I have to say I told you so. I told you I fail at keeping journals and thus am also failing at updating this blog AND I bet it's just going to get worse as the semester wears on. Either way, here I am again backtracking on the last week or more.
I spent most of last week settling in to life in Grenoble after all the random travelling thus far. Grocery shopping, getting internet at home, doing laundry and catching up on the things I hadn't accomplished during the first week which Jess and I spent in Spain instead. We also had more orientation sessions to attend and had to get our supplies for school. Unfortunately I learned that France does not like to use regular, lined, looseleaf paper. Nope. Instead, they use some weird graph paper type thing and their paper sizes and binders are all longer than ours in Canada. I accepted this eventually and went searching for a clipboard to carry notes back and forth to school. Nope. Couldn't find one of those either. An agenda with a monthly calendar also? Nope. And yes, randomly, peanut butter? Nope again.
Anyways, it was clearly a discovering week, discovering all the things France doesn't have that made me miss Canada just a little bit more. In the end the week was not a bust as we spent Wednesday (Sept 15) on a team building adventure where we hiked up the the Bastille on the mountain and got to play a variety of sports, eat baguettes and pain au chocolat, explore tunnels and just enjoy the 26 degrees it was that afternoon.
Let me tell you that the French like to party. It all started Wednesday evening. Yes, school was in session for some people but there was a party in one of the residences for the Mexican Independence Day from 9pm til oh, 5am...however, I decided to be lame and hit the hay that night since the sun at the team building event about drained my energy. Probably the best plan since you couldn't move within the room and I heard the police ended up at the residence to break it up anyways.
Then came Thursday. Jess and I decided we needed to integrate ourselves more with all the other students at GEM so we signed up for the Bureau des Estudiants' (BDE - Student Union type thing) Integration Weekend or Week End de Integration (WEI) as the French would say. We were to leave for an unknown location in the south of France, on the Mediterranean, on Friday at 1:30am in the morning. Well I figured I'd sleep til then, get up and catch the bus and fall asleep again til we got there in the morning. Boy was I wrong. We soon found out we were supposed to meet at 7:30 for dinner and then at 10:30pm for the pre-bus party at someone's apartment. Let's just say everyone was pretty drunk by the time it was 1:30 and time for us to board the bus. Did the party stop? Hell no, this is France. And it continued all the way until 6am, about an hour before we arrived and the point when everyone decided it was finally time to put down the microphones and sleep for a bit.
I eventually found out we ended up in Canet du Plage, France which was very near to the border of Spain. Needless to say the weekend was awesome even though it proceeded to rain most of the time. Some of the activities included hanging at the beach, paintball, bumper cars, human slingshot, mini rodeo, foam party, random drink parties, inflatable slip n slide, etc. Some sleep was had and also a lot of fun. The 6 hour drive took us home Sunday afternoon and I prepared to start classes for the semester on Monday morning! Yup...that's the boring part of this all. Haha.
The only thing about Integration Weekend that I would mention to future students of GEM is that it seemed to be mostly French students who went. As a result, not much "integration" actually happens unless you are willing walk up to a random stranger and strike up a conversation in French. They do appreciate the effort though but sometimes the conversations are short-lived.
So...I'm headed off to Switzerland tomorrow with Jess to meet up with a friend and head to Oktoberfest but when I get back I'll share a bit of my first week of school experiences as well as some of this upcoming trip.
PS- I just sucked it up and bought a replacement camera today so there should be more pictures to come on Facebook. And one of these days I'll add some to the blog so your eyes don't start to cross from all the reading.
A la prochaine (no I can't figure out accents either on here for the French words)!
Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
First Week
First? Yes, I'm about through my first full week in Grenoble since Jess and I returned from Spain last Wednesday. I'm going to try and catch up with this blog so I can be up-to-date on the information I post for you and the events will actually be current.
Well, once we got back from our Spanish gallivanting I really felt the need to relax, get established and start feeling settled in my apartment and in Grenoble. I still didn't know where anything was or feel confident in taking the tram so I had a definite need to discover such things before school started. At this point I can say I have been mostly successful and school still doesn't start until next Monday (Sept 20th).
