Leap Day!

Well everyone, I like to refer to this as my free extra day in France. Way back before I left the US I realized that I would get to spend leap day in France, and I thought that that was pretty cool. Even cooler, I actually had a library book due today so it was stamped with Fabruary 29th. Nice.

However, I really just wanted to let you know that yesterday, the 28th of February, was the day I officially received my stipend money from the Université de Savoie. That is two months I have been at this school's location and they only just now got around to finally paying me. This caused a huge problem because I had an automated payment set up with the internet company, but because the university had never paid me that payment got rejected and consequently the bank charged me 20E and they did this a second time (so I was minus 40E) and this all happened in a matter of days during my school's vacation so I no one at the university was responding to my e-mails and I didn't fully understand what was going on because the bank was communication with me BY MAIL! (not anything efficient, the mail) And as a side note, they sent their notifications in these high-security sealed-up envelope-letters (where the envelope and letter are a single entity) and you have to fold in a million places to get the letter open, and the first one that I received took me at least 5 minutes to figure out so that I could read the letter. At one point I was actually fairly certain there was no letter to read because I was having such a difficult time finding it! But anyway back on topic. The slow French bureaucracy caused me a problem with my bank, and after the vacation I went there to talk with bank and they were really understanding and dropped all the charges. But I was still in a really bad mood. I cannot believe that my university said that I would have my stipend by the beginning of the month and it got delivered to me on the 28th of February.

On a brighter topic, I did just find out that my mom will be able to visit me AGAIN in France this semester, and she will be coming out during the April vacation period. David and I are super excited and we are in the process of planning a little excursion in addition to some hikes around the Chambéry area. This is a wonderful surprise for the two of us, and we are really looking forward to our next vacation!

Also I feel like I have finally got into a schedule with my classes this semester, and I have also really enjoyed some of my business-related classes to the point where I think I understand better what career I would like to have in the future. I really like the idea of working for a marketing research firm that is hired by a company (or situated within a large company) which studies markets to help with successful product introduction of amelioration of the company's "bottom line". Anyway, I have lots of classes more or less on that subject this semester and I find them very interesting.

Well I do not have anything else too exciting to share today, but since it is a "normal" day, I will leave you with a picture of the sunset that I took yesterday... It is just gorgeous here in Chambéry. (and PS it was about 60 degrees outside today!)

Our Trip to Saint Sulpice

David and I did another bike ride today, to visit the town of Saint Sulpice where after we followed one of our marked trails and hiked for about 3 hours. I'll let the photos below do most of the story-telling, but there is one peculiarity that I would like to let you know about. So the bike ride to get to the hike "start point" (Saint Sulpice) was almost 10 km away, not too big of a distance. Actually David and I chose the hike because it seemed like it would be a little more relaxed. What we forgot to take into account was the massive elevation change in such a short distance. We climbed more than 2000 feet, meaning that we averaged an incline of 3 inches a meter during our ascent. And that is especially impressive because the parts in Chambéry were more-or-less flat and there were some portions of our mountain trek that were even downhill. Therefore we ended up walking our bikes almost the entire way up the mountainside to reach our hiking spot. This took us a little over an hour and a half. Then we hiked 3 hours, and then we headed home. From the time we left the spot we parked our bikes until the time we had them locked up behind our apartment complex, only 25 minutes had passed. And to make that time even more astounding we stopped on three occasions to snap some pictures of the lovely countryside! Plus we were braking throughout to keep ourselves from going too quickly. In my calculations I subtracted 5 minutes, which is what we figured for the stops, but so that you can imagine it, we averaged about 15.6mph, and there was a slight uphill portion to our trip, and a level bit in Chambéry. Needless to say, that is the fastest I have ever gone on a bike!

Here are some of the photos that we took for the day:

Ok so we are officially two-for-two. Two hiking trips, and two slightly unusual animals. Last time it was a legitimate donkey, and this time it was a "corse" or a "how" we are not quite sure which one. It was this really short, incredibly stocky horse with a total cow head. I know the picture isn't great but don't forget that you can click on it and then you can zoom in and stuff (at least if you open it up in another tab on your computer) I just wonder how that happened...

This is the first picture I took as David and I set off toward our hike. You can see how close we are to our city (that is Chambéry and it's outskirts). And later you will see some pictures that can give you perspective on how far away and how high up we really went during this trip.

This was a welcomed sight because it was the church that marked the start of our hike. At that point we had basically climbed straight up a mountain while walking our bikes for an hour and a half. Phew! Plus, it was a gorgeous little church!

This is just when we started out on our hike (haven't climbed the ridge yet) but you can see the city of Chambéry way off in the distance... It was a seriously lovely day.

Obviously you can tell by the grass at the bottom of the picture, that this was taken by my camera's timer function and the only thing I could find to balance it on was a chunk of nearby grass. But either way, here are David and I starting out our hike.

David and I took a picnic lunch break on one of the boulders. It was a typical lunch of ham, swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches with a Panaché to drink. I think David's blog told you about Panaché? It is a drink that used to be about 50% beer 50% lemonade, but recently is just slightly malt-flavored lemonade with less that 1% of alcohol. Surprisingly they taste quite delightful, and the best part is you can buy a pack of ten for 1.4€ so they are quite cheap.

Me rocking out in one of a string of about 8-9 caves. There were some caves that were absolutely massive too (you will ave to check them out when David does his blog post sometime later in the week: http://francedavid.wordpress.com ) These caves are famous because the king of France, François I, and a troupe of his men had to take shelter in them one night when returning from Chambéry for an important mission due to a violent storm. Here I just decided to take a great Facebook profile picture...

This is one of the infamous pictures for which I stopped during our downhill decent to the city after our hike had been completed. It was almost a sunset and the fields were aglow, but the mountains were still sparkling in the background. So beautiful.

Ok well that is all I am going to say in today's blog post, except that yesterday's Banana Bread turned out fantastically, and even served as our dessert for today's excursion! 

