the new house I moved into suits me very well. I love the location, the people here and the feeling that I can come home easily when I want to. I live with an old (but lively) german/french woman named Erika Barry, who makes delicious food and always responds with "Ah! Jaaake...ça va?" on the telephone when I call. She has three chickens who wander into the house from time to time to drink some of the cat's milk. The cat's name is Tiger; he lives outside and sometimes I see him hunting things in the wood by the side of the house. The backyard is enormous, with large old trees and places to sit and ponder life or read a book ( I haven't had time to do either yet.) There are two Finnish girls who live in the room next to me, and another American from the California program with us. It's really nice to have other people my age in the house; I'm looking forward to getting to know all of them. The Finnish girls know who Teemu Selanne is, but they're not hockey fans. Also, Suomi means Finland in Finnish; I felt like an idiot after asking why the Finnish national hockey team had Suomi on their logo.
Today in my neurological modeling class we talked about schizophrenia. The professor talked about general info for awhile and then discussed treatments for the illness, and then began to comment on the fact that due to schizophrenia, a lot of people who consider themselves to be hearing God are now classified as schizophrenics. He continued to discuss the fact that, if Buddha or Mohammed or Jesus were around today, they would have probably been diagnosed schizophrenics, delirious with the prophetic thoughts of God. The manner with which he approached the topic was unlike anything I had heard at Berkeley, and naturally surprised me. I've found that in Europe, if someone's not religious, their attitude towards religion is very negative and readily-expressed. Even if Jesus and other religious figures were schizophrenics, which we'll never know, they had enough convincing material for us to continue talking about them today. By convincing, I mean that their thoughts on society and ethics held enough substance for the ideas to be passed on to others. It's getting old to read about the different church press releases on sexual abuse cases; it's a easy sale for the media right now.
The other thing about my classes is that, even though we are only 20 to a class, no one stops the lecture to ask questions about something. I don't know if it's just not done, or if people don't care enough, but I feel discouraged from raising my hand by the lack of questions (and even more so because I don't want to sound like an idiot when I ask a question). I was totally lost in my artificial intelligence course, but I didn't want to raise my hand because no one else was, yet I could tell that other people were lost. I have to figure that one out.
I walked home from school today and found an "Albert Camus Preschool." The thought of Ms. Kim's interpretation of Camus' dark existentialism plus little preschoolers made me laugh, and the fact that the French felt the need to dedicate a preschool to Camus seemed silly.
mercredi 22 septembre 2010
mercredi 15 septembre 2010
homestay and courses
I'm living in a beautiful house. really, I am, I'm right across from a vineyard with a freaking castle. But I'm finding it hard everyday to get on two buses and a tram to take me an hour to my campus on Bordeaux 2 in the middle of town. I gotta figure out something soon. My "mom" was helping me look at options tonight, but really it just came down to home much I wanted to walk and which buses would take me fastest to the tram. I can't take a scooter because I need some type of license and insurance (how cool would that be, riding around on a moped of sorts). I miss the 5 minute walk to campus from my home in Berkeley, and I'm realizing more and more how spoiled I am there. We have online registration. We have easy to follow schedules. We have a single campus, containing all the undergrad majors, enclosed on four sides by large streets. (Anyone reading this who has online registration, thank your university administrators. I love the utilization of the internet in our modern times)
Waiting for a bus is like watching your life be inefficient. But the worst part is, you can't get up and do anything about it. Because you can't do it any faster on your own. Today I thought, "I'm not going to wait 4 minutes for this tram to take me 4 minutes to the next stop, I can definitely do it in less than 8 minutes." I arrived at the spot I wanted to go at the same time as the tram that I claimed would have been slower. Public transit: I like it, but I don't like the time where you realize you're waiting for something. I love google maps: it gives me a nice-neat-little number saying "You will get here in this much time if you walk at this pace and make this tram yadadada..." What a great way to feel like you're in control of your life. If I just make it to this tram at this time, I will be here at this time. I think that is what's peeving me about this whole mess of a transit situation I'm in. I don't feel like I'm in control of when I want to go somewhere and how. Usually that wouldn't be a problem, but feeling like I have to do that EVERY SINGLE DAY is going to "casse mes couilles". It's making me want to live close to where I work.
