'm quite excited - I won't have to worry about going to the lab the next day.  On Sunday, I'll be heading to Paris where I'll be spending the rest of my time until my early morning flight on Wednesday.

I'm really going to miss France and speaking in broken French but I'm also looking forward to going home and seeing friends and family again.

So I've been trying to upload photos, but the internet (or my computer) seem to be hating me.  I'll try to get some up ASAP!

Warm Weather!

I'm posting this from Marseille right now!  We've taken a three-day weekend to travel to the south of France to enjoy some much needed warm weather.  And it's absolutely amazing!

I've been here only one day (half a day really) but I've already fallen in love with the place.  The days are warm and amazingly comfortable - a cool sea breeze comes flows in from the Mediterranean (!) every so often.  It's fantastic being able to walk around in merely a T-Shirt at the end of February.  We had lunch outside at the old port next to throngs of boats in the harbour while we people watched.  The evening was cool but not cold, we again, had dinner outside and sat around in the cool evening air.

Today, I think we're going to the beaches.  It's probably still a bit too cold to truly enjoy the beach, but I'm sure it will be beautiful.

Pictures to come!

Quick Entry

Out of the time I've spent in Nancy, this has been one of the worser weeks.  I finished less work than I had hoped this week because of the lack of solvents and other materials and I managed to break my glasses yesterday.

I'll write more later, but right now, I'm off to Paris for the weekend!

When in Luxembourg...

I took a day trip to Luxembourg this weekend.  Europe is so convenient; you can take trips to other countries on a whim!  Anyways, Luxembourg is a small - one of the smallest European nations, only Liechtenstein is smaller I think - country bordered by France, Belgium and I believe Germany (I suppose I could check a map...)  It's about half the size of Delaware to give you an idea of how truly small this country is.  

Anyways, the day started out kind of miserable; it was cold and there was rain but it got better towards the afternoon.  Luxembourg City (its capital) is a city on steppes almost. The city appears to exist on and in a valley and has many levels.  Countless bridges span the valley and we had to cross a few to reach the MUDAM - the Musée d'Art Modern.  The museum was right in the middle of installing new exhibits so many of the halls were closed, but it meant free admittance for us.  What they had there was pretty neat.  There was a small series of homes and yurts made from what I think was felt. I don't know what it is about modern art, but I really do enjoy it - more than most classical pieces (minus the impressionists).  I don't really understand contemporary art but it certainly looks nice! We left the museum shortly after noon and headed towards the center of town where we wandered through the small side streets for the better part of the afternoon.  We ended up stopping at what was apparently a bar for English expatriates for a late lunch.  It was kind of comforting finding a place where there were other anglophones... and rugby on the television.  Afterwards, we started to make our way back to the train station to catch the train home.

MQP has been going pretty well, but I've started to notice a downside to working in the lab all day.  You don't have time to write much MQP.  I do have some downtime while waiting for my experiments, but they come in half hour intervals, barely enough time to sit down and get into writing mode.  And when I come home, I'm usually too exhausted (and hungry) to do much work.  I suppose that's what the weekends are for (except when I'm traveling)... and D term!  After all, I'm in France (!) and I should make the most of this trip.

Week Four... What?

I can't believe it's already the fourth week of my stay in France.  It's going by way too fast.  Work at the lab has been progressing fairly smoothly and I've been getting some pretty decent results on the experiments I've been running.  I think I'm really enjoying this opportunity to focus completely on my MQP for one turn.  It allows me to stay in the lab all day and I don't really have to worry about any other classes.  Then again, I only have this one term, compared to the three most people get, to finish this project so it's a little nerve wracking at the same time.

Nancy has been pretty good.  It's certainly warmer here than back in Worcester from what I've been hearing.  It snowed overnight today but because it was so warm out (upper 40's!) all the snow melted by late afternoon.  This past week I've been running around frantically trying to exchange train tickets and finialise travel plans.  I'm pretty sure all the ticket booth people know me by now, I can certainly recognise most of them.  But as of this weekend I'll be traveling every week; to Luxembourg, Stuttgart, Paris (of course), Marseille (warm weather!) and then back to Paris.  This weekend some of us took a day trip to Basel, Switzerland.  We pretty much just wandered around the city but it was super cold so we didn't stay as long as we had originally planned.  I loved the city though and I think I'll probably head back there once the weather gets warmer.

An Ode to Waffles

Oh Waffles, of the Belgian Kind

In Brussels, what a find!

So fluffy and light

Made just right

It's delicious redefined.

I went to Brussels this weekend and had an amazing time - mainly eating. Waffles, chocolate, beer. All things the Belgians are quite famous for. The five hour train ride from Nancy was well worth it. We arrived in the afternoon and before checking into our hostel, we went to a small, family-owned brewery for a tour. They don't produce normal beers that one would think of but rather lambics, which are spontaneously fermenting drinks. That means that no yeast is added to the drink and instead whatever yeast around in the brewery will naturally ferment the beverage. We ended up getting back to the hostel rather late and simply went out for dinner before returning and passing out for the evening.

The next morning, the sun was shining (the first weekend here when both days were sunny!) and we explored the city. We arrived at the Grand Place around noon and stopped by a small eatery for Belgian Waffles. They were absolutely amazing. And what better way to follow up than to wander the streets lined with chocolate shops and sample the goods? Anyways, we left early in the afternoon, and returned home later that evening, happy and full.

First Days of Research

This week marked the beginning of actual lab work for me. But instead of working on the biodegradalbe polymers project as I had previously thought, I am actually working with another advisor on characterising and comparing various oil-water emulsions and the effect various surfactants have on the physicsl properties of said emulsions. On Monday, I met my new advisor, Emmanuelle Marie and was shown around the labs where I would be working. I met a number of grad students, some just starting their PhD and Masters and some who are on their last year. Instead of working in groups like most MQP's completed abroad, I will be working alone. which is both exciting and just a little bit terrifying at the same time.