A Taste of Home

Well I have three general updates that I am going to put into a relatively short blog post:

1) I am making Banana Bread with my recipe from home and it is baking in the oven right now. Woohoo! David and I are really excited. Of course it is kind of experimental Banana Bread because France doesn't sell baking soda or baking powder in their stores (at least not the three I checked) but according to my translation program I did find some flour with the baking powder included... so hopefully that will be good enough. In addition, France has different nut preferences than the US so I couldn't find any walnuts or pecans in the nut isle, only hazelnuts almonds and pralines which do not work very well in Banana Bread in my opinion. So it is nutless Banana Bread for which all the ingredients were measured by a legitimate cup (we used google to figure out that 24.2cl of a liquid = 1 cup. Therefore we used an empty beer can (25cl) to figure how much a cup was in one of our drinking cups. Then I used that mark to estimate the 1 3/4 cup of flour and the 2/3 of sugar and I just eye-balled the 1/3 cup of butter. But in the end it seemed to have the right consistency and it smelled delicious. I'll let you know how it turned out!

2) I made crepes about two days ago. This was another culinary adventure and it turned out brilliantly. It was cool because I made something that was traditionally French but something that I associate with being home. They were so good that we are thinking about making some dinner-style crepes this upcoming week with ham and emmental. Speaking of emmental did you know that you can seriously only buy two types of shredded cheese? (at least in your typical grocery store). You can buy emmental and gruyère, which are both swiss cheeses, and sometimes a compté. I do not know how these people live without a good sharp cheddar. *sigh of longing*

3) I heard back from Miami two days ago and the ridiculously long set of essays that I had to write to attempt to receive honors credit for being abroad last semester have officially been approved! I am very excited. Of course I will be even more excited when I receive credit for my second semester (because I can receive one credit of each type - category A and category b) meaning that I will have fulfilled 9 of the 10 necessary "experiences" required to graduate Miami with Honors. That means at this point, with my recently approved credit for my last semester at Le Havre, I am at a very proud 7 completed experiences. I am not sure if it will actually matter to my future employer that I completed the Honors program, but I just couldn't let this one thing go uncompleted, though getting all seven of those experiences has been an extremely cumbersome task so far.

Also, David and I have recovered from our big bike trip last week, and we will be heading out on a new hike tomorrow. At this point we haven't decided on which one, so I will try to give you a post tomorrow and let you know about our hiking experience. Winter is rather quickly transforming into spring here in Chambéry, and we are now having days even as high as in the 50's, and quite a bit more sunshine, in addition to birds singing. Still no flowers yet though...

Bike Trip to Lac du Bourget

David and I had quite the adventure today as we completed #10 and #12 (our second and third respectively) hikes from our touring hike book for the Chambéry area. Each hike is labeled, and at this point we have completed three of the fifty, #1, #10, and #12. Some of the hikes, about 5 of them I believe, we most certainly will not be completing because there is no way in the world we can possibly bike to them, and there are a few that do not interest us completely, but we would love to get at least thirty or so hikes in before we leave this region of France. Therefore we are 1/10th of the way there. So back to today's story.

David and I knew because we were told, that a special bike route existed to get from Chambéry to Lac du Bourget. We also thought we knew where it was. Well we were wrong and we followed some other sign that led us up a nearby mountainside (killing both of our quads, though permitting some lovely views of rural landscapes) and were nearly completely lost except for a last-minute bus sign with a map that allowed us to get back down the mountainside and successfully arrive at our destination. Other than that ultimately 4 mile detour, we were very successful at navigating the hikes in our book, and we visited two chateaux, saw a beautiful lake (for the second time but from a different angle and with much better weather) and had an absolutely splendid afternoon. To save time since you have also most likely read David's post, I will supplement with some additional pictures, and some same pictures with my own interpretation. Hehe.

While we were on our detour, we passed a lovely country farm and there was this donkey just standing there. We stopped just so I could take this picture, and two others actually, because I thought this dude was just too cool. Plus you can see how picturesque the landscape was.

I skillfully managed to take this picture of us while riding my bike and got both of us in the picture! Go me!

Sadly enough, while standing on of the bridges we crossed over, I couldn't even manage to take a very good picture of the two of us as I cut off some of David's head. But you get the idea. That was a really pretty river behind us by the way. And the bike path that we were supposed to take (and did take on the way back) runs alongside it for about 7-8 kilometers. 

This is the entrance to the ruins of the Chateau Thomas II. There were in the process of being restored I guess, and therefore there was no way to enter. Oh well. We feel like we saw everything anyway because it seriously was just ruins except a cool tower from here to there and some archways. 

We balanced my camera on the gate to the chateau and shot this picture of the two of us on our bike so we can remember them forever. Mine is #488 and David's is #582. 

Mom I included this picture for you because this photo is definitely going in my "ensemble of 6" when I get back to the US. I find this to be the perfect swan picture, and on such a beautiful lake!

This is the second chateau that we saw today, and it is a privately owned masterpiece. Please notice the perfectly manicured vineyard growing around front. Unfortunately because it is privately owned there are no tours, but I was pretty proud of my picture none the less. Stunning location. 

I also wanted to include the picture of David and I in the cave. This is another timed photo masterpiece, which was taken with my camera balancing on a boulder. Though the caves were quite small, we felt so lucky to get to see them because the tourist map in the city didn't mark the caves, and the path to get to theme was rather ambiguous itself as well, so I don't think we ever would have discovered them if it weren't for our little hike book.

There was a really cool boulder formation jutting out into the lake and I posed Egyptian style. I think the photo turned out quite nicely. 

And this is part of our hike to get to the caves. The narrowest, tallest, most ancient-looking stone set of stairs I have ever encountered. They were beautiful, though admittedly you did have to use tree roots to descend that last part. It was such a quaint little escapade. 

Overall I think I will summarize this day in two ways: 1) I feel great because we had such a wonderful day of sustained exercise and we got to do fantastic cultural things at the same time and 2) I feel ridiculously sore everywhere and I cannot promise any movement tomorrow due to the activities previously listed. I do not think I have ever biked 26 miles before. Ever.

A note about school to keep you all up to date. This week of vacation has been a wonderful break from routine, though hardly all fun. I have had quite a bit of homework for my XVIII literature class, and I am proud to announce that I have read the required play, and am even thinking of reading a supplementary play so that I can make more astounding comparisons. Apparently we have some sort of oral exam on Wednesday (our next lit class) and I want to be ready to impress. So I have a bit of homework there, so that I can prepare my observations, and in addition I am very busy trying to prepare some of my documents for transfer credit back at Miami. Let's hope that all of that goes well. It will probably be months before I know anything definitely, but I'll certainly be keeping you up to date as far as that is concerned. Other than that I have just basic coursework to keep up with, which I am actually not very "kept up with at the moment" so most of the remainder of this break will be spent doing homework. YAY!

