the tomato that fell behind

kiel: up and down

kie: 50 miles east ;)

kio: beatles : with a little help from my friends

so i've been informed that my weblog is in a state of disrepair.  and it's true.  i haven't updated since i went to france.

well what have i done since?

um.... i went to france.... it was fun.

ok so more specifically i flew out august 7 at 10ish.  so 2 hours to drive to PHL, then a 1.5 hour flight to cincinnati, then a 3 hour layover then an 8 hour flight to paris CDG.  yeah, then a bus ride then a taxi ride to eric's pad at 31 rue chanez, in the seizieme arrondisement.  but enough paris talk.

stayed in gay paree for 2 days, had french dinner with eric's parents, spoke un petit peu of french.  (i would be saying this much much more as the trip would progress, along with a lot of nodding and smiling).  took the paris metro to some places, the arc de triomphe, the champs elysees, the louvre, walked from the eiffel tower all the freaking way back to eric's, which is about halfway across the city.

then we hopped on a bus to bretagne, about an 8-9 hour ride, thru most of which i slept.  stupid jet lag.  yeah eric was mad at me for that.  but it's his fault for making me stay up all freaking day the day i got there.  when we got to concarneau, we boarded a ferry to the glenans (nice pics there, easier to navigate if you are a francophone) for an hour and a half.  the ferry only docked at one of the main islands, so we then had to get on a power boat to the island we were staying on, île de Drenec.

there we began windsurfing camp.  well, windsurfing is a lot of fun.  but it's not easy.  i can go with the wind, and i can go up to about a 90 degree angle with the wind, but i definitely can't go AGAINST it.  needless to say i did a lot of swimming.  as in, when my boat would get too far away from the dock, i would have to put the sail on the board and swim back.

and speaking of swimming, the water was very cold.  we weren't allowed in without wetsuits.  and i don't think i would have wanted to go in sans combi anyway. 

so i spent a week at glenans and it was really cool.  next segment: more traveling.

so we get on the power boat from drenec to st. nicolas, then the now 2 hour ferry ride (stops at other major islands), then hit a crèperie real quick with eric's hot hot hot hot friend klaartje.  boy she was hot.  and belgian!  where was i?  ah yes.  so from concarneau we took about an hour bus ride to resporden.  then from resporden about a 2 hour train ride to auray.  then from auray a car ride with simon, eric's friend, to his house in crac'h, near trinite sur la mer, a popular french vacation spot.

and speaking of french vacations, the french go on vacation for approximately the ENTIRE MONTH OF AUGUST.  paris was practically deserted (according to eric).  anyway, so we went to the beach a lot in bretagne, introduced the game of beirut to france (although under some rather ghetto circumstances, i must say), drank a lot, it was really fun.  then eric and i took ANOTHER FREAKING TRAIN back to paris, to montparnasse.  **factoid: remember the physics lab book, taylor's introduction to error analysis?  well the picture on the front of the train crashing through a window and landing on the street was taken at gare de montparnasse!** anyway, so we then met up with our foreign affairs executive, sarah crawford, at eric's. 

more drinking ensued, including some of eric's teachers from middle school (.....?) yeah.  they happened to be ther ein paris at the same time.   i dunno either.  i can just see myself sitting down and having a few cold ones with, say, i don't know, mr. herb, my 7th grade biology teacher, or say, mrs. cake, my 7th grade english teacher.  who gave me an F on my very first book report.  she has ugly teeth.  but i digress.......

i did lots of touristy things in france, sometimes to eric's chagrin. these included but were not limited to:

getting a picture with this statue of an elephant
trying to lift the inverted pyramid at the louvre
riding the ferris wheel near the tulieries
visitng tons of churches: st. germain du pres, notre dame, the magdalene, le sacre coeur, etc.
going to mcdonalds (this was just me) and ordering... now get this... a ROYAL CHEESE and a beer.
buying a beret
visiting a real irish pub (le galway)

lots and lots of fun things.  it's a completely different world.  on drenec there is ABSOLUTELY NO light pollution (this might have somthing to do with the nearest civilization being an houe and a half away by boat).  however we were there in the middle of the PERSEID METEOR SHOWER, so this was of course rather breathtaking.  it is also cool to watch the sunset over the ocean: since i'm all east-coast *flashes gang signal* and shit.

do i speak french?  no.  do i understand a lot of it? kinda, actually.

all in all, i am REALLY REALLY glad i went.  will i return?  definitely.  next year?  who knows... maybe next time i'll go to a country where i actually speak the language.

anyway so that was france.  i have lots more stories which will probably come out as the spirit moves me.

after france, i hung out at home for a few days.  did some catching up with barrett.  barrett is a man of few words.  however, if you don't talk to him for a while you kind of get em all at once.  he and i drove around a lot and talked a lot.  very cool.

anyway, since barrett was the only one around and he was going back soon anyway, i headed back to baltimore, back into the old routine of research, resnet, and tour guiding.  actually i just did resnet and tours since it was RESNET SWAT.  i got a free polo shirt with SWAT emblazoned on it like 4 times, so i[m not complaining. 

i also got a significant raise from resnet, so it's still worth doing for me.  especially during the year when i don't get paid for research time.

um.. what else?  i'm taking 20 credits this semester.  that will be interesting.  i told baltimore actors theatre to take a hike, at least til next summer, so that will free up some time.  however, they called me yesterday and asked if i wanted to do one show, october 19 and 20.  geez, these guys don't take no for an answer!  i'll think about it.

so in p chem lab today the experiment was bomb calorimetry.  basically you put a compound in a chamber called a "bomb", feed in a lot of oxygen to a pressure of about 35 atmospheres, then blow it up.  you measure the heat capacity and the heat of formation of the stuff in the experiment.  anyway, the oxygen filler upper thing (the regulator) was being stupid and wasn't giving us enough oxygen, so we ended up with piles of carbon for our first two experiments.  eesh, we were there til 5:20 and still aren't finished the lab.  we're gonna continue the lab next week.

that's about the only interesting thing that happened today.  what else has happened lately?  holy crap i forgot auditions!

well, suffice to say that it was great fun spending so much time (about 30 hours in 4 days) with the mental notes.  auditions is a very stressful time, since there is a large applicant pool and a very limited enrollment, so to speak.  however, when the smoke cleared we had three newbies, and i think everything is going to work out great for us.

i think i'm done playing "catch-up" for now.  **note title (kial)**

in other news, i have not yet had a haircut, and my hair is pretty long.  i would include the customary snapshot of myself, but my webcam i believe has finally snapped its last shot.  oh well.  it was only $20 like 2 years ago.

so i have 9 am class tomorrow and i just took one of those long, really insanely hot showers.  yeah definitely bed time.  i will try to update as often as possible.

good night!