So it starts...

So I've just arrived in Paris, and I'm sitting in the bar of the Hotel Ibis, trying to psych myself up for going up to my room.

And I'm nervous.

My name is Eoin.

I'm a doctor, I'm Scottish, and I come from the Highlands where I work in the hospital in Inverness.

Only I've signed up to spend a year working in Antarctica with the French Polar Institute (Institute Paul Emile Victoir) for the European Space Agency, to do medical, psychological and physiological research relevant to a mission to Mars.

Which sounds great but when you get down to the nitty gritty - I know very little about the base or what a year at it is going to be like, I hardly speak French ... I could go on - it's a big bite to chew off. Right now I'm feeling like it's a bit too much.

I've just arrived to start a week of training. I'll meet my colleagues tomorrow at ESA's headquarters but tonight I just have to meet my roommate for the week. I'm hungry, smelly, fed up after a full day travelling, and I have no idea how well I'm going to be able to communicate with him.

Well here I go.

Bonne chance...