Ooops

Sorry to everyone that reads this blog that I haven't updated since March. A lot of happened since going to Barcelona like going to Italy with my parents and Amsterdam with my friend and I just got back from Dublin on Saturday. With all of this travelling it has been hard to keep my blog updated because I am still a student here. Finals are next week so I have tried to start studying for that, but I am exhausted and sick again (I hope it's not the swine flu =) ). So hopefully I'll be able to update everyone on my travels soon.

Barcelona and Class

Well my midterms are finally over, some of them were a lot harder than I expected but now I know that I need to study harder for the final.

Tomorrow I am off at the crack of dawn to see my friend KJ in Barcelona. She is currently studying abroad in Granada and we decided that it was just easier to meet in the middle. So hopefully all goes well while I am there (like not missing any flights (knock on wood)).

So when I get back Monday night I should be able to fill you all in on something exciting.

Can you believe that my program is over half way done?? Because I really can't.

Football Game and Midterms

All this week we have to take "examens blancs" which are basically just midterms that don't count for your grade, which I think is kind of lame. However, it is nice to see what kind of questions will be on the final.

I took one on Tuesday and it was pretty ridiculous. There were 6 pictures of what I think were French presidents but I am not sure and we had to identify four of them and describe them a little. So hopefully the ones I said were actually in the pictures =) I might take one today if I am able to get to the campus because there is another national greve so the buses might not be running today, which sucks, but I guess that is okay because I can always take it tomorrow. Then I have two more next Tuesday inmy Business and Translation class, but again they don't count, which is nice.

Last night I went to a football (soccer) game with my host brother, his friend, and me friend Julia. It was Grenoble against Monaco in the quarter/finals for the French league or something like that. It was a lot of fun, the fans a crazy though. There is a special area for the away team's fans in this cage like place so that they don't get in fights with the home team's fans and there were a bunch of police in riot gear and security gaurds with metalboxes with sand in them in case there are flares. They were definitely prepared for anything to happen.

Weekend In Grenoble

This weekend 5 people out of our group were gone. 4 went to Geneva and 1 went to London to go see an exhibit, which left just Lauren and Philip and me. However, this was one of the best weekends to have stayed behind in Grenoble because the weather was gorgeous. We spent most of the weekend at this huge park behind the local highschool laying in the grass. It was a really nice relaxing weekend.

We also went out because Lauren's host brother, Martin, was having a sleepover for his birthday and he wanted to house to himself so Lauren wanted to go out so I went with her. However, at my bus stop there was about 7, 14 or 15 year old and I could tell something was a little off with them. One girl goes behind the bus stop and her friend tells me not to look. I wasn't looking to begin with, but telling someone not to look instantly makes them curious. I really should not have looked because to my dismay I see that she is peeing. Mind you it is only7 o clock at night. After she peed two of the boys she was with did so also. And then one boy asks me what time the bus is and this girl was like what did he say to you! And when I told her that he just wanted to know what time the bus was she was like oh okay. She then wanted to know if i was french? english? and finally i just told her I was an America. Bad idea because then they all flocked to me and demanded to know where I was from and I said California. And then they start naming random cities in the US such as Las Vegas and New York. Finally I just said near San Francisco.

They all wanted to know what I was doing that night and I just said I was going down town and then they all wanted me to go with them and I was like no thanks, I have to meet my friend. I am super glad that I did notgo with them because one of the guys threw up at the bus stop. I could not believe how these young kids were acting and to top it all off it was barely even dark out.

American Birthday Party

Tomorrow is Kathryn's birthday, but Julia is flying to London to see a Byzano tine Empire exhibit so we had a picnic today to celebrate. Julia, Dianne, and Catherine all went to Leader Price, which I guess is this off brand, discount grocery store, where they bought a lot of "goodies" for Catherine. Some of these goodies were bacon flavored potato chips, violet candies that tasted like soap, perfume, and makeup, smurf gummies, tequilla flavored beer (not tequilla but beer that tasted like it), a pudding dessert in a can, party fizz with disney princesses on it, and lots of chocolate. Suffiencet to say most of the stuff was degusting, but we all had to try some of each (this was the only time I really wanted to be a vegetartian, so I could have gotten out of the bacon flavored chips).

Tomorrow Lauren is coming over to my house so we can bake we some cupcakes and then bring them over to Kathryn's house before we all go out.

