First several weeks in Grenoble....

Bonjour, tout le monde! I am sorry I haven't written in so long. Now that I am actually in classes, my free time has gone down. Plus, I haven't really traveled anywhere super cool yet, but I have over a week in February completely off and I am trying to organize a trip somewhere then. Ok, now to update on what has been going on.

I got placed into my class, B1.3. There are 10 levels for B1 (b1.1-b1.9 and then it goes to B2). My level is lower than I wanted to be, but that's what you get for not taking French for two years. I actually really love my class and my professor is super sweet and funny. I think it's a good thing I am in this class because I feel completely comfortable speaking, which is helping me improve.

My class schedule is actually super nice. Monday, I have class from 8:30-3:30, but I have an hour and half lunch and 20 minute break in that span. Then, Tuesday-Thursday, I have class 10:40am-3:30pm and no class on Friday! It's a pretty sweet schedule. I take the tram to get to and from school. It is only about a 15 minute ride and my house is so ideally placed that there is a stop right around the corner.

I am taking a tonic stretch class on Tuesday afternoons with my friend Nicki and it is super nice. I don't always understand the teacher, but I can just look and follow.

I went to my family's mountain house again this past weekend. This time, my friend Meddie came with us. We went on a super long hike Saturday and it was beautiful. The Alps are really beyond compare. Sunday, we went snowboarding. It was Meddie's first time snowboarding in the Alps and she loved it. I had a great time too and am starting to kinda improve. haha.

This week, the other student living with us is leaving. I am sad, since he is a super nice guy and now I will have no one else to share confused looks with when my host family starts babbling away in super fast French.

I miss all my friends and family, but I am really enjoying the experience of living in another culture. Some days are definitely hard. Being constantly surrounded by French can be overwhelming for sure, especially if you are talking to French people who speak ridiculously fast. But I can tell that my language skills are improving. I will try and write a little more regularly now. Hope all is well with you all!

First days in Grenoble

Bonjour, tout le monde! It's now been a few days since I have arrived in Grenoble. I will pick up where I left off: arriving by train to Grenoble. My host mom, Viviane, and the other student living with them, Chris, picked me up from the train station. I will explain who is part of my host family. First, there is the mom, Viviane. She is the sweetest. She is very patient with me and Chris and she loves to go out and do things with us. Next, there are four kids: two sons and two daughters, all around 18-25ish. Manon is the oldest child and she works at the hospital. Then there is Albain, who is a year older than me. He knows the most English and I talk with him the most. Next, there is Leah, a year younger, and then Rudy, two years after that. I cannot understand a word Rudy says. Haha. He speaks way too fast for me. Just Albain and Rudy live at the apartment. They also have the most adorable little puppy named Apache (like the Native Americans, but it is pronounced ah-pash).

There is also another student living with the family. His name is Chris and he is from London. When he came to France, he knew barely any French. He arrived a few days before me. He is only here for a month. He is super nice and when the family is all talking together super quickly, we just look at each other in shared confusion. :)

My host brother, Albain, immediately took me out to a local pub the night I got there (Thursday) along with Chris. I had a delicious Guiness and I was talking to one of Albain's friends for a while. He didn't speak much English and he was trying to say McDonald's, but I couldn't understand him for at least five minutes. That was definitely a funny moment.

On Friday, I met up with my group again and they took us on a tour of Grenoble. That would have been interesting if I wasn't miserable the whole time. It was really cold and rainy. I felt like I was in a colder Oregon. Blahhh. I hope that is not the weather all the time, but at least I have a great pair of rain boots. Since I was wet and freezing, I am sad to say I didn't absorb much of our tour, so most of Grenoble is a complete mystery to me still.

Anyways, after, we took the tram to the university and they showed us where we would be taking classes. From what I've seen, the public transportation in France is awesome. At least in Paris and Grenoble, there are buses as well as trams and metros (metro is underground and just in Paris). The trams are quite fast. It takes me about 15 minutes to get to my school.

Friday night, I went with my host family to their house in the Alps. I introduced Albain to Angry Birds and he loves that game now. We played the whole two hour ride there.