I found a bachelors program that is "Applied Mathematics for Social Sciences" in which they have a specialization in Cognitive Science. I was very excited to see the curriculum had lots of stats and algorithm work, things that I don't have much experience in. The professor that helped me initially brought me to my first lecture, right in the middle of a two hour lecture, and announces to the class that I was a student from California, and that it would be really nice if they could make me feel at ease and help me out with stuff. In front of 40 people I just kind of stood there trying not to look up. It was bizarre that she decided to do that, but now I'm kind of glad she did, because I had a couple girls come up to me after class to talk and ask if I had questions. I went to an artificial intelligence lecture where the professor asked "What is computer science?" and randomly chose people, until he landed on me. I gave him some sort of response, and he gave me some positive feedback, so the shakes I had from the nervousness afterwards felt good.
The lab work today wasn't anything too big, but I really thought it was cool. We started to prepare the syringes of cocaine for the Skinner Boxes where the rats will be self-administering. I got to see how the computer programs work to record all the information automatically and how the boxes themselves are structured. The other researchers thought it was kind of boring, but I was stoked to see the stuff before all the rats were in place. Tomorrow we see the rats in action. I have to sleep I think I'm getting sick.
samedi 11 septembre 2010
first thoughts on bordeaux
so it's been a while since I wrote a entry, but that's mostly been due to the fact that the internet in the dorms was somewhat spotty. That aside, I arrived here a two weeks ago and finished my french courses yesterday. I'll give some kind of background up until today.
Tuesday the 25th of August I arrived with a bunch of luggage and took a taxi to the campus, which on first sight, was not what I expected. It looks kind of run down, but we learned later that the French spend more time and money on their town centers than on their universities. I was the last to show up because my train broke down for a couple hours in the south of France, but everything worked out. That night the students from the program all got together and hung out in the hallway drinking wine and chatting, it kind of felt like freshman year all over again, but not as awkward. The next day we just hung out and had a meeting to orient us on future meetings, and then we went out that night for dinner in the center of town. We ended up going to a bar and getting stuck in town because the tram closed at midnight, and we were unaware of the schedules. So then 25 of us ran around trying to find a taxi, which was an adventure, but we all got home eventually.
Thursday we went out again after a meeting on housing, where we talked about homestays, apartments and other options. Friday we had an excursion with the EAP program coordinators to an oyster farm, where we learned about the history and techniques of oyster farms. Afterwards we tasted oysters (my first time with the crustaceans, possibly my last), but most people didn't really enjoy them. They're still alive when you put them in your mouth, which kind of bothered me, and I didn't really enjoy the taste, but it was still a cool experience. We then drove in the huge air-conditioned buses to La Dune de Pyla, which is the largest sand dune in Europe. We climbed up and the hung out up top for a bit, it was really impressive.
We had classes for the second week in from 830 until 1230. I really didn't find the courses that helpful unfortunately, they didn't use their time most efficiently. I'm so glad I came early and had the experience I did with Maxime and Aunt Melissa. After class, most people would go to town to hang out or eat or laze around. While I was in Toulon I got in contact with two research teams here at the Centre de Neuroscience, and both responded positively, so Tuesday and Wednesday of that week I went to interview with them and see the labs. I decided to work with a team in the INSERM building doing research on addiction and cocaine, and the following Tuesday (6 days ago) I started work there. I'll get to that eventually. On Thursday we went to a chateau for a wine tasting at Chateau Raymond-Lafon. They talked to us about how they make the wine especially sweet, because the particular type of wine was a Sauterne, a dessert wine. The vineyards stretched for kilometres and kilometres in all directions, and the region was apparently somewhat famous (Le Medoc). There were some castles off in the distance.