Life in Morocco

Basically to sum up everything about my trip in Morocco was that everything was late. According to everyone the French train system is ALWAYS on time, but apparently that doesn't apply to me since only 1 of my trains has been on time. Cat and I left Grenoble to go to Marsielle but that train was 15 minutes late so we almost missed our connection. We had to run to catch the train.

In Marseille since our flight was so early in the morning we decided to stay the night at the airport to save money. That was not such a good idea. I was unable to sleep not because of the uncomfortable chairs or the lights (although that didn't help), I couldn't sleep because it was sooo cold in the airport. At 3 AM I decided to put more clothes on so I put another pair of jeans over the pair I already had on. But I still wasn't able to sleep, however, I did find a British tabloid newspaper that I could read, which was really nice.

So our flight was into Tanger (Tangiers) but we were going to meet our friends in Fez so we had to take a train. However, there was something wrong with the train tracks so we had to take a bus. The bus was a 4 hour long ride in the middle of no where and then we could take a train. However, that train was late so we had to wait around the train station. Once on the train, there were no seats left so we had to stand in between two cars. This apparently was the smoking area for men, even though there were no smoking signs everywhere and we were the only girls, which brought a lot of stares (which would follow us everywhere). On the train Cat noticed that her cellphone was nolonger in her pocket, which meant that somewhere in between the bus and getting on the train someone had stolen her phone. This also started an unfortunate pattern of bad things happening to us.

Eventually we made it to Fez and luckily the hotel was really easy to fine and our friends Julia and Kathryn were on the terrace of the hotel. Cat and I were starving since we had not eaten real food so we went across the street to this cafe. I ordered couscous and mint tea and it was SO good and it was only about 4 dollars. There was so much food that I was unable to eat it all.

The next day we walked to these French ruins at the top of this hill with panoramic views of Fez and then we decided to venture into the Medina and then proceeded to get lost for an hour and a half. People everywhere we hassling us and call us names to try and get our attention and get us to buy things from them, or to become our guide and then rip us of. But eventually we found our way out of the maze like Medina, but not before seeing men carrying live chickens in the hands, people selling live snails, a camel's head, and other things that I am not even sure what it was.

After our long day of walking we went back to our hotel and went to the same cafe, where "Chad" talked to us about the differences to Berber and Arab cultures. (Chad was a worker at the cafe and he was Berber). He offered some pretty interesting insights, which we found to be true later on.

We left Fez the next day to travel down to Marrakesh. This was about a 7 hour train ride and after not finding seats on the first train we decided to ride in first class with only about a 10 dollar difference. In our compartment we met a man who was a little crazy and when he found out we were Americans he proclaimed to hate Osama Bin Laden and call America paradise. Thankfully he wasn't going all the way to Marrakesh with us.

In Marrakesh there were massive rain clouds and thunder, so Cat and I decided to eat really fast before the rain came down. We ate at the main square, where there are a bunch of restaurants that basically sell the same things and all of the workers call out to the tourists to get them to eat at their restaurants.

The next day we went to a Hamman at our hotel, which is basically a sauna and a bath house combined. Where the workers wash you and use this soap that is exfoliating. After our hours of traveling without a shower it was really nice. Then we went walking around the Medina in Marrakesh and got a little lost, but not too lost.

Miraculously in our wandering around town we saw this man with about 5 camels and a couple of little ponies. He wanted 150 from each of us just to get on a camel, but we bargained down to 75 for the both of us and he even took some pictures of us. After the camel adventure we walked around and got henna tattoos at the big square and then went back to our hotel.

The next day we went to the royal place and took some picture which apparently is illegal because a guard came up to us. I thought we was going to take our camera or our memory cards, but he just made us delete the pictures, which was nice considering. I still don't know why we couldn't take pictures because there weren't any signs or anything.

We basically had a lot of time to kill because we had did everything that we had wanted to do on the first day. But we waited in Marrakesh to meet up with our friends, but they never called us but we thought that they were going to check into our hotel. I guess they did try to call us, but none of our phones worked in Morocco. Oh well. Eventually I got so sick of all of the leering and name calling and people asking for money that I didn't want to leave our hotel room anymore because it gets pretty exhausting.

