What's for Dinner

I have been shopping the last couple days.  Buying food and supplies.  As many of you know, I like to cook.  It is a creative endeavor and I can like to take what is in the refrigerator and make a meal.   So I decided I would cook dinner last night.  Started off with some Pecorino cheese with peppercorns.  It took my a little while to boil water.  I have a little two burner electric cooktop.  I pressed buttons until some numbers appeared and kept pressing until something turned red.  The pot I selected was too large and I only had simmering water.  Then I moved to a smaller pot and got tiny bubbles appearing.  Finally I moved to the other burner which is larger and got a real rolling boil so I could cook some piccolini (small penne rigate).
Butter was added to pasta and the juice from half a lemon.  But I wanted a creamier texture, so I added a couple of tablespoons of goat cheese.  Did I mention that the markets here have at least two whole aisles of different cheeses?  I have three kinds in the refrigerator and will probably collect some more.  The goat cheese gives it a tangy flavor, a grown up version of mac and cheese.  To that I added some pre-packaged roasted chicken pieces that had a great natural smoky flavor.  Luckily I only make enough for me to eat in one sitting.  I don't have any containers for leftovers, otherwise I could have eaten two helpings.

The fruits and vegetables here taste better.  The bananas are smaller, but taste and smell like a banana.  The lemons are sweet and lemony!  The bananas are from Cameroon, which could be why.  Because I think the fruits are not picked for their size, but for flavor.  The american fascination for supersized does not just happen in fast food meals.  We have fruits and vegetables that are bigger and brighter in color, but have lost the taste.  And that's what I want.

I noticed that I did not have any olive oil when cooking last night.  Got some on the way home.  I just finished an appetizer plate with cheeses, some olives,  olive oil, and pepper.  I mixed the goat cheese with pepper and olive oil and then placed it on some fresh french bread I bought today. 

Now, what's for dinner?

I am nearly settled in

My room has nice high ceilings,  8+ feet,  and big sliding doors looking to the west.  It is on the top floor (penthouse) and I can get lots of light into the room.  It is "L" shaped, with a big 6 ft closet on the left as you enter.  The bed/couch is just beyond it in front of the sliding doors.

Across from the couch is the kitchen and a table I am using as my work space and eating area.

There is a TV and cable, but luckily it has only French stations, so I will only be watching the football matches.

The bathroom is off to the right as you enter.  Nice and bright with two lights and a big mirror.  Toilet and shower are beyond the sink.


Now the big surprise, I have a balcony.  Not just a Juliet balcony (usually just wide enough to step out), but a real balcony.  It is 5 ft deep and about 12 ft wide.  Very nice!  I need to get an outdoor chair to set there.

 The view is nice,  I can see the buildings across the river and up on the hills.  Looking south from the balcony I can see down the street I will be walking everyday to and from the lab.  The nice patisserie I visit everyday, the little grocery, and quite a few restaurants are also down that street. 

There is construction on the corner.  They are extending the tram T1 from Montrochet across the river and down avenue Debourg.  It will make it much easier to visit the central part of Lyon when it is completed.  But who knos when that will be.  Certainly not while I am here.

 It has been raining on and off all night.  It keeps the streets and the air clean.  Had a pizza at a trendy restaurant last night.  They have locations all over the world, Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and the US.  They are in hip/young urban areas on the east coast.  But they are moving west.  Vapiano's in Boston, NY, DC, and Virgina, with Chicago being added soon. I will be eating there again soon because I like pasta and pizza.  I know, I know, it is italian food and I am in France, but it has big portions at a reasonable price.  It has an interesting concept that I'll write more about in future posts. 

This is the view to the west of the buildings across the river.

Lyon, France - day 1 of 134.

Lyon, France - day 1 of 134 days in Lyon.  I made it in about 7:00 last night.  All my luggage also made it.  I had brought a rolling duffel bag for this trip.  I was able pack it to capacity of 50 lbs, attach the other bag of 40 lbs, and finally put my carry on around the handle.  It still wheeled easily.  After a short walk and 2 escalators, the tram from the airport into Lyon was sitting there waiting for me.  They headed out as soon as I was on board.  It takes you directly to the train station in Lyon where I would usually catch the Metro down near my apartment.  But I was tired and did not want to lug the 100 lbs around the subway, so I splurged and took a taxi.  The driver did not speak english, but with my bad french, his bad english, he figured out where I was going.  Evidently there is another street with the same name as the one I live on.  I remembered enough of the names around the area for him to understand which one.   I used the phrase I picked up from the first Bourne movie, "c'est ici" to have the taxi stop right outside the entrance to the apartments.