Oh and a final update: David and I's heating shut off two days ago, and we have no idea why and I contacted the owner but he hasn't gotten back to me. Our first theory is that the gas has been turned off due to the construction below us (we are not exactly sure where this construction is but it does wake us up nearly every morning) and our second theory that for some inane reason they turn their heating off on February 15th. Needless to say it has dropped to a below satisfactory temperature in our apartment, but hopefully everything will soon be worked out. Much love from Chambéry!

Happy Valentine's Day

Hello to all my family, I wish you a wonderful holiday of love!!! David and I have been doing very little with our computers (like blog updates) because "Old Reliable" (our nickname for my old laptop from high school) gave up the ghost - well actually just it's battery pack- so until we get our replacement, which is in the mail, we have only one computer which is proving to be very difficult at this day and age.

I just wanted to update you that David and I had a wonderful day excursion to Aix-Les-Bains which is quite close to Chambéry and sits on one side of the Lac du Bourget, the biggest natural lake in France. Although it was a very cold outing, it was a wonderful trip. We went for a walk to explore the city, walked beside the lake, and went into an aquarium museum (or do you just say aquarium?) which ended up being the highlight of our trip, as I'll explain below with the pictures.

We hiked all over the city and all through a park to get to this chateau that we spotted when arriving into the city by train, only to finally get there and learn that it was an apartment complex. Lucky renters I guess. But it was still a gorgeous building with an imposing facade over the city. 

These are the trees all trimmed up for the new season. I just thought they looked a little funny.

To remind you how cold it is here right now, here we are in front of a mini frozen waterfall. Sweet.

This is us beside the lake. Of course, the lake wasn't quite frozen but it was prolly around 20 degrees outside so all of our pictures have a supreme mist in the background from the lake. But no picture can really do this view justice. It was absolutely gorgeous there. 

Here is another picture from a slightly different angle. It was also really interesting how beautifully clear the water was. You could easily see to the bottom of the two meters of water that were right off the dock. 

This was the massive crawdad in one of the aquarium's tanks. He was enormous. 

And this video shows the reason that I had the best time ever in Aix-Les-Bains. They had a "tactile tank" where kids could touch some fish (enormous gold fish and carp... and some others but I forget) but the coolest part was that the fish were trained to give hands "bisous" which is the French word for kiss. The aquarium caretakers would always feed the fish by hand, so if you stuck your fist into the water, the fish would all swim up and give you a big suction kiss. Then, normally they would swim off because they realized that you didn't have any food. Well the guy in charge of the tank came up to us and gave us a few pieces of food and I got to get my hand massively "kissed" by a lot of fish at the same time! It was hilarious and it tickled like crazy, but David filmed it so here it is for your viewing pleasure. I would also like to comment that I was the first one (between David and Nicole and I) to actually put my hand into the tank to get a fish kiss. Admittedly I did jump when I got my first bisou because it was quite startling, but I am so glad I did. All of us spent the rest of the day with large smiles on our faces, walking around making fish kissing sounds. Truly fantastic. (NOTE: Apparently you have to actually view my blog, and not just its e-mail version, to view the video. There should be a link at the bottom of the e-mails)

Finally, just a really exciting update for today. David and I went and rented city bikes for the next 4 months, in other words for the rest of our semester here at Chambéry. It was only 20 Euros per person for all four months because we are students, and I am really looking forward to being able to bike all around to the nearby hiking locations, chateaux, lakes, and even the grocery store. And I am proud to say that we rode them from the gare to our apartment without any trouble at all. They are great. Tomorrow we are taking them out again to run some errands because I have a book that I have to buy for a class, I have to go to the library to rent a book, and we are going to go to the tourism office and buy a book that I found recommended online by the tourism office of Savoie with 50 hikes and hike ideas for the Savoie area. David and I are really stoked about the prospects of more independent travel with our bikes. 

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

The funniest thing....

So I was surfing Facebook and I found a link to the University of Le Havre's new welcome video. It is a video that is supposed to attract new students to its campus. Well, I watched it and you are never going to believe this but I am in it writing Chinese on the blackboard of my Chinese classroom. Hahahahaha. The link to the video is: http://webtv.univ-lehavre.fr/spip.php?article51 but I don't think you would be interested in the whole video since it is about 10 minutes long and all in French, but, I took a screen shot of one of the frames of me writing so that you could see: what an achievement! I left my mark on that campus!

Other than that I do not have class tomorrow (Friday) so that means I am on vacation for a week!!!! Woohooo! Actually, David and I aren't planning on doing much this trip, but I am going to get a ton of homework done for back in the US, where there isn't this silly little holiday.... hehe. 

It's Been A Long Time

I feel like it has been too long since I did a blog post, about 8 days to be exact, so I wanted to make sure that I kept all of you in the loop. Unfortunately there is really nothing that exciting going on which is why it has been such a long time since I posted. And actually, on there other hand there has been a lot going on with me and my courses, and working with my French professor back home to receive transfer credit (which Miami is extremely unwilling to give for anything except literature courses - grrrrrr I AM SO SICK OF LITERATURE). And also I just spent two days writing my honors petition for honors credit for my first semester of study abroad which reached a massive 3,500 words, which is basically an extended essay from high school, for those of you familiar with the IB extended essay required during my senior year.

Now my Miami-related homework is going to be preparing syllabi for my business-related courses and contacted the head of the marketing department and hoping for better luck with my transfer credits there. Actually I'm thinking that "hoping" isn't going to be quite enough....

My courses are going fairly well out here, though I am struggling to find motivation for a lot of my classes since I am really not achieving the material that I need to graduate and I am really starting to look forward to graduating and I think I am kind of just ready to be back in the US efficiently finishing up my degree. On the bright side I do have several very interesting business and marketing courses to which I enjoy going. And also my FLE language courses are quite informative, and there is no denying that my French is always improving, it just boils down to the fact that I am ready to graduate and I do not feel that I am most efficiently working toward that goal here in France. But at least I am bilingual!

