Trip to the mountains and holiday

At 3pm today it will finally be the holidays! We have a week off university and all the school children are off school for La Toussaint (All saints day) which is next Friday (1^st November).

Last weekend I went into the mountains with a group of 7 other people. 6 of whom I had never met before! We had a guide with us and after what felt like a very long journey in a mini bus up very twisty roads, we were all thankful to arrive at our destination! The views were amazing! We walked for a few hours, passing some spectacular views and stopped for some lunch by the side of a little lake. The sun was shining so we had a little siesta there while eating lunch and drinking coffee that our guide had brought! We then moved on and after seeing a lot of ‘eagles’ we walked back down the side of a mountain to the mini bus whilst pretending to be ducks! We found out that what we had seen weren’t eagles at all and were vultures instead! Nevertheless it was still great to see them come so low! I have put some photos at the bottom to try to show some of the views (although I have been informed that my photography isn’t very good, so I apologise!).

Wednesday was the first time that I had slept in whilst being here! I woke up at 7.40 and realised that I should be on my way to university! So after arriving in lectures an hour late (in the break), forgetting my laptop battery and pencil case, I knew it was definitely a good thing to have this holiday coming up!

This evening, my amazing mum is coming to visit me for the weekend! I’m so excited to have a visitor and to be able to show her Grenoble properly. Thankfully I have a phone contract which allows me to phone UK landlines for free so I have been in contact with home a lot – I don’t know what I would have done without it, especially as my internet is very temperamental and so skype doesn’t work very well. But it is still really exciting to have a visitor!

On Monday, Hannah and I are heading to Switzerland to do some travelling and see somewhere different! It’s only two hours on the train to Geneva and so doesn’t take very long at all! We went to try to get some Swiss Francs the other day, only to realise that you can’t just pop into Marks and Spencer’s to the bureau de change like you would at home! We went to one post office who informed us that they didn’t do currency exchange so went up to the other post office and finally, after about half an hour waiting and paying 5 euros, we got our money!

Wine tasting, trips and french stereotypes

Well it’s been a hard week this week. I feel that some lectures I can sit in and feel that my French has improved and I am beginning to understand a lot more. However, in some lectures I feel that I really struggle. I think this is down to the lecturer. I find that it is easier, in general, to understand women’s voices. They tend to be clearer than men's voices.

Yesterday felt like a very French experience! We went to a wine festival in the middle of Grenoble. It was held in Place Victor Hugo. It was free to get in and 7 euros to get a glass which meant you could try any of the wine! Naturally, we paid the 7 euros to get the glass so we could pretend to know what we were doing with the wine testing! After going round a few stalls it was clear that we had no idea what we were doing! It was a lovely afternoon and there was some live music so we sat and listened to a bassoon trio for a bit and then decided to go to a session called initiation à la dégustation in an attempt to learn what we were meant to be doing! After sitting through the session for almost an hour in French, I would by no means say that I was a pro at wine tasting now! I do however know more than I did before!

Tomorrow I am heading up into the mountains on an organised, guided walk! It’s meant to be lovely weather so hopefully I will get a lot of nice pictures! Unfortunately the trip that I was meant to be going on to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc on Sunday is no longer happening as a result of the weather. I really hope that I will get a chance to go at another time!

I don’t understand this weather that is going on though! Last week I was writing about the snow fall and the ski centres opening and this week the temperatures have risen again to almost 20 degrees in the afternoons! Bizarre! How are you supposed to know whether to put winter or summer clothes on in the morning?!

In other news, I thought I would consider some of the French stereotypes that many people have!

French are bad drivers – well this is true in most cases! I have seen cars reversing down roads, cars speeding up towards you while you are crossing the road on a zebra crossing, speeding and definitely impatience whilst waiting at traffic lights!

French wear stripy tops, wear berets and carry baguettes – So far I haven’t seen anyone in this dress! However, many people do go out to get fresh bread each day as the bread here does not last much more than a day before going stale!