We decided to take the night to Tanger from Marrakesh because it was a 10 and a half hour train ride, which was supposed to get us into Tanger at 7:30 with plenty of time to make our 9:45 flight. However, how train was almost 2 hours late, so we literally jumped off of the train before it stopped and ran to get a taxi. But we definitely chose the wrong taxi because he didn't go fast at all and the proceeded to take almost all of the money out of my wallet. I say almost because he left me a 200 dirhaim bill, that no one would take because it was ripped a little, but all of the numbers on the bill were still there. But essentially I had no money left. At the airport they wouldn't let us check in and since we flew with ryan air, we couldn't check in online because we weren't EU nationals, so there was no way onto the plane. I then started to cry in the middle of the airport because I was just so fed up with Morocco and just wanted to go back to France.

There were no flights to France from Tanger out that day so our other options was to take a 36 hour boat ride to some city 250 KM from Marsielle, which is about 500 KM from Grenoble all together. Cat gets seasick so that wasn't an option. So there was a flight to Paris on Saturday and a flight to Marsielle on Sunday. Both tickets we would have to pay for and none of us had any money for food or for a hotel and we both wanted to leave as soon as possible so we took the flight to Paris.

Since we didn't really have any housing options, Cat asked the lady at the desk if we could sleep at the airport, which she said we couldn't. But she did ask if we wanted to go back to her apartment which she shared with her sister. We both said yes and we were so greatful for her. Cat and I waited at the airport until she got off of work and then went back to her place, where her sister had cooked us dinner. We watched Arabic MTV with a bunch of arabic music which was really nice. They wanted to take us our dancing, but we both hadn't had a shower since Monday so we didn't want to go.

On Saturday, they took us to the airport and they didn't charge us to check-in or to check in Cat's bag which was super nice. Our flight was about 30 minutes late though, so when we got to Paris we discovered that we missed the last train to Grenoble by about 15 minutes. So we then took a train to Lyon and got in at 11 PM and the last train to Grenoble from Lyon was at 10:45 PM. So we both had to stay in a hotel at Lyon and wait until 6:45 AM for a train to Grenoble. Finally in Grenoble we look at the bus stop and see that we missed our bus by about 10 minutes and then had to wait an hour and a half to finally get home.

Basically it was an adventure and a half. I am glad I went though because I got to see a completely different culture and although it was stressful I was able to do a LOT of shopping and got my friends some really cool presents.

Travels and Skiing

I went skiing in the Alps on Saturday and for someone who only had been skiing once before (10 years ago) I was doing pretty well. The first run was basically on my butt the whole entire way down but by the end of the day I was doing really well. It was so hard to see though because of the clouds and it was snowing so I could only see about 10 feet in front of me, which makes skiing kind of difficult. But I think I will be going again sometime real soon once I get back from my trip.

I have been preparing for my trip but the location will be a mystery so my parents won't have a heart attack worrying about me while I am gone, even though everything should be fine. Since where I am going I don't think I'll be able to access the internet readily you won't be hearing from me until the 21 or the 22. I get back late on the 20 but then my host brother is taking me to a football (soccer) game on the 21.

Just to let you know you should be prepared for a REALLY long entry when I get back so you can hear all about my travels in *******!

Classes are going really well by the way. My language teacher is so funny, everytime someone makes a mistake he pretends to shoot them and he makes a sound like he is dying. Today I got shot.

French Health Care

This week I had my first encounter with the French Health Care system. After finally being convinced that I needed to go to the doctor I went and was told that I have bronchitis. So I was given 4 different prescriptions that have all helped so far. However, I think I now have a cold, which makes me wonder if I am going to be perpetually sick in France, which would not be fun (although the doctor was quite nice).

Also, I moved down to a different level this week and I am loving it. The teacher is really nice and animated and which makes me actually want to go to class and as a bonus this level has no Friday class so I have long weekends every weekend.

On Friday, Victor took 4 of us into one of the mountain ranges near Grenoble where we saw a church and a monastery. The church was amazing. On the outside it looked like a normal church in a little French village, but inside it was filled with modern art. The whole church was done completely by one artist and it took him over 30 years. All of the stain glass, the sculptures, and paintings were done by him and it was his own personal take on the Bible. It was really fascinating.

The monastery was really cool too. Since it was a monastery we were not allowed in, but after a little hike up a hill (in the snow) we were able to see a little bit inside of the wall surrounding it. According to Victor, Pope John Paul II really liked going there. These monks make their living by distilling this liqueur called Chartreuse. It takes upward of 130 different herbs to make it and only two monks in the order know the recipe at any given time. Victor bought us a little bottle of it and it sure helped with my cough. It is said to help extend a persons life but I was not so much a fan of it.

