An American in Provence

One of my more embarrassing moments from High School was when I decided to take part in a regional spelling contest. I think I was a Sophomore, or maybe a Junior.

I spent a couple of weeks reviewing lists of words, and one Saturday, my Civics teacher drove me and another girl Erin down to another High School in Colorado Springs where the competition was being held. We formed a team, so first one of us would spell a word, then the next round the other one would.

We got there, and there weren't many people. Spelling contests aren't the most popular thing in town I guess. There were maybe five other teams.

We sat up on stage, with our teacher in the audience. The person in charge explained the rules. You could repeat the word out loud, but once you started to spell, if you made a mistake you couldn't go back and fix it.

I went first. The word I received was seedling.

I repeated it a few times.

"Seedling. Seedling. See - I mean Ess -e -e -d -l- -i -n -g"

Nope. It was over. Just like that. We were finished. First word, first round. I was so embarrassed. Poor Erin never even got a chance.

The winning word was something like "spinach". Give me a break.

Sigh. So that was my brief attempt at spelling contests.

The end.

A first-year graduate student at the University of Virginia, Electrical Engineering Department. She has a few classes, plus an Introduction to Science and Engineering class for Freshmen for which she is the teacher's assistant.


Another fall day in Virginia like any other. She gets up, and leaves her first-ever apartment for class, this morning she is sitting in on the Intro. to Science class. The professor up in front is talking about GPS- what it is and how it works. He talks about the accuracy of the GPS locators, saying that they have an accuracy radius of about 100 m. To demonstrate, he shows a picture of the White House, showing that a GPS could be used to hit the white house, and also Pentagon.


Outside class, there is some buzz about a small plane or helicopter that hit the World Trade Center in New York, but nobody really thinks too much of it.


As the morning progress, things begin to seem much more serious, but nobody really knows what is going on. The university puts some TVs in the hallways, and there are groups of students standing around the TVs, watching.


There starts to be some panic, and someone mentions that the top-secret Army Intelligence installation just north of town was also hit, that someone saw some smoke coming out of the building.


In the afternoon, in the computer lab for the Intro. class, the teacher apologizes for his remarks earlier that morning. He had had no idea, obviously, that at the time of his comments, someone was hitting the Pentagon with a plane.


The day passes, and our young graduate student returns to her apartment, feeling a bit isolated- no roommate, plus doesn't know too many people as classes started just a few weeks earlier. She doesn't have a tv, so just listens to the radio and looks at the news on the internet.

Her family calls, to make sure she is alright, and to say that nobody they know was hurt.


Classes are cancelled for the next few days. People go to give blood, donate items, raise money.
Church attendance is greatly increased, and there is a candlelight vigil on The Lawn. Everyone is still rather stunned by it all.

We took the TGV up to Paris and stayed there for about four days I think. Alain had to pass the oral exam for the CNRS- boy was he nervous! There were about 60 candidates for three spots. He had his exam on the first day- now that I think about it, we are lucky the SNCF wasn't on strike that day or else our whole future might have been different if we had been stuck in Marseille.

We visited the Eiffel Tower, took the Seine river cruise, Notre Dame, visited the Louvre but didn't go in, the Jardins de Luxembourg (I think that's the name?). It was a great time. Not too many tourists. We haven't been back since.

(Photo disclaimer- I have no memory of us taking this picture. If we are not the copyright owners, then sorry, didn't mean to steal it.)