Tuesday, July 6, 2010




Today was day one of particle physics lectures. We have mainly lectures this week before starting on our project. You can see the picture above of one of the slides from our lectures (it's all quite simple he kept saying)....if you want to see the rest I can share the link with you. We heard from two of the physicists here, one of them the designer and head of the CMS construction (one of the detectors at CERN) and he has been nominated to be the project head of CMS.
After our lectures, we went to a special CERN colloquia by the President of Virgin Galactic on their space tourism program.
We went straight from there to swim for a half an hour before leaving for a walk through the country on our way into Geneva for supper. The other two pictures are from that walk. On the top one, Mount Blanc is just off to the right. It is barely visable most of the time, but we've been able to see it the last couple of days. It's been a full day...we just got in and it's midnight.
Last night after I wrote, I went over to the patio, just outside the cafeteria and played Farkle, drank wine, and ate chocolate. I'm finding that it's quite impossible to make it through a day without wine and chocolate because it is so readily available. If I don't walk all of this off during my time here, I'm going to need a new wardrobe when I get home! I also need to take a crash course in French because I hear that they serve horse meat and raw beef at times, and I need to know the names of those dishes BEFORE I order!
The days are really long here....sundown is after 10 pm, and sunrise is 5:30ish. There are very few bugs, so there are no screens on the windows. I keep my windows wide open, and then I have to decide whether I want to close the shades to keep the sun out or open them to get air. So far, the air has won out.
I was off one day on the Tour de France schedule, and we are scheduled in here for the day I thought we were going to see it. Our plans changed now to seeing an alpine finish on Saturday. We'll go up in the morning, and they are anticipating the finish between 3:30 and 5. I also found out the car with the small back seat is a Porsche, even more reason to fold myself into it. Now if we could just have an Armstrong victory....nah, too early in the race for that.
Tomorrow's lectures are going to come way too early, so off to bed I go.


1 comment:

  1. Your descriptions of your days are so good that I feel that I am right there with you...well almost there. Praying for the best adventure and experience ever!

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