Festival de Loire 2007

A wonderful festival has been taking place this week in Orléans - the Festival de Loire 2007 . You can see some photos of the festival above from previous years - it takes place on the Loire in Orleans, and has a strong marine flavor. It has run from September 19-23. I'm writing this the evening of Saturday the 22nd and we just saw the fireworks over the river - lovely. As Orléans is a fairly small city (about 270,000 people in the area, maybe half that in the city proper), things are fairly accessible. This festival is a good example - it got crowded around the quais where the exhibits and shows were held, and the traffic was bad in the city during the festival. Nevertheless, it was fairly easy to get to and around even the most popular areas.

Activities in Orléans

The last week or so, we have been busy trying to set up activities for ourselves outside school and work. Daughter Maggie joined a fencing club (see photo from the Cercle d'Escrime d'Orléanais) and son Robert has joined a water polo club. I have started going to a squash club and intend to begin yoga in a couple of weeks. (I am returning to the US for a couple of weeks). Sue may begin working in Maggie's school as an assistant, but we've not set that up yet. And Sue's french lessons at the university are still in the process of being set up. One of the nice things about Oréans is the relative ease of insertion into the activities here - relative in the sense that a certain (basic, but non-zero) mastery of french is generally necessary - but the helpfullness and goodwill of people here makes joining things a pleasure.We think this contact with clubs and activities will be especially important for all of us to get a better sense of France and will lead to a richer experience of living in France. It is just starting but so far, things look promising.

Arrival

The Graves family from Lafayette, California is spending the year in Orléans, France for 2007-08. We are David, Sue, Robert and Maggie. Son Steve is at the University of California at Santa Cruz for the year. Sue and Maggie are seen posing to the left in front of the cathedral of Orléans. This blog is being written by David, so I'll switch to first person. I am a professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the department of Chemical Engineering. I study various aspects of ionized gases (called 'plasmas'; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29), focusing mostly on the use of plasma to process materials. They are used extensively to make computer chips, for example. I was given an invitation to spend the year with my colleagues (especially Laifa El-Hadi Boufendi) at the Université d'Orléans at an institute named GREMI, to study various problems associated with making small particles of silicon in plasmas - also called 'dusty plasmas' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_plasma). The stay is being supported in part by a foundation called le STUDIUM (http://lestudium.cnrs-orleans.fr/). My colleague André Bouchoule, now retired, is from GREMI and is an old friend with whom I have have had many enjoyable interactions over the years. Robert is attending the Université d'Orléans in a program that involves french instruction as well as french literature and history. He is 18, and graduated last June from High School (Acalanes).

Maggie is attending the Collège Dunois in Orléans in 5ieme, or the US equivalent of 7th grade. She is 12.

Sue is currently managing the apartment and all of the family functions. She will be taking french classes in a month or so. We arrived August 23rd, so we've been here almost a month. I was away for a week in Kyoto for a conference in late August, then again for a couple of days in London . Things are almost under control! Only today (9/17) did we receive the phone in the apartment and neither the intenet nor cable tv are available yet. But all things considered, things are going quite well. We've met many people and are having a great time so far. Orléans is less glamorous than Paris (where we stayed for 6 months in 2002), but is more friendly and accessible. We like it here!