Where in the World is CJS?: Nantes

I've been here for almost a month and, despite a bleak first impression, it seems like it's going to be pretty okay.

I've spruced up my studio.

Before:

After:

The school is far from the city and kinda reminds me of ncssm. It has about 800 students, many of which live in the dormitories that are 300 m from the classroom/lab building (okay technically there are two buildings, but they are connected). We eat lunch in the cafeteria and play sports in the afternoon.

My dormitory.

The Gym. (and snow)

The Academic Building - we live in an office park.

I've been playing ultimate with the ecole's team. It's a young (this is their second season), all male (except for Ezgi {a fellow ME3} and me), indoor ultimate team. We have the national university championships in the middle of March so we've been practicing hard (for France... less than jäga's offseason practices). Here we are after a very productive scrimmage against the Ecole Centrale Nantes:

Not only did we work on zone and clam defenses, which are sort of new to me with only five people per side on the field, but I learned that my mid range throws are actually full field hucks. This is an exciting and dangerous revelation.

It is so nice to be back to engineering classes. I got to use some modeling software and make some graphs in excel! We even went to the laboratory and I got to play with a pressure gauge on a nanofiltration thingie. This is so much better than management classes. We may be in class from 8-16h30 everyday, but at least I buy into what we are learning.

My french is still pretty foux du fa fa, but it is sort of progressing. Sometimes the grammar is like German's...okay, not really but it helps to pretend.

I ~~probably overpaid for~~ bought a bike. It's no townie or the touring bike that I thought I would purchase, but it's pretty nice and came with panniers, lights and lots of household goods that the owner was going to throw out (including 3 cacti and several glasses). I've taken some nice riverside rides and it cuts trips to the grocery store and city by more than half. Plus, it means that I'm independent of the city's ridiculous transportation system. Granted the school is in the boonies, but it can take two buses and a tram to reach centerville. Then there is this chunk of time in the evenings where the buses don't run because the day schedule has stopped, but the night buses haven't kicked in yet. And they change the routing when there is a soccer match, which is particularly inconvenient, if you are attending the match.

Like the school, the city was pretty bleh when I first arrived. You know, typical Europe: cold, castle, cathedral...

Slowly Nantes' charm is expressing itself: he old town is pretty, the elephant quirky, the isle modern and the crepes delicious. My classmates have found some cool cafes - there is even a local microbrewery that makes a dank (in a good way) ambre! So nice to have choices when it comes to beer.