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.