This week is la “Semaine du Developpment Durable à l’X”, or Sustainability Week at Polytechnique. The sustainability club planned a bunch of activities throughout the week, including creating a “relaxation lounge” in the Grand Hall with a bunch of plants and cushions to sit on as well as nature movies projected in the background. It’s quite intricate, but also very peaceful.

Plants + Nature Movie
Plants + Nature Movie

They serve mint tea all day and people come by just to hang out and work, so I spent my Tuesday afternoon drinking tea and doing research on petroleum platforms (Let’s be honest, I wrote some blog posts and surfed the internet after about 20 minutes. But at least I tried to be productive).

"Working"
“Working”

I bought a little white flowery plant to keep in my room, and I’m pretty excited about it.  It has a good chance of dying before I leave, but I’m going to try really hard.

plant

The sustainability club also prepared a dinner for students with ingredients from Polytechnique’s garden on Monday night, which was apparently delicious but I didn’t get to go. You see, we had to reserve our places ahead of time by filling out a Google form, which I did, but when I got there on Monday night my name wasn’t on the list. I found out later that I had accidently switched my first and last names on the form, which is why they couldn’t find “Lopez” on the list. Freakin France and their backwardness. At least I got the date right and didn’t try to show up sometime in June (because it was 06/10/2014).