My Residency in Banff, Alberta, Canada

A yellow School Bus arrived at the Banff centre yesterday morning to take us to Johnson’s Canyon. After a short drive of about 30mins we arrived and ventured out along the trail walk through the canyon. It was fantastic scenery of woodland, gorges and frozen pools (see pics)- a few of us hung back from the group so we could experience the calm. Well worth the trip apart from the disappointment at the end that the coffee shop was closed- had to go without the hot-chocolate I’d been fantasising about.
Got back to campus around 3-ish and spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for my presentation.
Skipped dinner as had to go over to JPL building, where the presentations were going to be held, 45mins early, to check all was working okay. Mine was quite straightforward as it was all on DVD. Was still very nervous though even though I’ve done this tons of times before.
Unfortunately, turned out I was scheduled last as one of the other artists has not yet arrived. As before, all presentations were very good, which made me feel even more nervous. Eventually, the inevitable came and it was my turn. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought and I was able to speak freely (rather than read from notes), which was much better, although I think I spoke probably too quickly due to my nerves, but it meant I kept to time. Phew! Glad that’s over. Actually I had some very nice comments from some of the other artists, who said that they’d really enjoyed my talk, so can’t have been that bad. We went on to the campus bar afterwards for a well deserved drink.