Last weekend I went with Dylan and Spence, two guys from UCSB, to Lacanau, a small beach town an hour away from Bordeaux. We took the bus there and stayed in a really cool hostel just 5 minutes by foot from the beach. That Friday I went swimming while Dylan hit the waves with his surfboard, and I got swept out by a rip current that nearly drowned me. I've never been so tired from trying to swim in the ocean. All I kept thinking was, "I'd really like to be back on shore right now sipping a cold beer. And I don't want to drown." It was a scary experience, and eventually I had a bodyboarder follow me as I slowly swam back in. The waves that day and Saturday were enormous, 8-9 feet high and heavy. They were tubing and really throwing that lip over the edge. It was an adventure for me to jump back into the surf at that level, but Sunday was a much nicer 4-5 foot day, and I had some really fun rides. We rented surfboards which weren't too expensive, surprisingly, and I really enjoyed the 6 foot shortboard that I got. It was fantastic to get out in the water and exercise again...
This week I started the actual internship at the lab, beginning with surgery on the rats. The team is looking at rates of rat self-administration of cocaine to replicate some data they found a year ago. To allow the rats to self-administer cocaine, they insert a tube into the back that leads to another tube that leads into the jugular vein. So on Tuesday and Wednesday I was at the lab helping shave the rats and anesthetize them while the grad students found the jugular veins. It was awesome. Bit by bit, my advisor kept adding things for me to do: shaving them, putting them to sleep, making the incisions on the back and shoulder, finding the jugular, and stitching them back up. At first it was hard for me to work on something that I new was still alive and breathing right in front of me, but I got used to it much quicker than I was expecting. Definitely looking forward to working more in the lab. For those who are interested, the research is looking to replicate previous findings that showed less neural plasticity in brains of classified "addicts" according to the way DSM-IV classifies human addicts. Too cool.
So yesterday I moved into my host family here in Pessac, just outside of Bordeaux. I live with a mom, dad, and two sisters who are 18 and 21. They're very welcoming and curious about my life; the mother (Sylvie) is a professor of history at a high school and Bordeaux 3 (the university), and I'm still not sure what the father (Vincent) does. He's quiet and rides a motorcycle, which reminds me, I'm trying to buy/rent a mobylette, which is like a bike with a motor. I really would like to be able to leave the house and not worry about getting on a tram and bus and another bus to get back to the house. The place is situated kind of far from my school, but it's a great house. I live on the second floor and look out on vineyards of Pape Clément, where I can see an old castle tower. It's really quiet, my room is huge, and I have my own shower. I'm diggin it here.
So from here I try to find out when I can enroll in courses in pysch and neurobiology, which should be monday... I'm still figuring out those logistics. I'll try to update my photos on the flickr account, so check them out when you get the chance. up and out
Tuesday the 25th of August I arrived with a bunch of luggage and took a taxi to the campus, which on first sight, was not what I expected. It looks kind of run down, but we learned later that the French spend more time and money on their town centers than on their universities. I was the last to show up because my train broke down for a couple hours in the south of France, but everything worked out. That night the students from the program all got together and hung out in the hallway drinking wine and chatting, it kind of felt like freshman year all over again, but not as awkward. The next day we just hung out and had a meeting to orient us on future meetings, and then we went out that night for dinner in the center of town. We ended up going to a bar and getting stuck in town because the tram closed at midnight, and we were unaware of the schedules. So then 25 of us ran around trying to find a taxi, which was an adventure, but we all got home eventually.
Thursday we went out again after a meeting on housing, where we talked about homestays, apartments and other options. Friday we had an excursion with the EAP program coordinators to an oyster farm, where we learned about the history and techniques of oyster farms. Afterwards we tasted oysters (my first time with the crustaceans, possibly my last), but most people didn't really enjoy them. They're still alive when you put them in your mouth, which kind of bothered me, and I didn't really enjoy the taste, but it was still a cool experience. We then drove in the huge air-conditioned buses to La Dune de Pyla, which is the largest sand dune in Europe. We climbed up and the hung out up top for a bit, it was really impressive.