Last night, my friend Cat's host sister was throwing a party at her house because her parents were going to be away (don't worry, the parents knew about the party). It was interesting to how different French parties are from American parties. It was definitely a cultural experience. Everyone tried to practice their English on us and they were all surprised that we were in France to learn French (which didn't make sense to me at all).

That was pretty much it for this week. Hopefully my posts will become more regular when I am not as sick.

Classes and the Inauguration

My French classes have officially begun and my first impressions are not so good. But it has only been the second day so we shall see what happens. The afternoon (culture) classes have been really interesting so far and it'll be difficult to chose which one to go to.

On Tuesday Cat and I went to her house to watch the inauguration of Obama and because it was live we thought there would just be French subtitles but then they were dubbing the speech so we had to watch it on her computer while her host sisters watched it on the TV.

Afterward we went out to celebrate Cat's birthday and by the end of the night it was just Cat and I left and we decided to walk a little bit to save some taxi money but when we tried calling a taxi, it said that the number was wrong even though I had already used to number once. So at this point we are no where near downtown and a tram passed by so we hopped on it in the hopes that it was going downtown so we could regroup. However, this tram took us to someplace where we had never been. So being completely lost we starting freaking out, but luckily as we were about to have panic attacks, Cat saw a taxi and jumped in front of it.

So today is the only day of the week that I have 8:3o class and I was all prepared but I forgot to set my alarm clock last night. So when I woke up and it was light outside I was freaking out and saw that it was 8:30. I ran to put clothes and ran to the bus (twisting my ankle in the process). However, the little bus was late so I had to wait for another bus to come and then I got on. However, this bus although it was the same number did not go to the campus and since I had no idea where I was I stayed on the bus until the end of the line and finally the bus driver asks me where I wanted to go. When I told him he started shaking his head and then went into a restaurant for a while for his break. However, when the bus finally did go to the campus he opened the doors and let me out at the building where my class was even though it wasn't a bus stop.

I made it class for the last 30 minutes and then the teacher asks why I was late so I had to explain my stupidity in front of the whole class =/

Day Trip to Lyon

Lyon is only about an half and half train ride away from Grenoble so our teacher Victor took us there on a trip. The day started out pretty early and the first thing that we did when we got there was take the funicular, which is like a roller coaster in the beginning where it just pulls the cars up a little bit at a time. It took us up to see this Church where every year there is a pilgrimage.

After the Church we had some free time to grab lunch so everyone that wasn't a vegetarian decided to go to buchon, which Lyon is famous for. My host mom tried to warn me about some of the food there but since I didn't know how to spell the things I was not able to heed her warning. The meal started out well with a Lyonaise sausage with brioche. It was surprsingly good. Then I ordered something, I was not really sure what it was when I ordered. But I figured that since it was a menu that people must eat it and like it. When the plate comes it looks like a giant piece of fried fish. I cut into it and discovered that it was not fish, but instead tripe. I tried to eat some of it but could only eat like 3 bites of it. After that dish I decided to play it safe with a lemon pie, while Cat inadvertently ordered prunes in wine.

Victor took us to this museum about the French Resistance and Deportation during WWII. It was interesting but the museum was badly laid out. And then some people went to the museum of Fine Art but I was tired so a group of us decided to catch the 5:15 train. I don't know why but Victor sent of off walking to a really far metro station in Vieux Lyon so the 5 of us were power walking because we only had about 25 minutes to catch our train.

When we all got to the metro station I saw that the train was about to leave to we all run and make it one, but as Lauren just reached the train the doors literally closed on her. She wasn't able to make it because most of her was still on the platform. The rest of us unsure whether or not we should wait for her or not, kept going to see if we could make the train. We finally got off but had to make a transfer within the Metro and we were all running trying to make the train.

Finally when we arrived at the train station, we couldn't find where our train was departing from. Frantically searching I discovered that it was the J platform but I only saw the elevator as a way to reach it so we all ran into the elevator which moved so slowly. But finally we made it to the train. After trying to find seats one of us gets a call and it's Lauren! She made it to the train station and she was almost at the right platform. As she was about to make it on the train, the doors were starting to close. But I said that it couldn't happen again so I forced the doors open and she was able to make the train.

