Switzerland

AND I'm back.

Holy smokes, what a week. Well....weekend mostly.

It started Thursday afternoon as Jess and I were finishing up International Marketing class. We had our backpacks packed and everything ready to go for our long weekend in Switzerland/Germany. We were enjoying break and talking to others about our upcoming trip when someone blurts out, "Don't you know the French transit is on strike again today?" Needless to say, NO, we did not know that. Its never written anywhere when these days are going to happen yet somehow, other people are in the know and I am not. We decided to check the train anyways at 1:30pm and no, it was no longer scheduled. Here we go again I thought...

Luckily the busses were still running to the Geneve (Geneva to English speaking people) airport so we paid our extra $50 for the inconvenience and hopped on that one leaving only 30 minutes later. Unfortunately that meant missing our planned train connection. Thank goodness for flexible tickets because it let us just hop on the next train from Geneve to Zurich with the same ticket we had previously purchased. From there it was Zurich to Zug where we met up with Marc, a friend of mine who lives in Switzerland but had come to work in Canada for the last year or two (where we met).

Although we arrived in Switzerland at night it was already amazing. We had dinner on a patio of an Italian restaurant right off the Lake of Zug and then headed to Lucerne to a lounge called "Suite" on the roof of a hotel. Here we experienced a breathtaking view of the mountains, the Lake of Lucerne and all the city lights. Luckily, we planned to come back Monday for more exploring, after our weekend in Germany.

The drive through Switzerland (and even 20 minutes in Austria) was incredible. It was a marvellous 25 degrees, although we were in a car, and the mountains were looking glorious while the lakes reflected the clear blue of the sky. The stereotypical green pastures, with cows everywhere, was exactly how I pictured. I decided this would be the place to paraglide if I get the chance to go back. We even drove past the country of Liechtenstein during our drive!

For ease of reading I'll write about Oktoberfest in the next post. We arrived home from Germany Sunday (Sept 26) evening, enjoyed a warm meal in the midst of crappy weather and headed to bed. Marc had to work Monday so Jess and I headed by train to explore Lucerne. we wandered around, marvelled at the view, climbed up some of the towers, crossed the famous Chapel bridge and munched on some Swiss goodies. Yes, there was some shopping in there too.

After a far to early start on Tuesday morning Jess and I finally made it back in Grenoble at 12:45pm for a class that started at 1:15. And so started another week of classes.

Party Time

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)!

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!