In the afternoon, I was shown how to use one of the pieces of equipment I'll be using over the next two months - the tensiometer. The tensiometer is used to measure the surface tension of various liquids and it also has the capacity to determine the interfacial tension forces that is present at the interface between two immiscible (non-mixable) liquids.

The next morning (Tuesday), I arrived early in the morning - a few of us had gotten up at the break of down in order to trek down to the train station and book our train tickets for our weekend trips. In the lab, I began to prepare an emulsion of aqueous modified dextran (a glucose based polysaccharide) and dodecane and learned how to use the high performance particle sizer.  The machine uses light refraction and particle movement to determine the size of the emulsion droplet sizes.  In the afternoon, I prepared some solutions for surface and interfacial tension testing that I'll be doing tomorrow.  I haven't done wet lab work in ages, since organic chemistry lab so things started out a little bumpy and slow but I'm really enjoying the work.  To top it all off, I prepared a cleaning solution referred to as Piranha solution.  It's a mixture of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide (both very caustic) that's used to remove ANY and ALL organic compounds.  My advisor showed me one of her lab coats which she had spilled some of the solution on and it looked much like swiss cheese.

Tomorrow, my advisor is gone but I've got a list of things I need to do.  It'll be my first day working solo and I'm quite excited!

Weekend in Strasbourg

For our first weekend in France, all seven of us decided to take a trip to Strasbourg, a city east of Nancy.  We took the train early in the morning from Nancy Gare (Nancy Station) and got to Strasbourg an hour and a half later.  Thanks to my rail pass, the trip by train was completely free.

Strasbourg is located in the Alsace province of France.  This region has many German influences due to it's proximity to Germany and because until the end of the first World War, this region belonged to Germany.  Presently, it is a very important location as it is the hub of the European Union.  The European Union Parliament as well as the European Court of Human Rights are located here.

We arrived at early in the morning and checked into our hostel.  We then set out to explore the old part of the city.  We had planned to visit some museums but apparently they were closed so instead, we wandered the streets for the day. To be honest, I much preferred wandering the streets as it really gave a better sense of the city and the people.  The old part of the city is pretty much an island.  It's surrounded on all sides by canals and the only way to get there is across on of countless bridges.  We saw the Strasbourg Cathedral. It was massive! Unbelievably so! Anyways, after wandering around for the day, we were quite hungry so we decided to try out a specialty of Alsace, Choucroute.  It's probably 

better known as sauerkraut  in the States.  Of course, it's not eaten alone, typically it comes with some sort of meat be it sausage or pork (ours came with both!) and is best paired with a glass of beer (Kronenbourg is the local favourite).  The meal was probably the best meal I've had in a long time, the choucroute was better than any I've had.  To finish it off, I ordered a bowl of chocolate mousse which was to die for.  Like any proper french meal, this one lasted far into the night and by the time we left the restaurant, it was quite late.

The next day, the weather had taken a turn for the worse 

and it started to drizzle.  We ended up taking a walk to the European Parliament and then to Petit France, but because of the terrible weather, we ended up leaving early in the afternoon to return to Nancy.  Tomorrow, start my actual lab work (my project changed and I'll actually be working alone now - more on this later) and I'm really excited.

But for now, a bientôt!

Première Inscription (First Entry)

It's day four in Nancy, France and I've finally found time to blog.  I flew out of Bradley on the 10th just before the snow began to fall and I thought that I was home free, but unsurprisingly, I was delayed in Detroit while waiting for my connection to Paris.  Not only did the plane arrive late, but we were forced to wait an hour or so in the plane while they hosed down the plane with some sort of defrosting substance.  So instead of leaving at 21.25, we left somewhere around 23.00.  What a wonderful start right?

I arrived in Paris only an hour late and met up with Julie and Jenn at the aeroport.  We made our way to Gare de L'est (East Station) to get the TGV (Train Grande Vitesse - the high speed train) to Nancy.  Jenn managed to get her bag stuck when passing through one of the metro entrances; the door caught her bag as it closed and had it not been for some strange, we would have been there for hours.  The rest of the trip was pretty smooth and we arrived at our homes for the next two months later that evening.  Having slept a total of three hours in the past 24, I was pretty tired so after grabbing some food from the nearby kebab shop (which was an adventure in itself, me using my broken french trying to order food), I promptly passed out

We've had French lessons all week and I'm surprised at how much I still remember from my high school lessons.  We got our awesome ENSIC (Ecole National Supérieure des Industries Chimiques - the school where we will be working) school ID's and our tram passes earlier this week.

So I should probably explain why I'm in France in the first place.  Every student, typically as a senior, must complete a Major Qualifying Project or MQP in order to graduate.  This project  serves as the culmination to your studies in your major.  As a chemical engineering major, I was given the option of completing my project in Nancy, France.  I'm working with another WPI student, Andy on a project concerning biodegradable plastics.  Along with Sarah, a PhD student at the school, we will be characterising the mechanical properties of plastics made from a mixture of starch based polymers and other organically derived polymers.  We won't actually begin lab work until next week so we've been reading loads and loads of journal articles to familiarise ourselves with the project.

All in all, the first few days have been pretty good; the project looks very exciting and I've become more and more accustomed to speaking french.  Hopefully by the end of my two-month stay, I'll be able to speak it without feeling awkward.

This weekend, a group of us are taking the train to nearby Strasbourg and spending our weekend there seeing the sites.  I'll be sure to post about our adventures come the weekend.

A bientôt!