Is the Cat Dead or Alive?-Day 11-January 19th, 2018

Before I start my blog post, I want to plug another travel blog, my brother’s.

https://drewinchina.wordpress.com

Andrew is also studying abroad, but  with NYU in Shanghai, China. I’m sure his experience will be vastly different than mine, but nonetheless very interesting. Also Andrew is way better writer than me and is award-winning! He  has written blogs before so don’t accuse him of copying me lol.

But back to my day.

The majority of today was spent in classroom. Fridays are by far my busiest day and my four classes keep me busy from 8 am to 5 pm. Today started off before sunrise and I got up even earlier at 6:45 to avoid missing the bus. I also ate as quickly as possible to give me more time, though I figured it wouldn’t be needed.

Spoiler Alert: I MISSED THE BUS AGAIN TODAY.

I honestly don’t even understand how this happens. I was there three minutes early and saw my bus leaving my stop as I rounded the street corner.  I accepted defeat and just waited the ten minutes for the bus. It was dark, raining, and a grim morning for me.

I may have a problem.

My street looking especially sketchy this morning

My reaction after missing the bus again.

I still made it to school on time for my circuits class and that went pretty much like any other 8 am class goes: quiet and with nonexistent class participation. After circuits, I had  three hours of my French culture class. This class was actually super interesting and had a ton of class participation. It reminded me a lot of my anthropology class from high school which I enjoyed a lot. Additionally, a break from math and science is always nice. We also find out that we would need to keep a journal about our observations and experiences in France for the class. I don’t think I will have trouble with that one.

I had a solid twenty minutes to eat lunch after class and went to the sandwich shop as usual. I picked a random sandwich and ended up with a really gross one that was just hot dogs and onions on a baguette. 2/10 would not eat again. I hustled to physics class and found out that there was an error in the time on the schedule. It actually started at 1:30, not 1:15. This meant I wouldn’t have to rush through lunch again. We had the less dry physics professor today and I have to say for the first time, I really enjoyed my physics class. Quantum mechanics is super interesting and to quote my professor, “If you’re not extremely skeptical of what we’re learning, you’re not really learning quantum mechanics right”. We learned about Schrodinger’s Cat today, which is an analogy for superposition of various possible states in quantum mechanics.

Here’s a basic explanation of that I took from reddit.

“Schodinger’s cat is a thought experiment. You put a cat in a box, and have no way to observe the cat while the box is closed. In the box you also put a device that will release poison based on a quantum observation that (like the electron moving left or right) has a 50% chance of being “true”. If the device reads true, the poison is released and the cat dies. Otherwise the cat lives.

The cat, like the electron, exists as both alive and dead until someone opens the box. At the moment the cat is “observed” the two cats collapse into a single cat (probability 100%) which is either alive, or dead.”

Cool stuff.

After physics, I had differential equations which was slow as any last period Friday class is. Fortunately, we got let out 25 minutes early and could head home.

After I got home, I messaged some friends for a bit and relaxed for a while. Tonight would be the beginning of my journey of microwavable meals. Tonight’s dinner consisted of the last two slices of my pizza from the other day and a microwavable pasta dish.

Here’s pictures from my wonderful meal.

The pizza was mediocre as expected, but the pasta wasn’t half bad, I’d give it a 6/10. Definitely would buy again. Also this is becoming a microwavable food review blog, I apologize in advance.

After dinner, I heard people from BU were going to a bar so I went to join them. I met a bunch of my friends at this William Shakespeare themed bar called Shakesbeer. To my surprise, a bunch of the French students from my physics class were there. Someone must have started talking to them and invited them to the bar. I took this opportunity to talk and hang with the French students. They were all very nice and welcoming, and asked us a bunch of questions about things in America. Two of my new friends, Vesco and Jodie, kept asking me questions about my fraternity and seemed to really enjoy the stories about my college shenanigans.

While I was at the bar, I tried the house beer which was unsurprisingly called Shakesbeer. It was super good and tasted almost like a pretzel. Definitely one of the best beers I’ve had in France and I strongly recommend trying it if you ever are in Grenoble.

I left the bar around 12 since I had an early bus to catch the next day. I said goodbye to my new and old friends and called it a night.