Groningen, Day one

Well, today was the first day of the conference, and it was a full day indeed. To begin with, my shower was far too leisurely. It felt good, but it made my breakfast a ltitle bit rushed. Then, I left in plenty of time to have a leisurely walk to the conference--almost an hour away by foot. But about ten minutes in, I realized that I had forgotten both of my travel wallets, and consequently all of my money and credit cards, open to the world in my room. It probably would have been okay but I didn't want to take that chance. So, my fifteen minutes grace period (that would be the leisurely part of the walk) quickly turned into an aerobic sprint. I was the last one to arrive at the class, a few minutes late, but looking a bit like I'd just come from the gym. Not exactly the first impression I had carefully planned out.

Nonetheless, it was a good day. In this workshop, today and tomorrow, there are six of us. The facilitator is from Atlanta, there is one woman from California, another from Sweden, and three gentlemen, one from Paris, another from Dublin (with the MOST delightful accent) and the third from London. They are all lovely people, and the class size is nice for what we are doing.

This is a fast paced course--normally given in four days, but brought down to two. The information is good, some of it a refresher course, much of it new, and all of it presented well. There is some shameless self-promotion going on too, but I can forgive that for the other stuff that I'm getting out of it.

It's cold and rainy though, so my walk back was a little on the wet side. I still wanted that walk though, because I know that if I sit for such a long day, then sleeping is always a problem. I was to meet some colleauges for supper tonight, but I'm having a hard time with the telephone number I was given. Ah well, I will sort that out tomorrow, so I will dine alone tonight. That's okay too...I've had a lot of people time already today!

Tomorrow's plan is to a) take the money, b) start breakfast earlier and c) walk to school again. Sounds perfect to me!