We had classes for the second week in from 830 until 1230. I really didn't find the courses that helpful unfortunately, they didn't use their time most efficiently. I'm so glad I came early and had the experience I did with Maxime and Aunt Melissa. After class, most people would go to town to hang out or eat or laze around. While I was in Toulon I got in contact with two research teams here at the Centre de Neuroscience, and both responded positively, so Tuesday and Wednesday of that week I went to interview with them and see the labs. I decided to work with a team in the INSERM building doing research on addiction and cocaine, and the following Tuesday (6 days ago) I started work there. I'll get to that eventually. On Thursday we went to a chateau for a wine tasting at Chateau Raymond-Lafon. They talked to us about how they make the wine especially sweet, because the particular type of wine was a Sauterne, a dessert wine. The vineyards stretched for kilometres and kilometres in all directions, and the region was apparently somewhat famous (Le Medoc). There were some castles off in the distance.
Last weekend I went with Dylan and Spence, two guys from UCSB, to Lacanau, a small beach town an hour away from Bordeaux. We took the bus there and stayed in a really cool hostel just 5 minutes by foot from the beach. That Friday I went swimming while Dylan hit the waves with his surfboard, and I got swept out by a rip current that nearly drowned me. I've never been so tired from trying to swim in the ocean. All I kept thinking was, "I'd really like to be back on shore right now sipping a cold beer. And I don't want to drown." It was a scary experience, and eventually I had a bodyboarder follow me as I slowly swam back in. The waves that day and Saturday were enormous, 8-9 feet high and heavy. They were tubing and really throwing that lip over the edge. It was an adventure for me to jump back into the surf at that level, but Sunday was a much nicer 4-5 foot day, and I had some really fun rides. We rented surfboards which weren't too expensive, surprisingly, and I really enjoyed the 6 foot shortboard that I got. It was fantastic to get out in the water and exercise again...
This week I started the actual internship at the lab, beginning with surgery on the rats. The team is looking at rates of rat self-administration of cocaine to replicate some data they found a year ago. To allow the rats to self-administer cocaine, they insert a tube into the back that leads to another tube that leads into the jugular vein. So on Tuesday and Wednesday I was at the lab helping shave the rats and anesthetize them while the grad students found the jugular veins. It was awesome. Bit by bit, my advisor kept adding things for me to do: shaving them, putting them to sleep, making the incisions on the back and shoulder, finding the jugular, and stitching them back up. At first it was hard for me to work on something that I new was still alive and breathing right in front of me, but I got used to it much quicker than I was expecting. Definitely looking forward to working more in the lab. For those who are interested, the research is looking to replicate previous findings that showed less neural plasticity in brains of classified "addicts" according to the way DSM-IV classifies human addicts. Too cool.
So yesterday I moved into my host family here in Pessac, just outside of Bordeaux. I live with a mom, dad, and two sisters who are 18 and 21. They're very welcoming and curious about my life; the mother (Sylvie) is a professor of history at a high school and Bordeaux 3 (the university), and I'm still not sure what the father (Vincent) does. He's quiet and rides a motorcycle, which reminds me, I'm trying to buy/rent a mobylette, which is like a bike with a motor. I really would like to be able to leave the house and not worry about getting on a tram and bus and another bus to get back to the house. The place is situated kind of far from my school, but it's a great house. I live on the second floor and look out on vineyards of Pape Clément, where I can see an old castle tower. It's really quiet, my room is huge, and I have my own shower. I'm diggin it here.
So from here I try to find out when I can enroll in courses in pysch and neurobiology, which should be monday... I'm still figuring out those logistics. I'll try to update my photos on the flickr account, so check them out when you get the chance. up and out
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