I have a nice room on the 6th floor (7th floor american) with a view over the top the adjacent building to the west to see the buildings on the hills above the river.  More about the room later.  I do have a refrigerator, so I  headed over to the little market down the street to get some food.  I got there about 8:31 and the store closed at 8:30.  I wandered about looking at all the menus of the restaurants in the area.  Some a pricey, 25 € for a meal and will be out of my price range.  I need to live on 15-20 € per day.  That will be difficult here in Lyon.  Wandered about until I saw a street vendor selling some kind of meat cooked with onions served in a thick whole wheat pita.  5€ for a large portion.  They added some spicy mayonnaise inside the pita.  Added a bottle of water and enjoyed my first meal in Lyon, walking though the rain back to my apartment.

Well, no turning back now.  They just let us use the electronics again.  Can't get them to turn around. I ended up with two bags of stuff.  Could not keep it 50 lbs, so I decided to use a second bag.  That allowed some of the stuff I had trimmed out, to now have a place.  More reading material, notebooks, and snacks.  I ended up with 85 lbs that I must lug to the tram that takes me into Lyon from the airport.

I am scared.  Not of anything bad happening, but of being on my own without any local support system. All my insecurities are exposed, both personal and those about my scientific abilities.  I must prove myself worthy of the fellowship and represent my lab, university, and my country by showing what I can accomplish. I have a new respect for the post-docs and grad students that leave their homes to come to Colorado to study.  I will take a couple of days to settle in Lyon before starting at the Lab.  I will need to get a metro card to allow me access to all the subways, trams, and busses. 

They also have a bike rental program in town with 500+ bikes available.  Purchase a rental card for 25 euro to get 30 mins (60 if I have a metro card) free and one euro per hour after that. Most of the destinations from my apartment are only a few kilometers and I should have no trouble staying in free time.  The big grocery store is only 2km (mile and half) from my apartment and will only take 10 minutes on the bike.  The bikes have big baskets on the front, so shopping will be easy.

Ugh.  I have been sitting in Heathrow airport for 4 hours.  There was an earlier flight, but last time I was here it took 5 hours to get through security, so I booked a later flight.  There was an earlier flight that I had not used. I thought I might be able to on it, but alas, it was full.  So, here I sit writing a blog entry.  There are many french speaking travelers around me.  I dont understand a word they are saying.  This should be fun.

I did sleep a little bit on the plane from Denver to London, but it is now 6 am body time and I am getting tired.  Still have another hour before I know which gate I will be at.

I did meet a nice group of Brits in an airport restaurant.  They are heading to San Fran for business.  One of the guys was a Swansea fan, so we talked about football, both world and american.  He enjoys watching the american football on ESPN as much as we used to watch Australian rules football.  The action and hard hitting are enjoyable especially when you dont have any allegiance to the teams.

Getting sleepy. Maybe I will catch a few winks on the plane to Lyon.  Will probably need to edit this tomorrow.

What to pack?

What should I pack for this trip?  I have taken two week trips using only carry-on luggage, but I will be gone for 133 days. When I was in college everything I owned could fit into a suitcase and a backpack.  But since then, I have collected stuff and now have 30+ years of things that I use daily, weekly, monthly, occasionally, and rarely.
It is easy to include all the daily and most of the weekly items while excluding the rarely and most of the occasionally used items.  I must limit my selection of stuff to 50lbs for the checked luggage.  I need clothes,  shoes,  toiletries, but how many clothes, shoes, etc.  Do I take a dress jacket, pants, adn dress shoes?  What about hiking boots, running gear, running shoes?  It will be cold in Lyon, similar to Boulder, for the rest of the winter, but I will also be there in the spring.  Should I take shorts and light shirts?
A bigger question is probably the inclusion of items for handling the constant injuries I seem to acquire while playing sports.  I plan on finding soccer matches and maybe be able to take up badminton again as it seems to be popular in France.   I will need ice packs, ace bandages, and ointments. I can buy them all there, but I already have them here and could take them with me.

So I have been packing all day.  First try I got about 3/4 of the stuff into my suitcase and it was 10 lbs over weight.  I then cut out half of the clothes and decided that I would not wear the suit. Saves space and another pair of shoes.  I moved more stuff into a carry on and now I am at 49lbs. I will either buy what I need in Lyon, or wait to get a package from home.

