2004-01-16
Hint: It's not the curtains...

9:47 a.m.

I think that my fascination for languages may be getting out of control. Takeshi has started to teach me Japanese, and I can say a few phrases, mainly the informal forms of 'good morning', 'good day', 'good night', 'how are you', 'fine', 'do you speak English', and 'thank you'. That's it. He says that my pronounciation is perfect, when I don't mix up the words. =) That's in addition to Cian teaching me Irish, and me trying to improve my French, work on my German, and maintain my Russian. Good golly graciousness!

I am poor now, because I went and took care of my three-month lapse of paying rent. Nice thing about France: they don't charge you for being delinquent on your rent payments. I went to the agency on Wednesday and explained to them that I noticed that rent hadn't been taken out of my account for the last three months. Anyway, they gave me the information that I needed and I went to the bank and had it all taken care of.

Today the US Consulate General came and talked to us regarding Bush's speech. He was interested in hearing our opinions. A fair amount of the students were skeptical; not Fabio, however, who valiantly defended NASA and the US against all real and perceived criticisms. I really enjoyed hearing what he had to say, and it was refreshing that he was so frank and honest with us, not too much of that political sidestepping as one usually finds. Will remarked that he was disappointed with how much skepticism and immediate rejection Bush's speech had met with among fellow students; I know that he did not direct it towards me, but I am one of the people of whom he was speaking because I was quite cynical in yesterday's posting. I did not realize just how much until he said that, and I went back and read it.

While I do hold a fair amount of skepticism regarding Bush's policies with respect to space, given his history of cutting NASA's budget, cancelling flight-ready programs (ahem, X-38), and never even having visited JSC despite living less than four hours away, I am very happy and feel incredibly lucky to be part of NASA right now.

Will brought up a good point, and that is, if we are not excited about his , how can we expect the general non-space-initiated public to be? They look to us to see our reaction and it is imperative that we show our enthusiasm and provide a united front and not look like a bunch of disgruntled and tempermental children who didn't get the exact toy that we wanted. It's not perfect, there's more that could have been said, but considering that we've been floundering for a while, to finally have some direction is a nice change, to say the least.

Another point: I'm still unhappy about the $1 Billion over 5 years (pocket change), but as another student, Benoit said, it is likely only the beginning and if we start to turn our attention seriously towards the projects outlined in Bush's speech, as we gear up, more money may be headed our direction due to raised awareness that we are doing something big.

So, in the respect of its possibilites, yes, I am extremely thrilled about his announcement.

Working for NASA might gain some respect again. ;)

Tonight we are having a 'Hooray for Krista Party' at Will's, Beth's, and Fabio's house (Krista is Nick's fiancee). Here are Will's

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