Hellettä

It is hot here, and in spite of the somewhat indoors-concentrated life of a PhD-student, I am getting brow... as brown as last time in 2006, during summer in Tväreminne.


Sykkeltur til Pointe-au-Pere, the strawberry place was closed, the fish-shop as well when I finally found it... But the view along the shore was great! The whole shore (on the south side, I havent been on the north side...yet) of the Bay of Saint-Laurent is filled up by houses. Imagine a lakeshore in Finland, with a whole lot of cabins. Then add some more in between. And a few more. Then imagine a road going 50m from the shore, and one row of houses and summerhouses crammed in between the shore and road. Another row above the road. Apparently it is handy to live close to the road, so one doesnt have to shovel so much snow in the winter. Having already gotten used to the Norwegian habit of walking along the shoreline, which is "allemansrett", it feels weird to see the privatized pieces of beach under the houses.

Juu, my bike is a bit greasy... So I bought a scrub to clean myself after biking... and my legs are probably cleaner than ever since my mother handed over the responsibility of washing myself.

Heron in the sunset, from the balcony of those houses along the shore, in between Sainte-Luce and Sainte-Flavie. (There is a whole lot of saints in the place-names here...). We were invited for a barbeque to Karine (who is an international student advisor here, and last year had the - not so pleasant, I can imagine - task to feed me with teaspoon the details of which papers would be necessary to come here) and her mothers place. Finally, we get very well along :) A house full of yarn, knitting needles and knitting books. Knitting is a universal language... and luckily they did not yet have the specific book that I brought from Finland. And, for those who are interested, Quebecois way to knit is the same as in South-Europe, moving the yarn instead of the needles.

Yesterday, we had 30 C and bright sunshine (I am happy I didnt know that when we started), and a 60 km bike-trip at the countryside. We went to visit Arnauds friends, Jean-Francois and Dominique (and to confuse a foreigner, Dominique in Quebec is a female name, but in France a male name, so they have both here...) a couple which has a farm inland, in a small village of Saint-Donat. We got a round in the barn to say hi to the rabbits, chickens, gluglu-birds, pigs... and to try the tractor ;) Happy to see the place from where the rabbits in our freezer come from :) Four-five rounds of sunblock-60 during the day, swimming in two small creeks, making face-painting with mud, sweating up the great uphill from Rimouski to inland (think of biking over the bridge from Kvaløya, then add the slope to the top of Tromsøya and a bit more, all in one go) - but how great it was to bike it down in the late afternoon! No photos from this trip, as I wanted to travel as light as possible in the heat...

I have started to work with full speed, and enjoy loosing myself into the world of data-analysis... So we have interesting dinner-discussions on topics like: how to present the results of mixed linear effects, or, what really is the difference between effect size from ANOVA and effect size from lme, or, how to filter out uncertain localities of satellite telemetry data from the good ones.

I addition to biking, working and barbequing, I have entertained myself with yoga in French. It also works as language-bath, maybe loosing some of its original meaning as I have to concentrate not only what I do, but also what the teacher says and what the others do, to be able to follow. But its fun anyway! Then I have explored the "marche public" (="tori" på finsk), where local food producers gather on Saturdays. Better not to go there with too large backpack ;)