Tomorrow, I fly to brussels, belgium. I am staying there for a night and then heading to amsterdam for 4 nights. Here is a map of map including my last two stops. [View Full Entry]

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Bonjour, So I realize that, while I have been giving you information on places I have been going, I haven’t really filled you in as to what I’ve been up to when I’ve been in Brussels. I will attempt to do that now. Work: Work is still fantastic. My mandate hasn’t really changed that much since I started, but I’m still enjoying it. The highlight of it, apart from the people I work with, has to be attending conferences. I’ve been to 3 now. The first one was a Lifestyles Risk Forum, but there wasn’t a lot of new information that [View Full Entry]

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Ok, it's 3 AM on Sunday morning and I am having a hard time remembering what we did on Friday! Since we had bought a 72 hour pass good for many attractions in Brussels, we sort of felt obliged to use it to get a good value for the purchase. Because it was open earlier than other museums, we started out at the musical instrument museum, located on a great art nuveau building. we are not musial instrument buffs, but the museum was a lot of fun for both of us. At the entrance, you are given headphones, and as you [View Full Entry]

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Picking up from the prior post, we decided to spare the lamb after all. We ended up having one of the best dinners of our trip, at the Marco Polo Restaurant in Ghent. The atmosphere was great, the service very friendly, and the food - we both had a salad, pasta with mushroom sauce, and shared a tiramisu - was very tasty. On Wedenesday it was another daytrip - about an hour by train from Ghent to Tournai, our first foray into the French speaking part of Belgium. The weather was dreary and our brief stay of 3 hours or so [View Full Entry]

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As promised here are the two videos I‘ve yet to put up here: Videos Week 2 in Ireland and Vogalonga, 2009. My Vogalonga videos don’t do justice to the scope of the boats involved. Imagine a full Sea of Boats, stretching for more than a mile long. And maybe that can come close - maybe. Summary Work has been very exciting! We’ve been busy running tests from right after the coffee break monday to tuesday evening. Spent most of today finishing up my first pass of the post-processing spreadsheets. The data is looking pretty good, though there is still [View Full Entry]

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End of France We went out of France with a bang. The second night we met with some people I studied in Madrid with. We had some warsteiner in a mug marked as 'Formidable' in french, it was basically a full liter of beer after which we went to the champ de elysees (sp?) and went to a club where beers were 15 euros. Needless to say, I only had one, and I only paid for it because I had no idea how much it cost until I received 5 euros back from my 20. Dinner was next to the Eiffel [View Full Entry]

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Work: Just finished my first week of work. I have a wonderful summer job(in my humble opinion). I am working at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics. As a stagiaire short-term student, I am assigned to a particular project. My project involves the use of the plasmatron wind tunnel facility, a subsonic tunnel extrapolated to hypersonic flows. In short, we research the re-entry of a space vehicle into the atmosphere, in order to design better Thermal Protection Systems. The specific vehicle that I will be focusing on is the ESA EXPERT. I’ve been very busy acquainting myse [View Full Entry]

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We had a long bus ride from Amsterdam to Brussels - even though we started out before rush hour there was beaucoup traffic (practicing my French). Finally we arrived at the hotel around 8pm, quickly checked in and within 15 minutes or so, headed out to see what there was to see in Brussels. We found waffles, chocolate and beer! This morning (Wed. June 3) after Ryan G. chased down the bus (Professor Brunel wasn't kidding when he said he wasn't waiting for anyone!) we were on our way to the European Commission. We had three lecture-style sections on the following [View Full Entry]

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Bonjour et Hello, Hello et Bonjour, So my first day of work was June 1st. It was a holiday. I love Belgium!!! I finished unpacking and then cleaned up some more stuff before heading back to Uccle to pick up some stuff I had left out there. Afterwards, I followed Elaine’s suggestion that it was only a 10 minute walk back to town. It was not a 10 minute walk to downtown. Try a 30 minute walk! It was a sunny day, so I didn’t mind it too much. I was wandering around, and two streets met (I’m not ripping off [View Full Entry]

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Bonjour, The Study Tour is now over and I have begun the process of adjusting to life in Brussels, which will be my home for the next 3 months. I packed my bags, checked out of the hotel and began my quest to reach my new home. My metro journey wasn’t that bad, but the escalators at the stop I got of at weren’t working so I had to lug my stuff up the stairs. Now, I’m not saying all Belgians are selfish and inconsiderate, but almost everyone I met that day was. People just wouldn’t let me walk up the [View Full Entry]

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