The end of the semester was really hectic. One morning there were 5 exams, some of which were open book. My testing seat looked like this:
The tests were generally frustrating; they covered half day seminars from the beginning of the semester and wrong answers were negative points. So the tests were short, but being exam ready on five different topics was rough.
That afternoon we went to an incinerator. It was pretty cool. Below you can see the giant claw that moves the garbage from the intake area to sorting belts. At residences recyclables are put into yellow bags and other stuff into blue bags, then they are optically sorted at the facility. I wanted to see the optical sorter in action (I had learned about a similar facility while at NCSU), but it wasn't running the day we went. We did get to look at the flame in the incinerator, although it didn't resemble anything we had learned about in our combustion couse. The loose trash, which doesn't get sorted is moved around using a giant claw (see video)... worst arcade game/prize ever?
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| bags to be sorted |
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| optical sorters |
It wasn't all work! People cooked for me! Anto made a delicious Indonesian meal and Caitlin made me a half-birthday fruit salad.
I biked with my mustachioed coursemates down to the new carrousel in Nantes to watch the Bastille Day fireworks, which were the most graceful I've ever seen. They were syced to delicate techno.
After the final IEP presentation (it went ok... I was poorly prepared) and a final night celebrating in Nantes (most of my friends went to an old shipbuilding warehouse that has been transformed into
Crepetown), I took a train to Lyon where I met my cousin, her old exchange-sister, and Emily in Lyon.
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| Hipsterized fountain horse |
We took naps at a roman amphitheater. The cathedral was beautiful and at the top of one of the huge hills. It was also a double decker: below the main level, which was full of mosaics, was another that was dedicated to Mary and was painted in pastels: blues, purple, green. So pretty!
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| Floor of the top level of the cathedral |
We also visited some nearby beaujolais vineyards. The area isn't very touristy, so our actions were mainly dictated by our quest for food. We saw a church steeple and walked towards it, thinking there would be something there. There was a restaurant (closed), bakery (closed, but they deliver!), and a pharmacy, where the nice lady understood my poor french and let us know that there might be something in the next town over-- 5 km away. So we hiked there through the grape fields and there were two restaurants! One was closed and the other was open, but just for drinks. The kind men there informed us that there was a supermarket not too far away. It was next to a park, so we had a nice little picnic.
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| pretty house |
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| little cousin in search of food |
After the girls left for Paris, I met Max, a French intern that I worked with in Germany, for a hike near his grandparents house at the start of the alps, in the Massif de la Chartreuse. Aside from the hut with dozens of boar's feet, the views were stunning. After the hike, his parents took us to the lake that you can see from the mountain.
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| View of the lake from the summit |
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| View of the summit from the lake |
I flew to boston via Munich the next day. During the layover, I picked up a copy of my favorite newspaper and did a complicated interview/Fragebogen (survey) in german, which boosted my german-speaking confidence, which was sort of low after the trip to Baden-Baden.