However, from what everyone says about trains in Europe are always on time LIED because after all of that effort the train was 30 minutes. So we didn't need to ran everywhere in Lyon to catch the train. Oh well, I am just glad we made the train because I was exhausted especially after my earlier culinary adventure.

Placement Test

Well today was the day of the dreaded placement test which places you into a certain level according to your French skills. I'll I have to say is that it was dreaded for a reason. We were told that we would start with the listening/writing section which was good so we good practice for the oral section. I should have known that the test was going to be ridiculous when I said that the test wouldn't be that bad and then all of the lights in the room went out. It was just destined to go down-hill from there.

We actually had to do the oral part first. I was not the first to go so I was able to hear the kind of questions that were being asked and they weren't that bad. Such as where has your family done on vacation? do you like to dance? Well it's finally my turn and I am thinking okay I can do this and then she asks me why I am studying French. So I say because it's a diplomatic language and I want to be a diplomat which she then counters with why. Which sends me stumbling around trying to think not only in English but in French as well. After narrowly avoiding catastrophe with that she then asks me what I find interesting on the news lately. Well since all of the news here in France is in French I can't understand half of it so I haven't been watching it. Basically the only thing I know is the crisis between Israel and Palestine. So I say that. BAD IDEA! She then asks why it interests me so then I had to come up with something which took a while yet again. So here I am trying to explain the Israel and Palestine conflict in another language while it is confusing enough in my native language. Basically it sucked. I have no idea why I got all of the hard questions while others got asked what countries they know.

At least it is over now so I won't be stressing about it over the weekend.

The Start

So when I got into Grenoble on the 4th, Victor (my teacher) took us around the town which took all of about 5 minutes and then left us to our own devices. A couple of us decided to climb the stairs of "La Bastille" which was originally built to see intruders from Italy and then later was used during the French Revolution. So this is about 2.5 KM up a steep hill on steps. I should have been in the other group that just went walking around town =)

Half way up the hill I was tired and didn't want to go any higher but then this cute 70ish year old French woman was encouraging me up the hill. Now this is sad on many accounts because she should not be giving me advice I should be giving her advice. Oh well. I started goging back up the stairs and we starting talking. During the conversation we went over what we (Julia and I) were doing in France and how old we were, ect... And she said that I spoke better French, but Julia could climb the stairs better. Either way it was really funny.

After that we went out to dinner in the Italian Quartier and had some pizza and pasta. And then we were all so tired that we just passed out at about 9:30 at night.

The next the director of API (the program SU is going through over here in Grenoble) took us on another walking tour of Grenoble. And then finally it was time to meet our families.

I was the only one with a dad to come pick them up and then he took me to Carrefour, which is like a HUGE Target with a full grocery store and clothes and other things. Basically whatever you could possibly need or think of would be in this store.

Then it was finally off to the house where I meet the mom and the brothers and sister. Edouard (21) doesn't live at home but is studying in Toulosse. Charles (19) is studying economics at Grenoble and Clementine (15) who is still in high school. They are all really nice and really welcoming. The dad speaks English and so does Edouard and Charles. But Francoise (the mom) and Clementine don't really. However, they all said that I spoke well and that I was doing fine, which is something I think.

Today we had our first day of classes with Victor. Cat (who lives literally down the street from me) and I took the buses to school today and Charles came along to show us how it works and which one we take and where it goes. That was really nice especially because we would have been so lost without his help.

However, our commute was not helped by the fact that it was snowing! I discovered that snow is pretty but not practical.

Life in Paris

I really don't know why some people think that the French are snobby and unhelpful. Our time in Paris was full ofwonderful people that were willing to help us out.

When we first arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport we thought are bags were lost because they were the last to arrive. Then we couldn't find the train that would finally take us to the Metro. Finally we found the RER B and tried to squeeze on with all of our bags (6 HUGE bags between the 4 of us with lots of little carry-ons). On the train some man got on who was carrying a rifle without a case or anything which is kind of a sketchy thing, but we made it off the train without any hassles.

At the metro station we couldn't find where to buy tickets and then when we did there was a HUGE line so we thought maybe we would take a taxi. But outside at the taxi line up there was no one there so after 15 minutes in the freezingcold we thought we would brave the metro station again. I had NO idea that the Metro would be so difficult with all of our bags because I thought that it would be handicap accessible...Well i was wrong, SO wrong. We had to make 3 transfers with about 4 flights of steps between the different metro lines. It was very difficult. Lucky someone was kind enough to help Cat carry her bags up the stairs because she was really struggling.