I should mention that I am still in the change-around-course stage, so I am still not 100% sure what classes I will be taking, though I am fairly certain. I have dropped my translation and grammar courses (although I found both, and in particularly the grammar course, interesting, they were not going to transfer as anything back in the US and yet they were still adding to my homework load. I also dropped statistics because in order to hopefully get a French credit back at Miami I have to take a course of XVIII century literature and the times conflicted with stats. On the bright side I have already checked out the classes offered by Miami this summer and there is an online stats course, so I'll definitely be taking that. Oh and speaking of summer courses, I forgot to update my blog, but I received a summer tuition waiver back in Oxford through the Honors program, which will waive 90% of my tuition fees for this summer. This is of course a huge blessing, but also explains why I haven't been posting as much as usual because I was busy typing up three massive essays explaining why I should receive a summer tuition waiver... woot.

Finally, David and I have a "winter vacation" coming up at the end of this week, so that is exciting. We are not really sure exactly what we are going to do during it because we are saving our money for more travel at the end of a semester, but we are thinking of checking out several of the nearby towns, doing some little day trips and possibly even a bit of skiing, since we have yet to make it up to the mountains. One thing most certainly on the list is a visit to the Lac Bourget, a very huge and nearby lake. There is a bike path from Chambéry to the lake so we would like to rent some bikes and go up, see the lake and visit the the Tombs of Hautecomb within an abbey, where the royal members of the House of Savoy are buried. Of course, we may hold off if it stays as cold as it has been because no one can go for a bike ride in -10 celcius. You simply can't breathe!

It has been absolutely frigid here in Chambéry since last weekend, and supposedly it should start warming up around Sunday, so we are all hoping for the best. It has been unbearably cold. Around -18 some nights! On the bright side though, the bitter cold has allowed the snow to stay around in some places, meaning it has stuck for 9 days which is pretty impressive.

Ok well actually I am going to get back to work now, but I just wanted to keep you all up to date. And at the end of the week I will give you an updated class list so that you can follow along with my schedule. Bisous!

Snow in Chambéry!

Well folks David and I woke up this morning to a growing blanket of white covering our wonderful little city and our neighbor the château. I am quickly getting ready for my classes today (as I mentioned yesterday I think I have 7 hours of them) so don't expect any more posts from me unless something really exciting happens. But I took a couple pictures so you all could enjoy our wonderful view.

It is just absolutely beautiful here today. Nothing quite beats a God-given snow (=

Results are in...

I am happy to bring you the news that I was placed into the top group for my course of FLE perfectionnement. I have the class this Thursday and I am excited to see how it goes, I am hoping for a nice high level of challenging exercises well geared toward my level. But we'll see.

Other than that nothing too exciting is going on, I had my three-hour Supply Chain class this morning, and it wasn't completely horrible so I'll probably stick it out for the semester. Tomorrow I have my Translation class (By the way, have I mentioned how bad I am at this? Apparently I just read French and understand what it is saying, but with the exception of very simple sentences I have a lot of difficulty finding the perfect English word/phrase to replace the French ones, and it is made even more difficult because it is an actual translation course so there are so many rules to follow and I have officially discovered that I am more of a practical user of French - just read and understand not read and translate. And to finish off my very large parenthetical statement I will add however that I think it is probably good for my French to have to take the time to translate because the analysis of the meaning goes deeper when you have to put it into words in a different language. ) Then I have Modern Grammar which is extremely difficult but thrilling (I love this stuff), then 18th century literature (kill me now, but a necessary course so that I can make sure that I get all the needed transfer credit back home) and then a different course called FLE perfectionnement which is specifically for the non-native French speakers of my License (CMI = Commerce et Management International = Commerce and International Management in English, in case you wondered.) so I will go to its class tomorrow evening, but if it isn't very good, or whatever, I'll probably just stick with the other one on Thursday. Tomorrow will be a little tough because those last three courses are all two hours each and are back to back to back. So 6 straight hours. But at least, with the exception of the literature course, they will be interesting.

David and I had mussels again for dinner - fantastic!!

Boeuf Bourguignon

I guess I would like to bring you up to date for the last three days because I have been busy not updating my blog, unfortunately. We'll start with Thursday:

THURSDAY
I had Statistics in the morning which was extremely boring as usual, because we have yet to actually do anything besides define the terms and develop our theory of statistics... ugh. On the bright side the slower more introductory-style pace is allowing me to develop my French mathematical vocabulary, but honestly the pace is even too slow for me so I can't imagine how bored the French students are. On the bright side I really think that we are almost done with the definition stage and I might get to do some actual math on Wednesday (this course meets two times a week, on Wednesdays and Thursdays). Also on Thursday I had my European economics course. Now as a preface I had spent a lot of hours during the last week researching economic terms, treaties, trade agreements, and historical events that altered economic perspectives because this class is a third-year class and is a little bit ahead of me in terms of economy (though as I mentioned before I am fond of the challenge). So anyway, a lot of homework, and a lot of supplementary explanations from David who loves economy and is quite familiar with a lot of the goings on. So I go to class and I arrive 5 minutes before the start of class and there is no one in the classroom. I wait about two minutes and still there is no one. Knowing the French system I am well aware that I should probably go to the "panneau d'affichage" which is their form of scholastic bulletin board on which the various "licenses" (majors) will be shown alongside their class schedule. The reason the French even have these bulletin boards is because their class schedules are so unpredictable and change all the time and they find that the easiest way to let you know about this is to change the bulletin board.... not just send out an e-mail, or have class schedules online or anything convenient so that you have to go all the way to campus to figure out if your classroom has changed of if your class has been cancelled for the day. Well, I went to my all-knowledgeable panneau d'affichage and sure enough there was an index card pinned to it that said that my class had been cancelled for this week. Great. That means I walked down the 140 stairs of my apartment to walk up the 138 stairs to campus just to walk down the 138 campus stairs and up the 140 of my apartment. At least I get in my exercise! But seriously, their system is so stone-age and aggravating.