First things first was food. I had gotten so sick of consistently eating out at restaurants and trying to find something that was decent priced, which proved to be more challenging than expected. Let me tell you that it is NOT a good plan to shop for all your apartment basics plus a full fridge of food all at once. Yes, I did think it was a task I could conquor and was later proven wrong. Friday afternoon Jess and I ventured out to Casino Geant (kind of like a Superstore). I later discovered this was prob
ably the most expensive place to buy groceries but it was nice to be able to get everything at once and not have to search through numerous stores. Needless to say I piled my full shopping cart of groceries into 3 of those enviro-savvy bags (since they don't give you plastic ones). When you have laundry detergent, milk, dish soap, glass jars plus a jumbo pack of toilet paper this becomes a bigger load than you might think. Finally we waddled outside with our bags and realized it was pouring rain. Getting soaked was really not my concern since I was more worried about how I was going to carry my bags from the tram to my house (5 min walk). In the end two French, 19 year olds actually took pity on me, when I had only managed to walk 1/2 block in 5 min, and helped me all the way to my apartment and up the 4 flights of stairs. Thank you humanity! I have some faith in you again.
Over the course of the next few days I attended orientation presentations for school for a couple hours each day. Since I decided to relax a bit and not skip town for the second weekend in a row I ended up with a lot more free time. Some of that was spent doing more errands and some spent trying to get rid of a sore throat but I had a definite highlight. Saturday (Sept 11) the Bureau des Sports (Sports Club at school) had free tickets to see the FC Grenoble rugby team play right in town! I LOVE that they speak of rugby as casually and as often as we do in Canada about hockey or football. Tickets are cheap and games are easy to find. One of the presenters today even used a rugby analogy in class....that NEVER happens at the U of A. I am a happy camper.
Other than that I discovered that some movie theatres in Grenoble have smaller screens than there are in some Edmontonians houses and there is very little leg room while only 30 people or so fit in the theatre.
In a sense I'm anxious for school to start but I guess thats mostly to know when my exams and assignments are due so I can get planning my weekend trips. The task right now is to try and find accomadation in Munich for Oktoberfest. Kind of had to wait until I had my school schedule just to make sure I could manage the trip but now everything is booked or $200 a night or more.
Note: If you notice a lack of photos posted on my Facebook it's because my waterbottled flipped and opened in my purse on my way to the rugby game...and my camera did not survive. I can turn it on and have access to my images and can take a few but many of the functions don't work properly. I'm hoping to find a way to fix it or else I'll have to suck it up and buy another (even though they're more expensive here than in Canada) because I won't last another 14 weeks without one.
Hope you all are enjoying at least some of my ramblings!
Well, once we got back from our Spanish gallivanting I really felt the need to relax, get established and start feeling settled in my apartment and in Grenoble. I still didn't know where anything was or feel confident in taking the tram so I had a definite need to discover such things before school started. At this point I can say I have been mostly successful and school still doesn't start until next Monday (Sept 20th).
First things first was food. I had gotten so sick of consistently eating out at restaurants and trying to find something that was decent priced, which proved to be more challenging than expected. Let me tell you that it is NOT a good plan to shop for all your apartment basics plus a full fridge of food all at once. Yes, I did think it was a task I could conquor and was later proven wrong. Friday afternoon Jess and I ventured out to Casino Geant (kind of like a Superstore). I later discovered this was prob
ably the most expensive place to buy groceries but it was nice to be able to get everything at once and not have to search through numerous stores. Needless to say I piled my full shopping cart of groceries into 3 of those enviro-savvy bags (since they don't give you plastic ones). When you have laundry detergent, milk, dish soap, glass jars plus a jumbo pack of toilet paper this becomes a bigger load than you might think. Finally we waddled outside with our bags and realized it was pouring rain. Getting soaked was really not my concern since I was more worried about how I was going to carry my bags from the tram to my house (5 min walk). In the end two French, 19 year olds actually took pity on me, when I had only managed to walk 1/2 block in 5 min, and helped me all the way to my apartment and up the 4 flights of stairs. Thank you humanity! I have some faith in you again.Over the course of the next few days I attended orientation presentations for school for a couple hours each day. Since I decided to relax a bit and not skip town for the second weekend in a row I ended up with a lot more free time. Some of that was spent doing more errands and some spent trying to get rid of a sore throat but I had a definite highlight. Saturday (Sept 11) the Bureau des Sports (Sports Club at school) had free tickets to see the FC Grenoble rugby team play right in town! I LOVE that they speak of rugby as casually and as often as we do in Canada about hockey or football. Tickets are cheap and games are easy to find. One of the presenters today even used a rugby analogy in class....that NEVER happens at the U of A. I am a happy camper.
Other than that I discovered that some movie theatres in Grenoble have smaller screens than there are in some Edmontonians houses and there is very little leg room while only 30 people or so fit in the theatre.
In a sense I'm anxious for school to start but I guess thats mostly to know when my exams and assignments are due so I can get planning my weekend trips. The task right now is to try and find accomadation in Munich for Oktoberfest. Kind of had to wait until I had my school schedule just to make sure I could manage the trip but now everything is booked or $200 a night or more.
