I’ve been getting in the habit of setting an alarm thirty minutes before my real one. I also make sure the song that plays are the same for both. This first alarm works beautifully because once and a while it wakes me up and I think its the real alarm. When I’m about to get up, I realize my mistake and have the glorious realization that I still have twenty-eight minutes to sleep.
This happened today and was a great start to my morning. Getting out of bed was no issue since I knew I had a delicious bowl of Frosties waiting for me. I took my time getting ready this morning before my 9:45 math class. I had an extra fifteen minutes which I used to file an insurance claim to get reimbursed for my doctor’s appointment. This was not too difficult, but I am curious to know how long this claim will take to go through.
It was raining this morning as I headed to class. I wore my rain jacket to prepare for the day. Differential equations has been getting more confusing lately and as a result, many people have been skipping it. I don’t fall into this party, but I was one of the eight people in class today. The jokes on the people skipping because I am actually understanding the material now. Talk about a competitive edge for exams.
I had a pretty long break before physics lab, so Nick, Harry and I headed to La Natation for lunch. I’ve been hanging out with them a lot if you haven’t noticed. Despite overdosing on their pasta carbonara a few weeks ago, I was ready for it again. Their plat du jour was getting a bit repetitive and I am tired of salads with dijon mustard dressing.
The pasta today was a bit different because they used penne instead of spaghetti. I prefer the spaghetti, but it still was delicious and filling.
My Pasta
After lunch, Harry and I went to the BU office to kill some time before our lab. Unfortunately we forgot the office did not open until 1:30 today. We headed to campus a bit early and decided to hang out in the library. This actually was my first time at the library and I was surprised how nice it was. Though to be honest, I am someone who studies much better in my own room and not at the library.
About thirty minutes later, we headed to the lab facilities. Today we were in a different room since we would be working with radioactive material. We were using some advanced equipment to analyze the photons given off by radioactive samples of cesium, sodium and cobalt. I would explain the Compton effect, but I don’t really understand it to be honest. I will figure that out later.
What was interesting today were all the safety procedures we had to do for the radioactive samples. The whole first hour of the lab was spent on safety and doing the math to calculate how much radioactivity we would be exposed to. We had to compare this to lethal amounts and learned that the amounts we would be exposed to were not harmful. Still, we had to take caution. When we were not using a sample, it had to be placed in a solid iron holder far from us. When we held the samples, it had to be held far away from out bodies. We also had to intensely wash our hands afterwards, though I can’t imagine this did much.
The Radioactive Samples and the Iron Container.
We had to complete a tiny safety quiz and sign an agreement as well. For some reason, there was a huge emphasis put on not eating the radioactive samples. This was explained to us at least three times. I’m not going to lie, I was a little tempted.
This quiz had some funny multiple choice options
The lab went by rather quickly once the long safety talk was over. Greg and I were able to get some nice graphs for the various samples. I was happy when we left because this had been my very last physics lab. Every group gets one week off and ours happened to be next week, which was the last week of labs.
Since we finished a bit early, I had plenty of time for the gym today. I made a quick pit stop at my house to change before heading to the gym. I did a full body workout today to make up for skipping a few days. Nick also happened to be at the gym, which was a nice surprise. I finished with an ab workout and left the gym fairly sweaty. I hopped in the shower as soon as I got back.
The dinner bell rang a few minutes after I got out of the shower. Naturally, I was starving. The appetizer tonight was some baked pizza variation and salad. The main course was chicken and potatoes with cheese melted over them. This was followed by the usual cheese and dessert, and weirdly enough champagne. I’m pretty sure Anne-Marie and Andre had a family party the other day and wanted to get rid of the champagne. I did not object to this at all.
Jessica was saying at dinner how she didn’t have class today because of the big strikes going on in France right now. The strikes are mainly with the trains, but students and other organizations have been joining in. The students in her program blocked all the building entrances with piles of desks and chairs. Their classes got cancelled as a result. Don’t ask me why my classes were fine despite being on the same campus.
Here’s a picture from my friends snapchat of the blockade.
The students are protesting because the government wants to make public universities more selective. In its current system, anyone student who wants to go to French university can without any difficulty since there barely is any selection. Because of this, the retention rate is extremely low. I don’t know the exact percentage, but a huge amount of students don’t even finish their first year. In my opinion, some selectiveness will be good for French universities.
After dinner I typed up my blog and watched an episode of the Sopranos. I have some French homework, but I’ll do it in the morning since my first class it at 1:30 tomorrow.
I called it a night around 12 and went to bed.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
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