For the past week and a half, I have been living in Toulouse, France!

I have yet to make a post about my time here, mostly because I’ve been working through my backlog of my little detour on my way here. Now though I think I’ve told all of those stories, so I can begin to tell of the next phase of my project.

Here in France, I’m staying on the campus of the ISAE Supaero, the worlds first dedicated institute of aerospace engineering! The institute is located to the southeast of the city of Toulouse, directly next to the Canal du Midi, amongst numerous other aerospace businesses such as the Touloues Space Centre and Airbus.

For the next six weeks this will be my base of operations as me and my group continue to work on the SEEDs project, but I’ll be sure to sprinkle in a few more adventures here and there to keep things interesting! For now though I thought I’d kick things off my sharing a few tales of what I’ve been up to since I got here.

Hitting the Ground Running

Immediately after arriving last Monday, I found out some interesting things about the place where I’m to live. The entire place is locked down like a military base, requiring key cards and authorisation to get into most places. With me both living and working here, I pretty much have the run of the place, but it feels incredible special to be under such security all of the time.

Once managing to get past the gate and picking up my access card, I dropped my bags at my room and headed straight to the project room to join my colleagues. Our main mission for the past week has been to write up everything we’ve achieved during our studying in Turin and Rome, whilst also thinking about the direction we want to take the project over the next few weeks whilst we study here!

It won’t just be writing up that we’ll be doing though, the institution has organised a few different events that we’re able to attend over the coming weeks; some close to home and others much more further afield, but I’ll be getting around to those in due time!

First though, I thought I’d give a quick tour of the campus!

The ISAE Supaero

The first place I visited was the student accomodation area. The entire north half of the campus is dedicated to six accomodation blocks where the many students who stay here throughout their studies can reside. Right now it’s very quiet on the campus as it’s the summer break for a majority of the students, the only people still here are people like me working on special projects, and PhD students who are greatly overworked!

Regardless, the campus has many open amenities. The student centre is open 24/7 and houses a gym, break rooms, and even a piano! It’s a great place to relax in the evenings and watch the sunset over the French landscape.

My room itself is pretty nice too, with a nearby kitchen, ensuite bathroom, and plenty of fridge space! My only downside is that it gets very hot in the evenings, and without AC it gets a little unbearable when I need to be sleeping. I know my thermodynamics luckily and have a few good ways of cooling down so I’m just about managing to get the rest I need. The background noise of Grasshoppers and Cicadas is quite comforting too and something I’m not very used to coming from the UK.

Elsewhere on the campus are the lectures building, which make up the main infrastructure. These buildings are made up of conference rooms, classrooms, lecture rooms, and offices where everyone has the ability to work on whatever project they need to. Thankfully, these buildings make up some of the few that are properly air conditioned, so whilst we work I don’t feel like I am on fire.

Speaking of, I feel I should address the weather I’ve experienced whilst I’ve been here.

Très chaud

It’s hot!

Since I’ve gotten here, I don’t think the temperature has dipped below 20, and it’s rare enough to see it in the low 20s as well. During the day, it tends to get up to about the mid 30s, with the hottest its gotten being about 40 last friday! The situation is even worse at night, I love to sleep in a cold room, keeping myself warm with the covers and fully able to regulate my body heat as I choose; that kind of thing doesn’t happen here. It’s still in the mid twenties at least for most of the night, making it very difficult to sleep. The coldest part of day is at about 5am, just before the sun rises, so I’ve been doing my best to wake up at this time and enjoy the coolness whilst it lasts.

With me having to deal with this weather if not worse for the next few weeks, I thought I’d share my key tips for staying cool!

• Hydrate – It’s really important to make sure you’re replacing all of the water you lose through things like sweat. Making sure your blood can keep pumping around will keep your body working as it should.
• Stay in the Shade – Places like Toulouse have lots of shady spots all over so that you can stay cool on hot days. Keeping out of direct sunlight tends to drop your skin temperature drastically and is a good way to stop yourself from overheating!
• Wear Suncream – You may only be in the sun for a little while, but in the heat of the summer its much easier for things like sunburn to happen. Make sure you’ve got all of your skin covered one way or another!
• Wear Loose Clothing – Clothes too tight to your skin will stop you from sweating properly, this will hinder your body from keeping itself cool. By wearing loose layers you can ensure the proper ventilation for your body and even let short gusts cool you down!

The Detector Conference

Our supervisors here in France have already planned a bunch of different events for us to attend. The big one we’ve done so far was a conference in detector technologies at a nearby conference centre, so here’s the story.

At this conference, I met many different professionals from all over the world and found out tonnes about what they’re working on and how it will help propell modern science. With the conference centering around detectors, many of the different stalls had examples of different cameras that the companies had created; which meant I had my picture taken in thousands of different ways and saw myself in a bit more detail than I would have liked.

A particular example I’ve got shown below shows me in a long wavelength, similar to the infrared heat cameras you can see. The darker regions of the image show the cold zones, so places like my hear and my clothes, whereas the brighter regions show the hot regions so spots like my eyes and my chest!

An interesting spot I noticed is that my mouth is incredibly cold! This is because of all of the air passing through all the time cooling it down making it much colder than the rest of my head! I got to demonstrate this by opening my mouth and breathing in a big gulp of air. This then looked to generate a black hole within me as the temperature dropped rapidly. Creepy!

Future Adventures

I’m now all settled in and I can already see a bunch of things that I want to get up to whilst I’m here in France. I love canals so exploring the Canal du Midi is a must, but theres a whole new city too, and tonnes of facilities here on the campus for me also. Not to mention my abilitiy to go further afield anywhere in France, or close countries like Andora or Spain!

My life here in France is just beginning, and I hope you stay tuned to see what I get up to. I’ve got Sunday School lessons, adventures, and of course France to show you! So, as they say…

Le jeu commence!

Cassie