That's it, Monday will start my last week at work. I have lunches planned with every one I like the most at work, a "goodbye party" half planned half improvised, a report almost done, and so  many calls to do for organizing my departure.

Like a conclusion of my stay here, the european cafe I liked so much, because they were nice and they had great soups has closed. Time to leave I guess. I'll miss this place so much.

My outcome on a 6-month internship:

que d'experiences... mais aucun regret. L'autre jour, j'ai croise un employe a la cafeteria. Il me dit, je crois pas qu'on se soit deja rencontre, et on se presente, et il avoue que c'est domage de se recontrer une semaine avant mon depart. Je suis pas vraiment d'accord avec lui: pour moi, "it's what it takes". Je n'ai pas essayer de collectionner les amities, les experiences et les soirees. J'ai pas essaye de rentrer dans cet etat euphorique ou l'on est plus sois meme parce qu'on est loin de chez moi. Je n'ai pas considere cet internship comme une courte experience qu'il fallait vivre a 300% pour pouvoir en profiter un maximum. J'ai vecu tout ca comme ma nouvelle vie, ma nouvelle maison, et, voila, 6 mois, c'est ce que ca prend pour commencer a connaitre les gens, a faire sa place dans l'entreprise.

Mes petites victoires, c'est les amis que je me suis faite en 6 mois. Et mon autre petite victoire,c'est que ce ne sont pas encore  de vrais amis. J'y suis allee tout doucement, petit a petit, comme dans la vraie vie, et j'ai appris des choses magiques, comme qu'il y a une vie sociale apres les etudes, meme si moins grande. Qu'il y a moyen d'aller boire des bieres apres le boulot, de faire des choses le week-end, de partager plus que le loyer avec ses collocs :)

Et puis, la langue qui va si mal mais tellement mieux quand meme. Le travail, ou les gens, presque tous maintenant,me sourient et me disent bonjour! Bref, je quitte cet endroit pas par fuite, pas parce que je m'essoufle, mais avec le sentiment que j'aurais pu tout autant rester, si j'avais pas une autre vie aussi en Suisse. Mais si je dois un jour revenir aux Etats Unis, faites que ce soit cette ville! Parce que je suis vraiment tombee amoureuse de Portland.

Alors l'Amerique, c'est vrai, c'est le mal. Et franchement, j'ai pu voir le mala l'oeuvre plein de fois. Mais disons que de l'interieur, on s'y fait, et on s'y fait plutot bien. Apres,j'ai pas vu tellement de tous ces trucs qui font si peur, comme les extremistes religieux, les loby, la police, toussa toussa, donc je suis pas rassuree a 100%,mais bon, disons que j'ai presque pu vivre 6 mois aux States paisiblement. Ca m'aura juste coute 30'000 dollars ^^

The reason is: I changed my point of view.

When coming back from Switzerland, I almost died. Really. I went to hospital for a few days, and, in the uncertainties of the first days I really thought that's it, it's over. And it is so sad, to think you're gonna die alone, so far from every one you love and you need. And I thought it was cheating, because it was happening one year early, and I wanted to live this year. Was not fair to be over yet.

At the end I haven't die. Instead, I have to struggle with my insurance that is not sure it will insured something at all, and with all the bills that arrive every day. Like 1000 dollars each.

Plus, I'm at the end of my project, which means I have to work a lot. So, if you sum all these cool things, you can imagine how I spend my time: work, bills, treatments.

Now you understand that this is not the kind of happy things you want to live in an exchange program. So, no, I'm not doing methaphysics about how it changed me, how I'm grown and other Dilemne Corneliens (in French in the text). I just want to go back. To cuddle my loved ones. Because, in my head, it's as if I was stuck alone in this hospital room, and I'm waiting for my family to come in and visit me. Well, in two moth this will finally happen, and I'll be able to start my life again.

But, even if the thing I want most is to leave this place, I still know I'll miss a lot of things: my roomates, the places I used to go, the people at work (it took me 5 months to know them, and now I'm leaving). My room and the big parking lots. The chicken patties, the thai restaurant, and the mexican too. My car that detects when it's becoming dark and light on the road lights, and which has 20 different settings for the speed of the windshield wipper. My subscription at Netflix ^^ And marshmallows in my cereals!

Anyway, here are a few photos of a bowling party.

Katleen's Car won't start. The problem began yesterday, with the first snow here at Vancouver. It began being difficult to start, but at the end finally worked. This morning however, I was trying to wake up early, because I was having this big demo day at work, with all the bosses comming by and listening at me, and I heard that Katleen's car was really dead this time.