Since I was back early I decided to surprise David and prepare Boeuf Bourguignon, which would turn out to be the highlight of our week, that is until Saturday, but I'm getting there. So I prepared Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon, which takes about an hour and is followed by 4 hours of cooking in the oven, and would probably qualify as one of the more complicated recipes I have ever made just because the Julia Child version was quite detailed and precise. Even though I didn't have any beef broth I just used a little extra wine and some water, and I can tell you that our 4 hour wait was well worth it. That seriously was one of the best meals that I have had since being in France and David and I have decided that it is a must-be-repeated-as-much-as-possible recipe before the weather gets too warm. We're thinking like once a week? Haha, but honestly because it is such a French classic it really is not expensive to make out here. Maybe 9 Euros for the entire pot which served two people two meals, so  really great and hearty deal. I have included a picture because I was so proud of my creation:

FRIDAY
I didn't have any classes Friday, but I did have to take a French placement exam which tiers the foreign students into groups based on proficiency for the FLE (French as a Foreigh Language) Perfectionnement class. I actually was more than happy to take the exam because I was thrilled that this school was actually reinforcing that the students be separated by level so that classroom discussion and lesson topics could be more geared to the level at hand. I will know which group I am in on Monday, and I'll let you know how the prospects are.

SATURDAY
I went out shopping with my American friend Nicole to take advantage of the French sales which are going on. We had a blast and spent 4 and half hours wandering in and out of the various shops in Chambéry, and I purchased a pair of boots, a poncho-coat (it is wool like a normal coat just without sleeves), and two very lovely dresses. Then on our way back to join David for lunch in the apartment we rode in the elevator with one of our neighbors. He asked if we liked to drink wine and we said yes, and he informed us that there was a big exposition wine-tasting going on just a couple hundred meters down the street from us, at an entry fee of 5 Euros a person. Anyway, we of course were quite excited and the three of us went to our first-ever wine tasting which was devoted exclusively to "wines from the mountains" meaning they were all local vendors and producers, mostly from France though a few from the Italian and German side of the Alps. We had lots of great conversations and even learned quite a bit about French wines, the naming process, (based on three things: the location, the type of grape, and the "savoir faire" or "how to" for the production) and, of course, tried a ton of seriously fantastic wine. Mom and Dad - (and of course Grammy and Grampy) we couldn't help but think of how much you would have enjoyed to be there. The winner for the night for me was an extremely sweet (though with a balanced acidity) Riesling which was from the German producer, but in general all of Savoie's white wines are just phenomenal (Abymes, Apremont, and Roussette) and there was also a red wine from the beginning of the night that was fantastic, particularly in the nose, but I have no clue what it was because all the wines have blurred (or should I say blended) into my head which is not quite connoisseur ready. But here is a picture that we took afterward by the entrance banner:

Overall a really great second half of the week!

Classes... A General Update

My schedule here in Chambéry is a lot less consistent than the schedule that I had in Le Havre. To make it so that I could keep things straight I have literally written every single class meeting into its proper days in my planner for the entire semester because days, times, and room numbers change for almost all of my courses on a weekly basis. This does have its advantages and disadvantages though, because there are some days where I have no school at all, and others where I have 8-10 hours in a day, and likewise there are weeks where I have very little to do, and some weeks which are likely going to be very tough.

As for class specifics, at this point I am still definitively working out which classes I am going to take for the semester, and my list keeps getting shorter and shorter because so far I have not found many courses that I like. This is also probably because my business courses do not start up until next week so I haven't started them yet. I just hope that they are better (more interesting) than some of the other courses I have been to. Even though I will not be dropping the class because there is a chance that I can get transfer credit for it, my statistics course is horribly boring. So far we have done nothing but mathematical definitions pertaining to statistics during which the professor reads long sentences from a book for the students to copy. I am serious, the French are completely unfamiliar with the concept of a handout / PowerPoint. However, because my mathematical vocabulary is a little rusty even in English I figure I better not try to skip ahead to a higher-level course, and if I get back into the US and can't get credit for this course, at least I had the refresher so that my Miami course will be that much easier. But on the other side of the spectrum you have my European Economy class which is probably the first actually difficult course I have been in since in France (except Chinese last semester I guess). We were given maybe 25-30 pages of reading from various handouts and a massive timeline of economic events (5 pages) that we "don't have to know by heart" but should be familiar with.

For those of you who don't know, even though I have a great memory, I literally know almost nothing about economic events from a historical perspective so all that reading combined with the timeline (that I have actually only skimmed once at this point) had made for a substantial amount of homework. And even though I have taken a course of Micro-Econ back home and Macro-Econ out here in France, this class is a very high-level economics course for the final year studies of what would be our equivalent of economic majors. I find the course very interesting and it is in that course that I made my first friends in Chambéry, but nonetheless it is going to be difficult.Especially since in France they also have to study law with almost every single "major" and therefore these students are very familiar with both the economics and the laws that surround European economics. On the bright side, I can provide a very unique perspective since I come from America which makes me a happily accepted newcomer. I have the class this afternoon so I'll try to let you know if all my hours of homework paid off or if I'm still feeling a little clueless in the class.

General Update: I should be able to figure out fairly soon whether or not I passed my classes back in Le Havre, though I am not sure how because ISEP has all these rules about the processing of transcripts and stuff. Today my homework for myself is to contact my professors back in Le Havre and ask for my grades which is one thing I was told I could do. Believe me when I say though, the moment I find out I will let you know. As a recap the class I am most worried about passing is Analyse de Donneés because my group's presentation followed what we understood her directions to be, but was somehow not what she was looking for... But other than that I am fairly sure that I passed all of my classes. But I guess we will see.

Finally I have a gastronomic update: I made mussels for David and I because they were having a sale at Le Clerc (our grocery store) and we got them for 2 Euros, and he loved them!! I was really excited because I legitimately think that mussels might be my favorite food and I was worried that he might not like them (because a lot of people do not enjoy the consistency of mussels) but my fear was mitigated and I am very happy. Also, we ate a very traditional French meal which consisted of choux-croute (cabbage steamed in white wine more or less - kind of like my mom's red cabbage except not red and not quite as pungent, though still rather smelly) served on bread slices with smoked salmon. It was truly delicious and the package of salmon served us two meals meaning that our net cost per meal and per person was a mere 1.50 €.

Ok well I think that I'll leave you with that because it is time for lunch so that afterward I can rock economics.Woot.

Lyon Visit

Well I am finally going to take the time to update my blog about David and I's visit to Lyon this past Saturday. We didn't want to wake up too early since it was our weekend, so we decided on getting up around 9, and taking the 11 o'clock train to Lyon, so that we would be there by noon. The night before we had looked up directions to the tourism office, and everything had gone according to plan until we arrived into a rainy city and couldn't find the street we needed to take to get to the tourism office. Actually we walked for quite a long way and then by happenstance found the street that we needed and it had a map of the city, so we figured we were good to go. And don't ask me how this happened but we knew that we needed to go toward the rivers (there are two rivers that run parallel through Lyon the Rhône and the Saône) and we saw them on the map, then we localized the train tracks which we could see right beside us and determined that we had to go away from the train tracks. So we did. Then 30 minutes later we realized we had gone the wrong direction, because we had thought we were on a different part of the street than we were actually on. So we walked all the way back and then again for about 30 minutes in the other direction until we arrived at the tourism office and the starting point for the touring we wanted to do. Phew.