Note: If you notice a lack of photos posted on my Facebook it's because my waterbottled flipped and opened in my purse on my way to the rugby game...and my camera did not survive. I can turn it on and have access to my images and can take a few but many of the functions don't work properly. I'm hoping to find a way to fix it or else I'll have to suck it up and buy another (even though they're more expensive here than in Canada) because I won't last another 14 weeks without one.
Hope you all are enjoying at least some of my ramblings!
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Viaje
Yes...as I am delayed in writing these blogs as of late it has been 4 days since I arrived home from my vacation in Spain or "viaje en Espana" as the Spanish would say. However, I am still determined to write about the trip it will just be less of a detailed/play-by-play account and more of a summary of the highlights.
As many of you know, I am the type who likes to plan things out and know what I'm getting into before I get into it. This was not really that sort of a trip, although I did my best to make it be.
Like I said in my previous post, Jess and I spent the Wednesday (Sept 1) planning our trip to Spain, since Egypt was now out of the question). We were dealing with crappy internet connection at school so it was really challenging to book hostels and check flights. In the end, by 8pm, we managed to sort it all out and had to get straight on packing since we were to leave at 6:45am the next morning!
We arrived in Barcelona first and it was awesome! After staying for 3 nights, and 4 full days, here are some of the highlights:
La Rambla
A street running from Plaza Catalunya to the marina that is full of buskers (sometimes doing strange things), restaurants, and souvenir shops. Needless to say it is a tourist trap but an interesting promenade none the less.
Tapas
A typical Spanish event, I say event because it can start as late as 10 or 11pm and last for hours. You go to a restaurant and pick all different types of dishes to try (more of an assortment of appetizers) along with your sangria, beer or wine. Jess and I opted to try this experience and although it led to a hefty bill, it was a lot of fun as we especially enjoyed the sangria and extra long (3 foot) straws that accompanied.
The Beach
We clearly cou
ld not go to Barcelona and not spend at least a couple afternoons at the beach on the Mediterranean Sea. Much to my surprise the beach was not like those in Nice, France where the "sand" is actually all pebbles. I was quite pleased that is was real sand and not a painful experience to get into the water as it was in Nice. We enjoyed the sun immensely (although it drained our energy) and I have to say our homemade glasses for the 1L cartons of sangria we purchased were the highlight of our trips to the Beach.
Passeig de Gracia
The main avenue running down the centre of Barcelona. It reminded me much of Les Champs d'Elysees in France with the boutiques, restaurants and stores like Hugo Boss, Burberry, Chanel, Yves St.Laurent, etc. It was always bustling with people and activity with some hidden architectural gems along the way. Personally, I was entralled by all of the colonial architechture in Barcelona. The only frustration was that although I can speak some Spanish, Barcelona was a city in the Catalunya region and most people spoke Catalan rather than Spanish.
Familia Sagrada
Considered the 3rd cathedral of Barcelona and a symbolic landmark, la Familia Sagrada started construction in 1882 and isn't supposed to be completed until 2025. It is one of Gaudi's most recognized, and admired, pieces of architecture, and it was amazing to see the inspiration he drew from the shapes, movement and characteristics of nature. It really was incredible and would certainly stand out among one of the top cathedrals I've seen from around the world.
Well, I guess I should space these out a bit so you guys get a break from my rambling so I'll share some stories from Madrid in the next post.
As many of you know, I am the type who likes to plan things out and know what I'm getting into before I get into it. This was not really that sort of a trip, although I did my best to make it be.
Like I said in my previous post, Jess and I spent the Wednesday (Sept 1) planning our trip to Spain, since Egypt was now out of the question). We were dealing with crappy internet connection at school so it was really challenging to book hostels and check flights. In the end, by 8pm, we managed to sort it all out and had to get straight on packing since we were to leave at 6:45am the next morning!
We arrived in Barcelona first and it was awesome! After staying for 3 nights, and 4 full days, here are some of the highlights:
La Rambla
A street running from Plaza Catalunya to the marina that is full of buskers (sometimes doing strange things), restaurants, and souvenir shops. Needless to say it is a tourist trap but an interesting promenade none the less.
Tapas
A typical Spanish event, I say event because it can start as late as 10 or 11pm and last for hours. You go to a restaurant and pick all different types of dishes to try (more of an assortment of appetizers) along with your sangria, beer or wine. Jess and I opted to try this experience and although it led to a hefty bill, it was a lot of fun as we especially enjoyed the sangria and extra long (3 foot) straws that accompanied.