French smoke a lot – this is also true in the majority of cases. In each lecture there is a break every hour. During these 10 minutes most people get up to leave the lecture theatre to go outside to have a smoke. If it is raining outside, people gather round the door and smoke, this means that some people invariably end up smoking inside! If you are trying to get somewhere whilst another lecture is having a break, you have to cough and splutter your way through a cloud of smoke!

However, I would like to point out that these are purely stereotypes and it is just a different culture with different rules and regulations.

The French culture is definitely a lot more laid back and relaxed than the British way of life. And whilst in some cases it has driven me to despair about the lack of urgency for things, it is a way of life that the British could definitely learn from.

A change in seasons and the French administration system

What an eventful week it has been! Started off with a trip to Lyon to catch up with some friends from uni! It was a lovely weekend exploring a new city and seeing new sites! Unfortunately we had to come back to reality on Monday and face the French administration system again! Who knew that it was possible for anything else to go wrong?!

We tried to go to see the international coordinator on Monday with a few questions, but of course, she wasn’t there! We went back on Tuesday and waited outside her office while she was talking to another student and finally it was our turn to speak to her! It was then that she dropped the bombshell. The courses that she had originally told us were 6 credits were actually only worth 5. The information was in her big manual all along but it had taken her up until then to look in it to check! I began to add up the number of credits that I would then have at the end of the semester and discovered that it only added up to 29 and not the 30 that we are meant to have. As we are now 4 weeks into the term we knew that it would be impossible to pick up another class. Panic set in! After a phone call to our home university we calmed down! We were told that we can pick up the extra credit next semester and after more emails exchanged, no more paperwork has to be done! Thank goodness!

On another subject; the clouds had been down right over the mountains as it has been a bit rainy this week. Last night the clouds cleared and the mountains appeared. It was beautiful! What had been falling as rain down here had been falling as snow up there and so the mountains have a covering of snow on them! How strange to think that last week I was cycling around the town in 30 degree heat and this week I have got my gloves and scarf out and there is snow about! Next weekend we are going on a trip to Chamonix Mont Blanc. I hope it is a nice day so we can fully make the most of it and take lots of pictures! Fingers crossed!

That’s about it for now! Just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has sent me post! I’m like a small child at Christmas when I go to look in my post box! I am getting round to replying to everyone, I promise!

                                                                 A view of Lyon

 View out of my bedroom window of snow covered mountains

The start of tutorials

Well the end of another week has come, which means another week of classes has successfully been completed! This week saw the start of tutorials which meant an hour and a half sitting in a class of 30 students being terrified!

The tutorials here are assessed on your input to class. Each week there are exercises to complete (which usually involves writing at least one essay) which may or may not be collected by the tutor. Also, there are 3 written exams to complete. The first of these is in two weeks time. We have to write an essay under exam conditions in half an hour. This seems like a task similar to exams in the UK, however, the French style of essay writing is completely different. The essays have to be written in two sections, with two subsections per section. Each main section has to have a specific title which you have to think of within the time limit. Add to this the stress of using a dictionary (which thankfully we are allowed) and you are left with a very stressed and worried ERASMUS student! There are two exams like this and a third one which is three hours long! I have not yet found out how many have to be written in this time, but I’m sure I will find out soon enough! Unlike our other exams, we are treated the same as all the French students. So a lot of studying will have to be done! Our final exams for each subject are done orally. This seems, to me, to be a much better way to do our exams as there is less of a stress on the correct grammar etc. Thankfully though, we still have a bit of time before worrying about them!

On Tuesday we decided to hire bikes to see Grenoble from another perspective. We paid 3 euros to have the bikes for 24 hours and after the initial worry of not knowing where we were going, in addition to not having ridden a bike for a while, we soon got into the swing of things! We were not offered helmets so the prospect of cycling on the roads seemed like a scary task! Sticking as much as we could to quiet roads and cycle paths, we made our way to Parc Paul Mistral which is right next to Stade des Alpes and the Opera House. It was a lovely day and was nice to have a cycle round the park. In an attempt to find the river without going on busy roads, we got quite lost and ended up cycling into a nice area of town that we had never been to before (I probably couldn't get back there now if I tried!) before tackling the centre of town again to take our bikes back to the shop at the station.

This weekend sees the start of our travels as we are heading to Lyon tomorrow!