Even though our trip got off to a rough start, I definitely say that it was worth it because we really had a great time and I got to see my first ever roman amphitheaters. Also, once we had finished with the touristic stuff we spent about 2 hours shopping (David is such a great husband to put up with and even be enthused about my shopping) because right now is the time of the "sales" in France, which more or less mimics Black Friday in the US but continues until Valentine's Day, and makes prices ridiculously low. Of course I don't buy anything, but I love looking around. However, because it is already getting late and I have some other stuff to do before my classes tomorrow, I think I will do a picture-show-explanation of my excursion.

But before I do the picture I would just like to add a side note about the classes that I went to today. I cannot remember if I told you already but I was going to try out a class called littérature de jeunesse, which basically means childhood literature. I was really excited. Then I went to the class today and it was h.o.r.r.i.b.l.e. She was a terribly boring speaker, and she spent the whole time talking about the most insignificant aspects of the stories. We didn't even get to read a story! She talked about the different types of colors that can be used in the books (diluted or pastels versus bright and bold...) and also the form of the book (hard cover, soft cover, taller, or wider...) I just don't think the kids discriminate against books based on their shape. And I was hoping the class would be about text analysis, the words used, the reason for the types of drawings, the morals taught to children etc because I was interested about the French perspective. Oh well, I'll just have to do my own study at a later time because I am not going back to that class. It was sooo boring! She talked for two hours straight about the tiniest stylistic elements, without giving us a break, and by the end I vowed that I wouldn't come back to the class because it was the longest two hours of class ever and even if the content of the course got better the teacher's presentation just would not suffice. (Ironic because I bet she is really good at reading kid's books).

And now for my Lyon pictures:

David in front of the "Grande Roue" in Lyon. This is where the long-awaited Lyon Tourist office was found. Also notice the umbrella in the background... something that neither David nor I had for our day out on the town. Luckily the rain was off and on and never very serious.

My turn in front of the Ferris Wheel. Unfortunately it was 8 Euros a person to ride so David and I decided against it, but it was nice to look at. 

David and I in front of the larger of the two Roman amphitheaters. This one can seat up to 10,000 people!

Here's a view looking down from about 3/4ths up the amphi seating. This amphitheater still holds venues today and was constructed in 43 AD. Way to go Romans. 

David and I in front of the smaller amphi, called the Odeon, which could seat about 3000 people. Also you can notice that the Roman city life was built on top of a hill which very successfully overlooks everything around it.

David in front of the Basilisque de Fourvière. The building was so huge it was quite impossible to get a good picture but we did try. It was just a stunning building to look at with a lot of intricacy in the construction. See the picture below for more detail.

I just loved the pattern on the arches. 

Here is my standing in front of the crypt entrance which was actually on the ground level and then you took stairs down below. The crypt was enormous, and very ornate. Unfortunately the main part of the basilisk was closed for construction (yearly care) and we couldn't see it, but even just seeing the outside was quite magnificent. 

David and I used the timer on my camera to get this picture from the back of the basilisk, overlooking the city of Lyon. It was a stunning view even in the misty rain.

Us in front of the side of the basilisk. We just kept looking for a location where we could get a good picture. It was extremely difficult.

I felt that I had to include this picture. I asked a Frenchman to take a picture of us, and he kindly agreed and was a very personable man and we had a decently long conversation afterward because he was curious about  our studies and our time in France... very nice man. Then we got home and looked at the pictures he took of us and he completely missed the basilisk behind us. What is sad is I cropped out a whole bunch of road from this picture which used to be about half road. The reason I had us cross the street was so that he could get a picture with more of the building, not more of the street. Oh well. I guess that will give us something to laugh about. 

When we were walking down the huge hill on which the basilisk and the ancient Roman ruins were situated, we took a narrow stair path and halfway down I stopped and took this picture of the Cathedral of St John. Again, it was such a huge building that once we got up close getting a good picture became very difficult, so this turned out to be one of my favorites. 

Me in front of the huge doors of the St John's Cathedral. This cathedral had some of the most amazing stained glass I have ever seen, just stunning and extremely complex (the told entire stories of Scripture) and if you ever visit France, specifically Lyon, you simply must go into this Cathedral and admire the stained glass.   

A downtown fountain lit up at night. This is primarily where David and I did our shopping, walking along the main strip and going into every single shoe store because I am currently boot-hunting. (= We took a little breather on the bench from which I took this picture. 

This was the Ferris Wheel lit up at night. Unfortunately the lights on the wheel spin quickly so my picture appears to be blurry. However it was a really pretty sight in the downtown.

This picture, though not entirely crisp, shows the view from the lower part of the city (where the Ferris Wheel is) toward the hill with the basilisk which was gallantly lit up at night. It was really a great view. You just don't have those kind of things in America.

Here is David and I taking a picture with the touristic mascot of Lyon, a red lion. I thought it was pretty cool and I like our photo. Also, the woman who offered to take the photo for us worked in the department of tourism and asked if I would mind taking a survey for her. I said sure because I haven't done one in French yet and it seemed fun (plus I wanted to pay her back for taking the photo).

Finally, David took a picture of me fairy tale kissing the lion. Overall we had a great day and a fun little weekend excursion. It is great being able to so easily travel to historic cities. And I will leave you with that because it is time for me to get to bed. Love to everyone!!

Il s'agit du week-end

David and I have decided to take our first little excursion since arriving in Chambéry and we'll be heading off to Lyon tomorrow. I am quite excited as there are several UNESCO World Heritage sites there to see, including two Gallo-Roman amphitheaters and a basilisk. I personally am not sure what the difference is between a basilisk and a cathedral but I am sure that it has a very important distinction. Also we'll be going with some of David's friends from class so we should be able to get some good pictures out of the deal. As David already said in his post, that is a definite benefit of traveling in groups! By the way, any of my blog readers who are interested in reading David's blog and are not already doing so should either check out this link: http://francedavid.wordpress.com/ or e-mail me and I'll add you to his e-mail list so you receive his updates automatically. Of course, in some areas they will be a little redundant, but overall we should present different perspectives and share rather complementary stories.