On the next Metro, Cat and I almost got stuck while Kathryn adn Julia got off the train because the doors didn't automatically open like i thought they would. I didn't know how to open them either and trying to get out the other doors my suitcase got caught on the stairs and the doors started closing, but some really nice man lept up to keep the doors open from closing for us.

At the hotel we had to wait an hour because they hadn't cleaned the room for us which kind of sucked because we were all tired and then the "elevator" was like a coffin so it only fits 1 person comfortablly so getting our suitcases to the 5th floor was an experience.

Once in the room everyone went to bed, but I wanted to explore a little bit so I walked around to get a feeling for the neighborhood which was really nice, and when I got back to the hoteleveryone was sleeping so I went to bed too. We all woke up at 4 in the morning, which was funny.

We went to the internet cafe that I found the night before and then to breakfast because we were all starving. We ate a tartine (bread, butter, and jam), fresh orange jucie, and coffee. It was really good and then went to a pharmacie to get some toiletries.

After that we tried to find a cell phone store that was open so we could buy our French cellphones. But since it was only 9 in the morning on a Friday, not much was open. We kept trying toask where to find "Bouyges" but no one understood what we were saying because we were prounoucing it so bad. We finally found a store but the guy didn't speak English, but we were able to speak French and understand each other and eventually we got our cell-phones.

After that we went to this amazing bakery and bought a sandwhich, a drink, and a dessert for only 6 Euros, which is pretty amazing and it was REALLY good. Then we took the Metro to see the Eiffel Tour and the Siene. I didn't know that it was so big. We walked around a little trying to kill time because Julia made plans to meet a monastic priest who lives in Juresalem but was in Paris at the time to go to dinner with him. It was a very interesting meal to say the least.

After dinner we were all tired and took a nap, but we wanted to go to a cafe so I set an alarm to wake us up. Cat, Kathryn, and I went to this cafe. It was nice and we sat at a table by the window. After a while this guy tried to talk to us through the window and then LICKED the window. It was very odd. After the one drink we went back to our hotel to sleep.

The next day we woke up at 7 AM (What an improvement!). We tried to go the cemetrary but I sent us in the complete opposite direction =/ So we just ate breakfast. We had the "Classic French Breakfast" (soft boiled eggs (which weren't as awful as I thought they would be), orang juice, coffee, a crossisant, and bread with butter and jam).

Then we took Julia to the train station, so she could go to Grenoble a day early. There we discovered we couldn't retrieve our train tickets because our cards didn't have the chip that most French cards have. So we went to a ticket window and after waiting in line we found out the we were in the wrong line because she didn't speak English, so we went to the "English" line. Which wasn't moving at all. Luckily everyone in front of us couldn't speak French at all so we got to skip the line and go to someone that did speak French (we didn't want to wait in line and we thought that 3 of us could work together and be able to accomplish what we wanted). This lady was really nice and didn't know ANY English at all but we were able to retrieve our tickets even though some of us forgot our reservation number. We were even able to change our tickets to be able to be on the same train and not have to switch trains either. She was really nice and patient with us.

Cat, Katryn and I then went to the Jardin de Tulleries (the garden right outside the Louvre) which was gorgeous. We then walked to the Obleisk which was really cool and we were able to see the Arc du Triomphe from there. We were a little too lazy to walk all the way there though.

We also went to the Notre Dame. It took us a while because again I got us turned around and we went in the wrong direction =/ but eventually we found it. Then we went back to our hotel on the metro, where this really creepy lady was singing a really creepy song and was asking for money. She was staring at me for a really long time, even though I wasn't looking at her.

We got lunch from the sandwhich place again and it was really amazing again. I went to walk to the cemetary by myself because the others were tired but I just missed it becuase it was closing right when I got there=( I'll have to go there when I go back to Paris.

Once back at the hotel I just passed out becuase I was so tired from all of the walking around. This morning we had to wake up really early in order to catch our train. We met Victor at the station in Grenoble and are going to have a walking tour of the city today.

(Updates will be more regular now that I have wifi)

I meet my family tomorrow!

P.S. If someone asks you if you speak English at a tourist spot say NO!

(Barely) Alive in Paris

Well I have been up for over 24 hours and barely got here in one piece. Currently I am in qn internet cqfe I found near the Bastille. I am really not a fan of the french keyboards so this wont be very long. I just wanted to let you know that I finally made it to France!