So I wake up and took her to work with my car. When I returned from work, she had tried jumping hercar with a friend's car, but the car still was dead. As here, people don't like spending money, she decided repairing the car by her own. We went thus three time to a store were they sell car stuff for buying a new battery.

(the first time we came in, she wanted to know what was the problem of her car. They told us: come back with the battery, so we came back. The Second time, they said the battery is ok, but still, you should change it, because it's 7 years old. So we bought a new one. The tird time we came in was to bring back the battery, because they had sold her a battery that wasn't fitting, and we took the other model)

So finally, after two hours of backs and forths, Katleen has a brand new battery in her old car, but the car still doesn't start. "Call a mecanic man" have I been telling her since then.

I'm also adding some photos, not of Katleen and myself fighting with the battery, but old photos of halloween, of the vacuumer (XD) and of the cat. The one with the cat is for my mum, as she asked for it :D

In these photos: Katleen as a sexy witch, the dead guy, Becky, a coworker, Sandra as a gothic nurse, the vacuumer, and the cat.

One more week and I'm back in Switzerland!
This is crazy how finally time flies. Well, I have looots of photos to show you. I have to say, these days I've been watching all this houses with crazy christmas decoration, and, tonight, I said to Kathleen:

Hey, what about going to a walk and taking photos of the houses?

So, we went out there in the cold and took photos of the neighborhood:

Moman, les photos, elles sont clickables, tu peux les agrandire en cliquant dessus. Mais bon, je vous previens, mon appareil photo, c'est de la daube...

I also had a "dry run" of Moday's demo. We have 5 minutes to do a presentation, and altough we were three in the firmware team to do a demo, and that mine was the most boring because I had no nice demo to do, neither am I playing music. But, still, my boss enjoyed my presentation and said it was the best so far^^

Now, that's all for today, but, don't worry, I found the photos of the Okama Park, and lot of other ones, so, I'll keep you posted^^

My mother is dying for an update of my blog. as I could not let her die too long, here are finally news from Vancouver, the other one.

My first roommate, the one that has 3 children at 25 years old, left last month, so I had a few weeks alone with my land lady, and now I have a new roommate. At the beginning I did'nt like her very much, but as we are speaking together it goes better and better. She also was a little messy at the beginning with the kitchen, but now she's ok, so, all is "In Ordnung".

She also came with her own cat, so now, at home, there's "Little Boy"  and "Little Girl", one being a red cat, the other one a really beatiful and haired cat, white, brown and black. "Little Girl" will left us in about one week, as the two of them doesn't go very well along.

My Land Lady left one week for Thanskiving, so I found myself in charge of the red cat, the fishes and the garbage, holding the fort, as Kathleen says. The fish and garbage part is ok. The real problem is the cat. Crazy, crazy cat. Like possessed, or with multiple personnalities. Sometimes he just want cuddles, but other times he's juste whistling and threatening me, like very scary. This night, he decided sleeping in my bed, and I tried so hard keeping him out, but couldn't achieve it, so finally he spent half a night in my bed, and when he started threatening me, I just kicked him out the room. He went upset all night after this :p

I also finally have a picture of Halloween. But you will be disapointed :)

I know. I owe you photos and news about my birthday, halloween, some parties downtown Portland. But I feel sooooo lazy.

So,promise, the photos of Halloween are coming. Once, soon, maybe :) I was as a gothic nurse (Abby from NCIS was my model), and my work team was all kind of doctors , nurses and butchers that were trying to bring deads to life. (Actually the death guy was called as a dead project, my first working joke waouh... was really weird^^) Other people at work had just so amazing costums, and they also tried to decorate their work space, which worked very well, as you'll see in the photos.

My birthday was also a quite nice evening, we just went to a mexicam restaurant in Vancouver and ate chesadillas, burritos and faritas. I think this is my favourite thing about here: the restaurants! Which leads me to today's news:

We had free lunch at noon because there was a presentation from a doctor at work. So we listened to a presentation about nutrition and health while eating our SubWay sandwich, kind of ironic XD At the end it happened that the doctor was trying to do some advertising for its clinic, but anyway, I had my lunch for free, which is the only think that really matters ;)

What else? Had a really bad day today and yesterday, trying to make things work without achieving it, but it's alright because tonight there's free pizza!!!

... You have the feeling I'm only speaking about food? It's not just a feeling ^^

Just a brief note for saying that al goes very well here. Today I eated sooo much, because I baught take-away food from a thai restaurant. And it was delicious but there were too many food for just me :)

Rock (Or I don't know his real name in the serie) died at the end of season 8!!! How terrible!!! hmmm... yes, you get it, I'm watching CSI episodes in the evenings (Les Experts)^^, but speaking about it, I would rather like to spend more time reading and less time watching series. It's just that when I come home I'm too tired to do anything but watching TV on my computer.