I haven't taken the time to update you yet, but I made my first three friends in Chambéry during my Thursday class of European Economics. They were very personable and they have invited David and I to celebrate the birthday party of Florence with them this upcoming Monday. We are definitely planning on going, and we are both quite excited I think. I am looking forward to having some new friends (as it is not too fun to be all alone in a classroom) and David will profit from his first contact with school-aged French students as all his current friends are other Americans. And a note about the class... OH MY GOSH I feel like I don't know very much about economics. haha. I guess I should have known that the class would be of a fairly high level since this was an economics course for the third year studies of students in the department of Economics and Social Administration, but I was by far the least knowing of the terms and acronyms and LAWS in the class. These students also have to study law for their degree so it is just lonely little me, the American, in the class without much background knowledge. However, I do not find this at all discouraging as I prefer to learn at a quicker pace than most and I find challenges exhilarating. Also, David likes to get involved in my homework and research so it is a good opportunity for us both to learn and for him to practice a more applied French. And overall I think that the course will be extremely interesting as it will most effectively show me the European perspective on economics. Perhaps the course is made even more interesting by the fact that the Euro-zone is near collapse and there are quite a few differing theories about what can be done to fix the problem, or at least delay destruction.

As for my statistics course, it was a bit easy, very fundamental, though my professor does speak extremely quickly. Fortunately he says a lot of filler information so I don't have to listen to everything - it would be very tiring (even in English) because he just talks a lot more than is necessary. We'll see how everything goes but I should be able to pass the class. Of course I am not sure that this is the sort of class that Miami is looking for to earn credit, but I also am not sure that I could do something much more advanced in a foreign language because it has been 4 years since I have taken a math class and even though I am extremely capable in mathematics (a perfect on my IB test and a perfect on the math section of my SAT) there is no point in denying I have forgotten some of the principles, and then there is the whole foreign language aspect. Either way I have decided to stick with the course that I am currently taking and if, when I get back to Miami, they do not feel that it adequately meets the requirements desired, then I will think of it as a course I took to prepare myself for my Miami Stats course and a way through which I got myself out of my 4-year drought from Math. I do quite like math after all...

Well it is getting late so David and I are going to get to bed I think so that we can get up somewhat early to catch our train to Lyon. I just wanted to keep everyone up to date about my classes, which really spring into action next week. I'll let you know how they go! Love to everyone!

Inscription... After My Classes Have Begun

Well this is just typical France. I found out yesterday when David and I went to inscribe into the university that my classes have begun. They started this past Monday. They started, yet I have been given no information on these classes, what they are, where they will be held, when they will occur... I was extremely frustrated. Luckily David's log-in information became active after only one day (we were told we might have to wait 2) so I was able to spend literally 8 hours today researching a tentative class schedule. And actually, my schedule looks pretty good. Right now it is 10 classes, and there is an option of two others, but those two others are likely replacements for two on my list. But other than that I actually am feeling quite confident that the classes I have down will be my classes for the semester.

To finish off this week (because I already missed all my other classes) I am going to two classes tomorrow, Descriptive Statistics and European Economy/Economics (I am not sure how to translate it or what the difference is between those two words in that sense). I also am not really sure what the difference is between statistics and descriptive statistics. Oh well, that is what tomorrow is for. Actually it is a bit late and David and I will be up early tomorrow for our classes (his are going all very well he tells me) so that is all I'm going to write for today. I just wanted you all to know that I was actually going to start being a student again tomorrow! I have been out of school for one month and two days, wow, that is a huge vacation!) I'll try to update you and let you know how they go!

Orientation Day

Today we had some administrative help to fill out our paperwork to inscribe into the university, and I just wanted to say that I found it another fine example of the bureaucracy in France, and their incapacity to understand efficiency and technology as the quantity of forms necessary to inscribe into the uni is unbelievable (and ridiculous, we need proof of our high school diploma... which obviously we have because we are going to college back in the US... etc AND the woman who presented to us gave us the PowerPoint not in presentation mode, in other words, she clicked through the presentation with the side summary bar and got herself confused quite a few times. Afterward the students were talking and we all just wanted to go up there and help her change it to a presentation. It was so cute, but sad at the same time. I talked to a student who was here last semester and apparently she did the same thing. Someone has really got to start teaching PowerPoint literacy out here.

The second thing that I wanted to say is that there was an ISEP dinner tonight so that all the ISEP students could meet each other in one place before the school year really began. Well, this was fantastic because it was payed for by the university, and they wanted to treat us to tradition Savoie food, which includes Fondue. Therefore I had my very first fondue, in France, in a region where it is a specialty, and it was phenomenal. David also got the fondue and loved it. It was truly phenomenal and we would love to go back but probably can't afford it on our budget. Oh well, at least we got to try it before leaving!!

That is all I am going to write tonight because it is late and David has classes pretty early tomorrow morning, but I just really wanted to tell you about the fail PowerPoint presentation and the fantastic fondue. Yum Yum.

Arrival in Chambéry

Ok, I am finally ready to do my final "catch-up" blog post, as I have been fairly busy researching class information for my classes that supposedly start tomorrow but that I have no information about, and David and I have finally started to think about planning our Europe trip, and some of the places that we want to go. However, I really did want to tell you about our arrival in Chambéry because I found it to be a rather interesting story:

So David and I left Modane, the train station where Dario dropped us off, with all of our ten pieces of luggage. I wish I would have asked someone to take a picture of us at some point during one of our baggage-laden voyages, but to be honest we were always so concentrated on getting where we were going (as that took a lot of effort) that the opportunity never arose. Besides, I probably couldn't have found the camera anyway given that I most literally had ten bags to choose from. In case I haven't listed them all before, I am going to list them now so that even those of you who have not weaseled your way through public transportation can appreciate our skill: two enormous suitcases, David's being even larger and heavier than mine, two duffel bags, a comforter, a Carrefour shopping bag of foodsstuffs, a Carrefour bag with our towels, sheets and a blanket (these are industrial reusable shopping bags by the way), my tote bag, David's backpack, and my purse. Phew. We are literally superheros. So anyway, we were very excited because this was the last time we would ever have to move all this stuff, because a lot of it won't be traveling with us after this semester (food, towels, my plant - yes I transported my little plant from Le Havre to Turin to Chambéry and it is still alive and flowering, the little beast) so we will be a little less burdened. 