Saturday, I went snowboarding with Chris and Albain. Albain is an amazing skier  but he stayed with me and Chris the whole time, which was super nice. I just can't believe I snowboarded in the Alps. It was hard day for me because that morning, I fell down the stairs and hit my knee really hard. Both my knee and my tumor hurt all day, which kinda sucked. The Alps are absolutely beautiful, so it was worth it.

The next day, Albain's knees were hurting too so he drove me around the valley. Just on the other side of the mountains is Italy, which is pretty cool. He told me that sometimes when they get a craving for pizza, they just drive into Italy. Anyways, he showed me the last village on the road through the valley before the elevation gets too high and it was very beautiful. We also had Apache with us and so we played with him.

Sunday night, we came back to Grenoble. I just took my placement test today and tomorrow I find out my level for classes. I will write more in a few days about my classes. A bientot!

Last two days in Paris and arriving in Grenoble

Bonjour! Wednesday was probably my busiest day yet. So much walking. 10 miles is not a crazy estimate. First, we started out at Notre Dame. I've always wanted to go here and it did not disappoint. The outside is more detailed than I ever realized. The front entrance depicts the final Judgement and half of the people are in Heaven and the rest are being tormented in Hell. It is really cool.

Inside, the interior is indescribably beautiful. The stained glass windows are beyond compare. We only explored the lower part for about 15 minutes. Then we climbed up to the bell towers. You could see all of Paris below. I am afraid of heights so that was a little difficult, but I still enjoyed getting to see the gargoyles up close. Sadly, they didn't burst into song or witty one-liners, so Disney lied to me. 

After Notre Dame, we went to the Sainte-Chapelle, another famous Cathedral which was beyond beautiful inside. It was built sometime in the 13-14th centuries and they actually took down the stained glass during WWII to protect them in case it got bombed, which happily it didn't. 

We then went to Palais Justice, which is most famous for housing Marie Antoinette during her last few weeks. Although Marie Antoinette's actual cell no longer exists, a reproduction on the spot exists as well as a  little chapel dedicated to her.

Then, we went to the Louvre. The amount of people there is staggering. They are all pretty pushy. We had a guided tour and saw some highlights of the museum, including, of course, the Mona Lisa. It wasn't as small as I expected, but all the people crowding to get a pic was ridiculous. We saw the Venus de Milo too, which was awesome. I definitely need to go again, since I didn't see that many things and the Louvre is huge.

 On top of Notre Dame

Then, my group split up and two friends and me went all the way down the Champs Elysees, through the Tuileries Gardens (we again imitated some statues to much hilarity) and down to the Arc de Triumph. It was quite a walk. We walked up to the top of it and the view was amazing.The only sad part was the random skyscraper that completely ruined the skyline. It seriously needs to go away.

Afterwards, we went to the Musee de Cinema. It was smaller than I expected, but I suspect that we didn't see the whole thing. It was closing in 45 minutes when we got there and we were all tired and hungry, so our cogniitve functions were definitely limited.

We then had a very yummy dinner at a cafe. I had salmon with veggies with pesto and sauce bernaise. I then had what was basically a chocolate lava cake and it was AMAZING! I almost licked my plate.

The next day, we went to the Eiffel Tower and climbed up the first two sections. Then we took the elevator up to the third and last section. I have to admit, my fear of heights was not helpful for looking down from the Eiffel Tower, but as luck would have it (for me), it was completely foggy and you could barely see the ground. My group was sad, but I was kinda happy.

Afterwards, we split up into smaller groups and I went with 3 of my friends to the famous cemetery  Pere Lachaise. It's humongous. There are lots of celebrities buried there, including Isadora Duncan (dancer), Oscar Wilde (English writer), Edith Piaf (famous French singer; if you've watched Inception, she is the singer of the song that plays every time they're supposed to wake up), Frederick Chopin (composer), and Jim Morrison (famous singer).

Morrison's grave was the most difficult to find. It was really hard navigating Pere Lachaise. There were so many beautiful and elaborate graves. Not every path was marked, so finding some of the famous graves was very difficult. We missed them more than once. We actually lost one of group and couldn't find them again. We seriously just had to leave and meet them at our hotel.

Afterwards, we went to the train station and came to Grenoble. We were actually in first class on the train, which was awesome. It was hilarious watching our group struggle with all their baggage. There were some huge bags that were very unwieldy. It made me very proud of my packing.

