FRIENDS at LAST!!

Bonjour, all!

This past week has flown by at the speed of light!! (That is 299,792,458 m/s!) I have met so many new people and made some great friends. I feel as if I have also fallen in love with Aix-en-Provence. It is a wonderful feeling and with each passing day, I do not want to leave this place. With a car and AC, I would stay here without a second thought to it! The only drawback is that Aix-en-Provence is the most expensive city to live in after Paris. We all know how that can go...

Each and every person that I have befriended (or has befriended me) has greatly enriched my life through sharing knowledge and sharing their life experiences with me. I would like to tell you about each one of these people.

My friends: One of the first people that befriended me was a young man by the name of Fabrice. He is an engineering student who is finishing his Ph.D here at the lab that I am in. He is fun and outgoing and loves to ask millions of questions about the U.S. and the culture and the food and the movies and the music. He has had many opportunities to go to different countries for various internships and he has shared a lot of his experiences with me. He has even been to New Zealand! How cool is that? His girlfriend is dutch and lives in Amsterdam, Holland, so he goes there every weekend to spend time with her. He has widened my horizons by answering all of my questions about the countries that he has been too. He has also brought me back some sweets from Holland just so I can broaden my scope of gastronomie. I went hiking up the big Montagne St. Victoire with him this past week. It was a huffer and a puffer hike, let me tell you! But the views were gorgeous!!

Fouzia is a girl that I met at the bus stop where I wait for my bus to CEREGE every morning. One day I was sitting at the bus stop, reading a book and waiting for the bus when she walked up and sat down next to me. She was reading a newspaper with a screaming headline about the World Cup. She pointed to the headlines started talking to me in french about the French football (soccer) team. I kind of nodded and smiled and said an occasional "oui, oui" or simply "aaha.. oui" just to be polite and because I only understood like every 3rd word. So that is how we met and our first discussion was about the World Cup. There was something unique about this encounter because where in the world do you find two GIRLS talking about the WORLD CUP? We have become really good friends and she greets me with the french kiss on both cheeks every morning. I feel rather french when I am greeted in this authentic french fashion.  She is from Algeria and she is finishing her masters in computer sciences. She has shared with me the story of her religion and her home country, both of which are fascinating because they are so different from what I am used to.

Filip de la Pologne (as I like to call him) is a young man that I met at the bus stop next to my apartment. We had both waited for approximately half an hour and the bus still hadn't come. I knew that it would come eventually because it always comes sooner or later. However, he had just arrived in Aix and had no idea so he spoke first and asked when in the world it would come. I answered with "hopefully today". I discovered that he is from Poland and is doing historical research in the Aix-in-Provence library in centre ville. He is finishing his masters in history and is also working on his second bachelors degree in Arabic. He wears black-rimmed glasses and seems to be the artsy-fartsy kind of person. I do not mean that in any deragatory manner. He can speak polish, english, french, arabic and UKRAINIAN!!! Today I had a conversation with him in which we utilized 3 of those languages. It never ceases to amaze me how the human brain can grasp so many different languages all at the same time. The entire time I was trasitioning from one to the second to the third (and grasping the fourth, Polish), I felt as if it were just one language. A part of me now wants to devote my life to studying the two major areas of the brain that are responsible for linguistic skills: Broca's area & Wernicke's area. But that is biology, a topic I prefer not to associate myself with.

My most recent friend I made this past week. I met him on the bus on my way to CEREGE. Usually, on my bus rides to CEREGE, I either read books (all of the books that I have not been able to read during the past 3 years of my life because of school, school, school!) or talk to Fouzia. A lot of the people read books on the bus, and I (because I am somewhat nosy) always try to read the title of the book and see if it matches the person. It's weird, I know, but I do it anyway. Over the past few weeks I have noticed that everyone who was reading a book, was reading it in french except for one young man. I had sat within close proximity to see that he was reading an english novel, like me. This past week, Fouzia and I were not able to find seats next to eachother so I sat down in the first seat that was open. I opened up my book and began to read. I glanced over at the book that the young man was reading next to me when lo and behold, it was the english reader! We struck up a conversation about english books and have become friends since then. I wish I could tell you his name, but I don't know it. It escapes my mind. He is, however, one of the smartest boys that I have ever met in my life. He lived in Ireland for one year, working in the hospital, and learning how to speak english while doing an internship. Then he lived in Germany for one year studying physics and doing research and learning the German language. Impressive. Now he is finishing his masters in physical engineering, here in France. When he inquired about what kind of research I do, I briefly summarized and explained about the TiO2 nanoparticles in cements. He listened and then dissected the mechanisms and distinct properties of TiO2 and how photocatalysis occurs. He basically summarized what I had spent 3 days reading in scientific articles and various journals. I was thoroughly impressed. He then proceeded to cross disciplines and tie in the dreaded biological perspective of my research project. I told him that I don't specialize in biology and that in my universe, biology just doesn't exist. And if it does, then I avoid it as best as I can; like the bubonic plague (which I must say, is caused by a gram negative bacterium that is called Yersinia pestis). So he brought in my beloved chemistry and asked complex and intelligent questions pertaining to it, like the physicochemical aspects of the research. I knew there were smart people in the world, but he is probably the smartest person my age that I have ever met!! I am honored to have crossed paths with someone who will no doubt accomplish something great in the future. With extremely bright young people like him blossoming today, we have nothing to worry about concerning tomorrow.

Christine Hendren is a Ph.D student that I met very briefly this past week. She is a student from DUKE University. She just got married and she and her husband touched base at CEREGE for a couple of days before heading to the beautiful Alpes for their honeymoon. Ooohlala! Although our meeting was very brief, I am super excited about having met her. We have exchanged contact details for potential future collaboration as she has done some work with sediments and silver and her results looked promising and would be great to continue with in future research studies.

I have many more "friends" that I work with, but as they are all my seniors and are well advanced in their careers, I like to think of them as my mentors. Marie-Ange is the Ph.D student with whom I am working on the cement research. She is tall and thin and beautiful and is a very logical girl. Perrine is an engineer/research scientist who has helped me in numerous ways and has pointed me in the right direction many times throughout my experiments. Jerome is the research scientist whom I like to think of as the Thinking Cap. He is petit in size but his brain contains massive amounts of knowledge in it. He has been wonderful in helping me see the big picture of my research and in providing intellectual advice. And Armand has been extremely nice to me, as always. I thank him the most for being like a father (in all aspects) away from home and for letting me use his office.

There are so many more people that I can think of and would like to share with you but my eyelids are extremely heavy and I am rather sleep deprived today. I shall try to put up a post tomorrow with some pictures. However, no promises, as I have yet to discover what sort of adventure awaits for me in the day of tomorrow!

Au revoir,
Oksana.