Ho, did I tell you how nice my workplace was? Each Wednesday, there's Bagels in the cafeteria for the employees (and for free, of course), and each Friday there's donuts! and sometimes they also offer lunch at noon, or the other day there was like a floral arrangment, but it was made all of fruits and we could eat it!!  There's also another thing so surprizing for me: Here, Halloween is such a big deal, that everyone, even adults, are dressing for this occasion. At work, their planning decorating the whole place, dressing and parents will bring their children to work so they can "trick or treat". So we have very serious team meetings where we discuss about Halloween and what we are planning to do XD

Another think that is amazing here is my roommate son. He's growing soooo faaaast! I mean, he's still spending most of time crying and yelling, but, when I arrived here, he could barely stay on his foots. Now he's running everywhere, and he's almost speaking!

I had a really nice week-end last days. I went to the Portland Art Museum with Alex, where there was a Native Amercians exhibition, and also an exhibition called Wild Beauty, where I saw old photographs of the Columbian River, from 1867 to 1950. Portland Art Museum is a huge Museum, so there were lots of other exhibitions, but in 3h30, we only got time to visit these two exhibitions and also some chinese art. The exhibition on the columbian river was amazing. Imagine than in 1900 the place was not far from inhabited. There was still lot of native inhabitants that were living from fishing in "tippies", and the only man print was these train trails. Then the area grows in first place because of tourism, and then because of salmon industry (if I didn't misunderstand the story). It was also really fascinating to see old pictures of places I have actually visited, as the viewpoints and the Multnomah Falls.

Then we had a lovely evening talking in a Cafe and eating japanese (was sooooo goood :) ). The day after, we decided to go to Trillium Lake, to see Mt Hood more closely. I choose Trillium Lake because all pictures of Mt Hood are taken from this place. This is an example you can find on Google:

So we went there and the view on Mt Hood was almost so pretty (I actually take the camera, but I ran out of bateries, so I'm waiting for Alex photos ^^). So, we did a loop around the Lake and then came back to Vancouver for eating a Pizza.

Apart from this, all goes pretty good at work. I'll have to make a Demo for my work in a very formal meeting, in December, so I'm a little anxious, but it will be really worth doing it. And also, I'm returning to Switzerland for Christmas! 

I discovered recently that there were a ot of places to go in Oregon, and in particular there's a lot of falls, volcans and beaches in the area. So, this Saturday we went to the Multnomah Falls, which are the second highest falls in north America. At the beginning it was all so touristic, but then we continued climbing along the river and it was becoming really nice and wild. I felt a little disapointed when we had to come back to the car.

Here are some photos of the day. On the way returning to Vancouver, we also took a little montain road and stopped to a view point take some photos. It was really a good day, back to the nature again, and just fancing the forest and the falls. Actually, I had to admit that for me climbing on the top of the falls was just sooo hard. I was so shy to see little boys and girls 4 years old coming back from the top, and I, just out of breath, sweating and cheeks red trying to keep good figure in the climbing. But at the end it was really worth it, and I finally continued like three hours more!

By the way, at the end we went and ate at a mexicam restaurant (it was really delicious), and also went for some shopping at Borders, which is a really nice library. Lots and lots of book,s and of course I had to buy 3 :p

I'm a little scared of becoming quite nostalgic thosedays. I'm thinking about my family, friends and boyfriend, and makes me something sad. But the website of the organization who sent me here says it's normal and it will be better after a few days :)

Hopefully I have nice acquaintances here. A Swiss co-workers takes me out very often. We go and drink some beer after work (Don't worry, he's the one who drinks the beer, most of the times I take an Ice Tea^^). He shows me nices places at Vancouver and Portland.

By the way, I went for the first time in Portland this weekend, 'cauz I had to buy a coat and some other clothes, and I just loved the city. It's very nice, with lots of buildings "haut standing" and cafes. I will return there as often as possible, and hope once it will be sunny enough for taking nice pictures.

One of my co-workers (my "mentor", actually) lives in Portland for 9 years, and he's sending to me places to go and things that are worth doing in the city. He's the man who brought me some real bread to work, and a croissant!! And today, he gave me a logitech stereo system, so from tomorrow I will have a real alarm clock that wakes me up with the radio!!

There's also another guy at works that is coming from EPFL and is spanish but can also speak french XD So I think he has a lot of work those days but maybe we could visit some places in the Vancouver area.

Johnny: I have bought a GPS! I'm totally equiped now! And I also tested the Mac Donald, the French fries are really better than in Switzerland or France. But I can't remember the price, sorry...