My host mom picked me up at the train station. I will describe my family and my first full day in Grenoble in a few days. Au revoir!

Days 1 and 2 in Paris...

Bonjour, tout le monde! Yesterday, I arrived in Paris. I was freaking out because my flight from Denver to Iceland was late and I only had an hour layover. Happily, all of the flights waited for my plane so I caught it. My flight from Denver to Iceland was about 7 hours and it was the longest that I have been in a single plane. Plus, I immediately jumped on my Paris flight afterwards, so then I was on a plane for 10 hours completely straight.

When I arrived in Paris, I was lucky enough to meet another girl from my program who was on my flight and we took a taxi together to the hotel. These are my first impressions of Paris thus far. It was cloudy and gloomy when I arrived. I love the classic architecture. Everything is on a small scale here. The cars are tiny and all of the shops are really cute. Parisians all walk really fast and go through crosswalks at all times, even when the cars are going.

Yesterday, we took a boat tour on the Seine and I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. We were lucky enough to catch it when it lit up.

 La Tour Eiffel from the boat

 It was so cold on the boat though. By the end, all of us went inside the boat. For dinner, we went to an American place called Breakfast in America. Rather funny that my first meal in France was in an American diner. :)

Today was very busy. We got up early to go to Versailles. It was absolutely stunning. Every ceiling was breathtaking in its detail. I have always wanted to go to Versailles and it did not disappoint. My favorite room was the dauphin's chamber. I loved the green color on the walls. Something I didn't realize was that a lot of the furniture are reproductions because the furniture was lost in the Revolution, although they are trying to trace the originals and have restored some back to their original places.

The Dauphin's Bedchamber

 My group and I had fun taking pictures imitating the statues. I am sure everyone thought we were crazy, but it was super fun. I will try and post those pics when I get them. It was so freezing out in the grounds. I was sad that the fountains were not running, the view was still amazing. The gardens and grounds of Versailles stretch for miles. Sadly, we didn't have time to go to Le Petit Trianon, which, for those who don't know, is where Marie Antoinette had a whole village set up and she would dress up as a peasant with her friends. It was too far away and there was no time.

Me in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles

Afterwards, we went to the Musee d'Orsay. Getting to see the Degas paintings up close was beyond amazing. I never realized how beautiful the Impressionist paintings are. Seeing them more up close really showed that to me. I actually preferred them a few feet away, because they obviously look a lot sharper from that view. After a while, my group left to go see the Tomb of Napoleon. It was pretty epic and there were several other people buried there, who were important, I am sure, but I didn't know who they were. Haha.

The final resting place of Napoleon Bonaparte

I had a vanilla macaron on the way back to the hotel. It was my first French dessert and it did not disappoint. The vanilla was clearly first-class and it wasn't overly .

We went to dinner and it was about a 3 hour affair. That was a new experience for me. We had four courses. We all had a little turnip soup to start and then I had a smoked herring salad. It was too salty for my taste, which made me sad. I'd never had herring before, but this one was not to my liking. I then had lamb stew for my main course. That was ok. The lamb and potatoes in the stew were great, but the stew part was not a good flavor for me. Finally, in my dessert course, I had a knockout. It was a chocolate ganache cake-like thing and it was utterly amazing. I wish I'd taken a picture of it.

So, my first two days in Paris have been uber busy, but very fun. I will post again in a few days, probably Thursday night, when we get to Grenoble. Au revoir, mes amis!

Leaving for France...

Hello, everyone and welcome to my blog. I will be keeping this as updated as possible while I am on travels. I figured a blog would be an easy way for people to know what I'm up to during my study abroad trip. For those who don't know, I will be living in Grenoble, France for about four months. I have never been out of the country before, not even to Canada or Mexico, so I am beyond thrilled and more than a little nervous.

Here's a little pic I got of Grenoble from google, but soon I will be able to post my own pictures. I am living with a host mom and two of her four kids, who are all around my age. They have an apartment in the city center and then a house in the Alps (!) where they go skiing from, which I posted below. It looks incredible.

I know this will be a huge challenge. I haven't been studying French this past year, so I am trying to review before I leave. Anyways, next time I post, I will be in France!! :) I will post my address later so people can mail me things if they so choose. I will also use skype and facebook a lot, so feel free to contact me that way.