The Beach
We clearly cou
ld not go to Barcelona and not spend at least a couple afternoons at the beach on the Mediterranean Sea. Much to my surprise the beach was not like those in Nice, France where the "sand" is actually all pebbles. I was quite pleased that is was real sand and not a painful experience to get into the water as it was in Nice. We enjoyed the sun immensely (although it drained our energy) and I have to say our homemade glasses for the 1L cartons of sangria we purchased were the highlight of our trips to the Beach.Passeig de Gracia
The main avenue running down the centre of Barcelona. It reminded me much of Les Champs d'Elysees in France with the boutiques, restaurants and stores like Hugo Boss, Burberry, Chanel, Yves St.Laurent, etc. It was always bustling with people and activity with some hidden architectural gems along the way. Personally, I was entralled by all of the colonial architechture in Barcelona. The only frustration was that although I can speak some Spanish, Barcelona was a city in the Catalunya region and most people spoke Catalan rather than Spanish.
Familia Sagrada
Considered the 3rd cathedral of Barcelona and a symbolic landmark, la Familia Sagrada started construction in 1882 and isn't supposed to be completed until 2025. It is one of Gaudi's most recognized, and admired, pieces of architecture, and it was amazing to see the inspiration he drew from the shapes, movement and characteristics of nature. It really was incredible and would certainly stand out among one of the top cathedrals I've seen from around the world.
Well, I guess I should space these out a bit so you guys get a break from my rambling so I'll share some stories from Madrid in the next post.
Ciao amigos!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Au Revoir
So I'm intending for it not to be this long between posts while I'm in France because otherwise you will only see 4 or 5 up here. I just haven't had much to write about lately. My life has been going on as usual, however I have spent the last month ridiculously busy trying to see all my friends before I leave. In addition to those extra plans I am running errands and had added numerous items on my to-do list of things to get done before I leave. Combined, those things have made for an insanely busy, and pricey, August.
I woke up this Sunday and reality hit me hard for a moment. I had just been crazy excited all the way to this point and it finally hit me that I will be across the globe, away from my friends and family, the conveniences I'm used to, my car and English...until Christmas. It didn't scare me or make me less excited but it definitely created a moment of apprehension. After that I kinda stopped counting down the days until I leave since I looked at my to-do lists and the number of days and sat wondering how the hell I was to get everything done...especially since I work my full time job during the day until Friday the 27th!
Thankfully, my lists are finally getting shorter and I'm starting to get excited again.
I can't wait to:
1) Find an apartment and make it my home
2) Explore my new locale that is Grenoble
3) Live in the mountains!
4) Live somewhere where the average December temperature is 5 above
5) Travel to other countries on the weekend
6) Pay 3 Euros for a bottle of wine
7) Plan all my trips once I get my school schedule (hopefully including Egypt, Oktoberfest and, Spain and Switzerland...at least)
8) Live in Europe
9) Become fluent in French again
10) Enjoy the fresh pastries and cheese that France is so well-known for
Things I'll miss (some already mentioned):
1) My friends
2) My family
3) My car
4) My own bed
5) My full closet selection
6) Having an income
7) My cell phone and being able to text people without an international fee
8) Using Canadian Dollars and not having to constantly convert currencies in my head
9) Being fully understood in English
10) Smoke free restaurants and bars
As for my next blog, I leave way too early on Sunday morning so I won't be writing again until my feet are on French soil.
Au revoir mes amis!
I woke up this Sunday and reality hit me hard for a moment. I had just been crazy excited all the way to this point and it finally hit me that I will be across the globe, away from my friends and family, the conveniences I'm used to, my car and English...until Christmas. It didn't scare me or make me less excited but it definitely created a moment of apprehension. After that I kinda stopped counting down the days until I leave since I looked at my to-do lists and the number of days and sat wondering how the hell I was to get everything done...especially since I work my full time job during the day until Friday the 27th!
Thankfully, my lists are finally getting shorter and I'm starting to get excited again.
I can't wait to:
1) Find an apartment and make it my home
2) Explore my new locale that is Grenoble
3) Live in the mountains!
4) Live somewhere where the average December temperature is 5 above
5) Travel to other countries on the weekend
6) Pay 3 Euros for a bottle of wine
7) Plan all my trips once I get my school schedule (hopefully including Egypt, Oktoberfest and, Spain and Switzerland...at least)
8) Live in Europe
9) Become fluent in French again
10) Enjoy the fresh pastries and cheese that France is so well-known for
Things I'll miss (some already mentioned):
1) My friends
2) My family
3) My car
4) My own bed
5) My full closet selection
6) Having an income
7) My cell phone and being able to text people without an international fee
8) Using Canadian Dollars and not having to constantly convert currencies in my head
9) Being fully understood in English
10) Smoke free restaurants and bars
As for my next blog, I leave way too early on Sunday morning so I won't be writing again until my feet are on French soil.
Au revoir mes amis!
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