We arrived only 3 minutes late, and the owner of our apartment was waiting with a little sign for "Ellen" so we had no problem finding him and he even drove a truck so he was able to bring us and all of our luggage to our new apartment. Also I saw a sign for a Le Clerc (a grocery store) when we were leaving the gare so I asked him about it and he made a comment about it being close-by because he had just purchased some stuff for the apartment for us. I was super glad to hear that because David and I still needed to find a grocery store that night in order to buy some food for dinner and breakfast the next morning, ans since we had arrived at 5:45pm, I knew we only had a few hours before everything would be closed. So as he drove us to our new home which was only a couple minutes from the train station we paid attention so that we would be able to trace our way back. 

Arrival into the apartment was really exciting, starting with the fact that he said to go to the French 5th floor (our 6th floor) when we got in the door. I have always liked being on the upper floors of a building. Then once we were out on the 5th floor, the top floor with elevator access, he told us to go to the 6th floor to get to our apartment - the very top floor! And PS I have counted the stairs and there are 140 of them from ground to us, so we are really nice and high up. Then he showed us the apartment which is really cute and quaint with quite a lot of space. We have a living/bedroom/study area, a small entryway area, a bathroom, and a kitchen/dining area. And the kitchen is awesome! Especially in comparison to what I had in Le Havre. I am sorry that I still haven't taken pictures, David and I will try to take care of that tomorrow since neither of us have school (well I might, but I don't know anything about it yet, haha). But anyway, the kitchen is great and we were provided with loads of dishes and cookware, so it was quite exciting. But the best is yet to come. Then he showed us that we had an extra walk-out balcony which is on the roof of the complex, and it literally is across the street from the château of Chambéry, which was lit up since it was already dark. It was breathtaking and it is all ours because no one else has balconies there, just us!! Here are two pictures, but they are both during the day because the night ones stink... I am still trying to find a camera setting that works.

Here is the main part of the château, without either of its towers. In fact, we are so close to the château that it is impossible to take a picture with the whole thing in it. I also really like the mountains in the background, though they are a little muted in the picture and are actually more visible normally.

This is the château as sunset begins (therefore I probably took this picture at 4:45, haha) and you can see one of its towers. I'll also make sure to take some pictures once the trees have their leaves. 

Immediately after Monsieur Piard (the owner) left we took off to find some food. Key element of the story: there was no "included wifi internet" as stated in our contract, so we set out only knowing that there was a Le Clerc by the train station. Well, we remembered wrong, so this is where our night got really exciting. We literally walked so long in the wrong direction that we left the town (bear in mind that this only took about 25 minutes because the city only has about 50-60,000 people in it) so then we turned back, had to go back to square one, and then we went the other direction. It was about 7:45 by the time we found the gare, and we thought for sure that we must have been close to the Le Clerc (and we had passed no other supermarkets at this point, so Le Clerc was our only hope). There was an advertisement for "the first on the left" so we followed the road for about 5-10 minutes and didn't see it, so we turned around and came back to the gare. Once there I went in to ask for directions because I knew that it was about 8:15 and stores would be closing soon. The guy at the coffee shop told me that the Le Clerc was actually about 2-3 kilometers away and that I couldn't walk there (turns out he was wrong as we would find out later) but that meant that David and I had to abandon our plan for the night and start scowering the other parts of the darned city for a supermarket. We didn't find one. I even asked a hotel manager at 8:25 in a last desperate attempt where the nearest supermarket was and he told us that it would be probably be closed but that there was a Monoprix by the FNAC. Luckily I had seen the FNAC so David and I went there hurriedly to find this Monoprix... which didn't exist. So finally we gave up and returned home empty-handed after about two and a half hours of walking. I was in an incredibly bad mood because there is no reason that new exchange students arriving in a new place should have so little information. And I was mad because we were supposed to not only have internet but FREE internet, which now we have to pay a ton for. (I am trying to work on that problem currently). On the bright side, since we got back home exhausted and famished, at least we had carted around the remnants of my Le Havre food with us all around Europe because we did have "food". Mommy, you will be proud to know that our first meal here was Cream of Wheat and we loved it. (=

However, because I was so worried about not having groceries in the house David and I woke up early the next day so that we could track down and find this elusive Le Clerc, which we did. It is about a 20 minute walk from our apartment, though that is not 100% confirmed yet because in each our 8ish times going there we have gotten lost by some minor turn or, I guess, some major turn, and therefore we have no exact time estimate of how long it takes to walk. We can take the bus though, which we often do for the return when we have lots of heavy groceries. 

The other thing we did during Day Two was cleaning. Cleaning cleaning cleaning. Even though we had just moved into the place, the people who lived there before us clearly did not have the same standard of cleanliness as the two of us, and I was afraid to cook in the kitchen or use anything provided in the kitchen to prepare our food. And let's not even talk about the bathroom; I still don't thoroughly enjoy my showers because I know how dirty it was before we cleaned it, and the drain doesn't drain well... I will spare you all the details but I can definitively say that our elbows will never be greasy again because we expelled all of our lifetime supply degreasing and scrubbing every surface of the apartment. But that was totally worth it because we absolutely love it here. 

First of all, we have the most amazing view that I have ever had in my entire life. I'll admit, the lake with a bald eagle in the tree, and a mountain backdrop is a serious competitor, possibly even the winner, but there is nothing like looking out over a regal château with beautiful mountains in the background from your private roof-top porch. So cool. And so exotic, in a non-tropical way. Also, we are only a 9-10 minute walk from the campus (though you probably have to climb the equivalent of 7 stories of stairs to get there because it is all uphill) and we are a 5 minute walk from the historic downtown which is thriving with shops and life. 

Well, I think that pretty much sums up David and I's arrival here in Chambéry, filled with excitement and stresses, but now that that is over, David and I are settled in and very happy, so I'll leave it at that. 

Oh, one last thing actually. That Monoprix that the hotel clerk told us about, well I asked a clerk at FNAC the next day about it and he informed me that the store wasn't open yet. That's right, the hotel guy sent me to a supermarket-in-progress. I guess it's a good thing we didn't find it because that would have been even more frustrating.