Day 6

Trying not to fall behind on this business...  Yesterday was our first official class day.  Orientation is over, and we're getting into the nitty gritty of the courses.  We spent a lot of time talking about model synapses, a bit of cellular neuroscience, channel kinetics: you know, all of the fun stuff that I'm sure everyone wants to hear about.

After class finished up, though, is where the adventures began (Zoltar says, "this may become a theme").

After class, I booked it over to University of Paris to meet a colleague to see if we could find a way to get our students into see some real experiments in a Parisian lab.  I had a good feeling about the visit, when I noticed the cross street for the University.

Sure enough, the awesome Boris Lamotte d'Incamps, a spinal cord physiologist (who we all know are great people) agreed to host not one, but three small groups of students in his lab.  He even offered to set up multiple experiments for them to observe.  If that wasn't enough, U. Paris is about to hold a mini-course in electrophysiology and optical techniques (optogenetics, 2-photon microscopy, etc), and he graciously offered to let our students join in.

After returning from the university, I hosted the first iteration of the Emory in Paris running group.  We had only one stalwart student join Rachel and me, but we had a great run, nonetheless.  We're hoping to explore Paris with a different running route three days a week.

After the run and getting cleaned up, it was time to take advantage of the ongoing Paris Beer week, continuing through this week.  The program leadership headed to a local brewpub.

I'm still having a little trouble with the language, apparently.  I had the strong impression that I was ordering a flight of their diverse beers...  However, when the waiter slapped down a bucket with 10 bottles, I realized I had slightly mistranslated the menu.  Thankfully, I had some help polishing off the bucket, and I got to sample many fine brews from the Demory.  We also made friends with a restauranteur from Stockholm who was sampling beer to import into the restaurant he works at.  All in all, a very successful outing for the evening.