Arrival

I am here! It was a little scary at Ohare when my flight in was late and I barely made it to my connecting flight, but all went smoothly after that. It is warm here....90 degrees fahrenheit today. The average temperature for today is 74. There is very little air conditioning around here...the Frankfurt airport was very warm and stuffy, and I have my window open in my hostel for a little air. My room is very nice; small, but nice. The bathroom isn't much larger than the airplane bathroom; it's sort of a small room with a shower head and toilet. I don't intend to spend much time here though.

After I showered and napped, I took a walk around my area of CERN. There was a garden walk of old equipment that's been retired, and the buildings are much larger and closer together than Fermilab. I ate supper in the cafeteria and then stuck around to watch the Tour de France prologue. When I left the cafeteria, there was a rainbow coming down to building 40. I'm sure I could find some symbolism there...

For those who don't know, I'll briefly explain my program here. It started a little over a year ago when I became a Lead Teacher for Quarknet, a high-energy physics program for teachers through Fermilab. (A quark is one of the particles that is studied in collisions at accelerators). Lead teachers spend 8 weeks doing research, so last summer I spent my time at the Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator Detection and Development at Northern Illinois University doing research on detector design for the International Linear Collider. I also got a Cosmic Ray Muon Detector that I worked on for a couple of weeks earlier this summer at NIU. In January, I read about a program from CERN for teachers to come here for this program and applied for it. I am one of 5 teachers from the US that are here, and there are about 40 of us from member countries of CERN. The official language of CERN is English, so communication should not be a problem.

Tomorrow morning I meet up with some of my group at 10 to check out Geneva, and then we officially start at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon.

Oh, and Bryn....remember when you used the cell phone to order spaghetti from France for me to pick it up? I had it for supper tonight. It was really good!