EE-KAY-UH

And I'm back. Yes, I might be posting one after another today and tomorrow just to catch you all up. Don't worry, you'll have less and less to read as time goes on.

My second day in Grenoble started with an early morning wake up to meet my landlord at the school and sign my lease (yes, it was in French, and yes, I understood almost all of it). He took me and my luggage to MY apartment** to get settled in but realized he had left his key at his house, up a mountain. Jess and Kathi (another student from Germany) met up with me as I waited for my landlord and we managed to stumble across a patisserie for lunch. Once I got my luggage inside we decided to head downtown to “centre-ville” to take care of some things and look into heading to Egypt for the next week (since international orientation doesn’t start until September 9).

**In actuality I am living in Fontaine, France. Its basically right across one of the rivers that runs through Grenoble and feels just like a different neighborhood rather than a different town. Really it's so close that it still only takes me 15 mintues to walk to Grenoble Ecole de Management/school/GEM.

Once downtown, the girls and I started with getting cell phones, so we could be connected to the real world again, and stopped at the bank (LCL) to confirm my housing insurance (1 Euro per year for students) by providing my new address. Might I add this was the second time we had been to the bank since they all close, and at random times, for lunch. This isn’t just banks but stores and restaurants as well. Jess and I were disappointed to find out from the travel agents that tours to Egypt only leave Lyon (the main airport for us that is actually situated almost an hour away) on Sundays and Mondays which would mean we wouldn’t get back in time for school orientation. Thus, Egypt became a NO GO and I was thoroughly dissapointed.

After buying a few things from a drug store (Schlekers) we hopped on a tram to IKEA, which I discovered is pronounced EE-KAY-UH and if you don’t say it that way then the French will have no idea what you are talking about. We got a ride from the metro to IKEA by some random lady we had asked for directions whose motivation seemed to be that maybe we would then believe that “the French are sympatic (ie. the French are nice people)." The IKEA trip left us with heavy bags of dishes, pillows, sheets and floor mats and a sad Dania who discovered that they only serve Swedish meatballs for dinner on Thursdays and Fridays. This has been noted for next time we make a trip to IKEA.

Well, after IKEA we were hungry so of course we decided it was a good idea to stop at the Géant Casino(a superstore/Wal-Mart type thing) for some food for dinner…WITH our IKEA bags. We were wrong. This trip was followed by much complaining, hunger and impatience as we worked out our shoulders and biceps like never before whilst carrying our massive and heavy bags all the way home. In the end Jess and I arrived at my new apartment and enjoyed a meal of Swedish meatballs, salad, fruit and a fresh baguette.

Arrival

Alright so I have now stopped to breathe long enough so write a blog post after arrival. Because I said I would love future exchange students to be able to take advantage of my blog before they head to Grenoble, I will make the next few posts pretty detailed (with sometimes boring information) that would be useful for others who visit/come to live in this town. As well, I will be posting for the past week so there will be some back-tracking involved.

It has been a ridiculous first week in France so far. Many of you have been updated by my Facebook statuses or have emailed me so thank you for that. It's always nice to stay in touch with eveyrthing going on in your lives as well.

For future reference, if I haven't already mentioned, I am flying to Grenoble with Jessica Steingard, another student from the U of A Faculty of Business. We have spent a lot of time together preparing for the trip and will be traveling together in Europe I'm sure. You can check out her blog as well if you're interested.

My trip to Grenoble, France began with a 3AM wakeup call on Sunday (August 29) morning after only heading to bed at midnight. The flights were fine and there was of course a lack of sleep, some of which was made up for with my 2 hour nap, on the floor of the Toronto airport, in the middle of the afternoon. The craziness began when our flight from Toronto to Frankfurt landed a little bit late and then they didn’t let people off the plane for a good 20 minutes. This would have been fine except for the fact that we really only had an hour and a half layover, which was now reduced to one hour. Luckily we already knew that we didn’t have to collect our bag and they were going straight to Lyon but that didn’t stop the insanity. We followed all the people to the “connecting flight” area which then became a “passport control” area…ie. customs. The line up was ridiculous so I knew from immediately we weren’t going to make our flight if we waited through the whole thing. I asked one security person for advice and they pointed me to the info booth who then pointed me to the customs officer who then pointed me to the customs officer in the different line up who then said it was up to me to ask the people in the front of the line if we could get in front of them. Well, luckily at least one person could understand some English, and passed the message onto the others who let us through. Home free…we thought.

Well then we scrambled along and arrived at security and then proceeded through a similar process as there was of course, another long line. Jess and I then found out we were in the wrong terminal. Well in the Edmonton airport this is not a big deal, however, Frankfurt was a different story and we hauled our butts down some stairs, through the terminals, up an elevator and made it to the gate after everyone had already boarded. Luckily we still made it our flight and landed in Lyon on Monday (August 30) morning like planned.

We had some difficulty finding the school once we arrived as the roads turn unexpectedly and the train station seemed a little convoluted for us who are not used to taking the trains on a regular basis. After ditching our luggage in a room at the school we met the ALOHA team (welcome desk for international students). They helped me set up a bank account, get housing insurance and then started helping me search for an apartment. I could barely keep my eyes open and hadn’t had much to eat but I made it through the day. By the end of my first day I had looked at 4 apartments/studios and already informed my landlord that I wanted to sign a contract for his place, although this couldn’t get done until the Tuesday morning. I’m happy I had pre-arranged temporary housing with a student from ALOHA for that night but they weren’t very organized in that aspect and I didn't know where I was sleeping until 10PM. In the end it worked out and I finally got a warm shower and a pretty decent sleep…after a 4 Cheese Gnocchi dish and half a bottle of red wine. There was so much rich cheese on that dish that I may have to recuperate and go sans-fromage for the next few days. I really never thought I could say there might be too much cheese in a dish.

Whew, what a trip and that was only the FIRST DAY!