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Valencia and Portugal

I finally am updating on my trip to Valencia and Portugal. It's taken me a while to catch up with classes and Mars Gravity, but I'll get a word in now. I went to Valencia, Spain on a NASA sponsorship for the International Astronautical Congress. There were 13 of us that were chosen by NASA from the student abstracts submitted, and we were all in the same hotel, so it was nice to have a group of people with whom I could hang out. The first day I was there, I toured around the old town of Valencia by myself, doing some sightseeing, eating, etc. I spent some time in the Cathedral and its tower overlooking the city, and then I also had some gelato, and they had the wonderful Ferrero Roche flavor that I remember so well from Italy. yum! (And I probably had it at least twice more while I was there.)

The next day, I went to the Royal Gardens, the art museum, etc., and then walked along the old river bed, which is now a huge park. It was surprisingly warm there, and the one thing I didn't bring was a swimsuit, and I wish I had. That day we met up with all the other NASA students and went out to dinner, where I had vegetarian paella. It's so tasty and good - I bought saffron, so I'll have to try it here. It was a little hard to find vegetarian paella, but we did manage a couple of times. My roommate for the IAC, Mamta, is also a vegetarian, so we could stick together throughout the week.

The conference started Monday at the new "Arts and Sciences Palace." The place (it was actually 3 different buildings) was very futuristic looking and quite a large complex, so it was a cool setting for the conference, even if the facilities weren't all that great. As the NASA group, we did get to meet with Mike Griffin, and I was again reminded about how rude he can be when answering questions. He's very straightforward, which is great, but I think he needs to balance his responses a little more. We also met with the current head of Space Operations and the new head of the Space Exploration Division. They were very willing to answer all of our questions and were excellent speakers, so that was a nice aspect of the conference.



I gave my talk on Wednesday morning. My session chair was very enthusiastic about my paper, so that helped to give me some more confidence before I had to speak. Some of the NASA students that I'd known for a while were also there, and it was nice to have their support. I was a little nervous in front of them, though, because I wanted to impress them since they knew me. The talk went well, and I had answerable questions, so I would deem it a success. It wasn't the largest group I have ever presented for, but there were still about 40 or so people there, which was pretty large for the conference sessions.

Overall the conference was just too large to do any quality networking, which is a shame. It was hard to meet people with similar interests because the sessions were so long that people would wander in and out, making it hard to track anyone down. They also didn't have any meal times or many booths set up, which, for the Small Sat Conf, was a great time to network.

Anyways, enough of the conference. Thursday we did some shopping before Miguel and I left that night for Portugal. We stayed in Portugal from late Thursday to early Tuesday morning, so we had 4 full days to explore the Lisbon area. We saw a lot of great sites - the original castle, old Cathedrals, new and old monuments, the towers guarding the river, the neighboring towns of Sintra and Cascais (via a small guided tour), etc. All the pictures are up on my ofoto site, so you can look there (e-mail me for the login info, if you don't have it).



It also finally took sending me to Portugal to actually go out and do some clothes shopping. It´s not anything too European, but it was necessary. All the European clothes there are not really my style anyways. I bought a new skirt too that´ll be good for salsa dancing, some new summer and winter shirts, and some new jewelry (I couldn't resist).

One tough thing about Portugal was that EVERYTHING had meat or fish in it. Miguel was very good about being patient and helping to find a restaurant I´ll eat in as well. So we had some good Italian, Indian, Lebanese, pastries, etc. :-)

Our last day went well, but it turns out all of the museums are closed on Mondays! We still managed to see some more sights and more of the city. I definitely enjoyed the vacation, but I missed the US some. It´s funny, though, because I was only a little homesick because I wish I could have been in the US doing nothing/relaxing with my friends, my family, etc. Instead, I have to go to a foreign country to allow myself to take a break! I want things to change in that department, but I will need some help...

Our flight home was eventful - arriving in London, there was a bomb scare that shut down the terminal our incoming plane needed to go to. They wouldn't let us off for about an hour, and after they did, they took us to another main terminal. By the time we went through Heathrow security, our plane's doors were closed, and there was no way we could get to Boston that day. So we were stuck with no one willing to cough up the money for a hotel. Luckily I was with Miguel and another NASA guy, so we decided (after much internal struggle) to pony up the $300 for a 2-person room and make do. (Everything was really expensive near the airport, and all the cheapest places were booked.) But, we ended up getting a suite for some reason, so it worked out alright in the end. We did make it home to Boston the next day, and we returned to the hectic and stressful life here.

Two days later, I left for VA to go to BJ & Kim's wedding. Now that was a fun weekend with great old friends, and what a site seeing Brian Johnson tie the knot! Congrats!

posted by Biff @ 11:52 PM