Trip to LA to get my visa

I am spending more than 3 months in France and therefore I need to obtain a visa.  There is not a French consulate in Colorado, so I must travel to Los Angeles to to obtain the visa.  There is a consulate in San Francisco and I was already planning to visit that area for a conference, but I could only obtain a visa from the consulate that handles applications from Colorado.

When I arrived, I went to the main entrance, expecting a grand lobby and an ornate waiting room.  I was informed that visas were at the back entrance.  The windows were blacked out and there was a door with a paper sign instructing me to ring the bell.  A fuzzy voice responded over the intercom, "what do you want".  I told him that I had an appointment and the door buzzed.  As I walked in there was a metal detector and a security guard sitting at a desk.  He asked for my passport and then grilled me for a few minutes.  I was told that there was no eating or drinking allowed and was told to wait in the next room.  It was a small 10 x 12 foot room with white walls on three sides and glass windows on the fourth.  Behind the windows sat two workers, one for student visas, and the other for all other visas.  Because I am not studying as a registered student in a French University, I needed to obtain a "scientific visa."

I had brought all the paper work that the required.  I had found their website a little confusing, but I brought extra copies of everything.  If they rejected me, I would have to buy another airline ticket to LA that is not covered in the expenses the fellowship pays for.  There were only about 5 others in the room and most of them were waiting for student visas.  I only waited for a half an hour before the clerk was available.

She was very nice and helpful.  I handed her all the documentation and my passport.  She went through the paper work, returning the documents that I had too many copies for, and helped me fill out the forms that were in French.  I had only partially filled in the blanks of the fields that I understood.  Once all the parer work was accepted, they took my fingerprints electronically and my picture. I now have all ten fingers and my picture filed with the French Government.  Because I was a Chateaubriand recipient, the clerk made sure that all the information made it past the first checks in the computer system.  At that point, I was finished.  But, I had to leave my passport.  They would FedEx it back to me (I had to pay the bill) when they finished reviewing my application.  At this point, I can not leave the country until I get the passport back.  They say it can take over a month when the number of requests is high.

I did not have to wait long.  About 10 days after I visited the embassy, FedEx delivered my passport and visa.  I am read to go to France.

Only 25 days until I get on the plane.  It was only 12 months ago that I was contemplating applying for the fellowship.

Chateaubriand Fellowship is french equivalent of the Fulbright Scholarships.  U.S. graduate students are encouraged to propose research that is a collaboration between U.S. and French universities.  They provide the recipient airfare and a stipend to cover the costs of living in France.  Last year at this time I was wavering about putting in the time to create an application that was due by the beginning of February.  I did not have any contacts within french universities, nor any idea for a project.

I searched through the set of journal articles I had been reading for my research.  I found a couple  laboratories in France in those articles.  I found the authors email address and wrote a letter to them outlining my current research and asking if they would be interested in putting together an application on short notice.  I sent it off not thinking they would even respond.  To my surprise, they thought there could be a good synergy between our research ideas.   I quickly formulated a short description of the research idea we would pursue and began to collect all of the additional materials and contacted a number of people to write recommendations.

Needless to say, I got it all together even though I was collecting information from two continents.  I finished my submission not thinking that I would have a chance at being awarded a fellowship.  But,  what I did not know was that I had randomly picked a laboratory at one of the most prestigious universities in France and that the head of the department has over 250 peer reviewed articles published.  I was planning on attending a conference in Barcelona, Spain in the spring and wanted to extend my visit to Europe by heading to Lyon to meet the people I had been communicating with via email.

I was one of two grad students in our lab that put together applications and we think there were at least 500 applicants this year.  The other grad student received an email in the early spring thanking her for applying, but that she was not selected.  I kept waiting for mine to arrive, but after a couple of weeks I thought maybe I had made it past the first round.  April rolled around and I had the trip to all arranged.  I took the train from Barcelona to Lyon.  The french lab paid for my train and room.  I stayed in a nice little apartment just a few blocks from the lab.  I was able to spend 3 days meeting people, giving a talk about my research, and touring the city.  We discussed different possible ideas and projects.  But, we still had not heard anything about the fellowship.  We made plans to try to create a collaboration even if the fellowship did not materialize.  I returned to the U.S. on April 29th and only a couple days later on May 3rd I received the notification of being a 2012-2013 recipient.