Chapitre Un: Bienvenue a France

The view from my balcony at the Hotel de l'Europe in Grenoble

Bonjour tout le monde!  I have arrived in France in one piece.  My flights were easy, no delays, no runway drama, no dramatic employees quitting their jobs.  If you go to Europe, I recommend flying Swiss.  I had a delicious tortellini meal, including an excellent brownie, and in the morning they gave me a chocolate filled croissant!  On my next flight, which was short, they gave me swiss chocolate!  Forget about pretzels, American has it all wrong!  When I arrived in 

My airplane in Zurich

Lyon I met three other girls from my program who all go to Bowdoin and we found our way to Grenoble together.  We had some free time to rest, shower, etc before we met as a group for dinner.  I watched Woody Woodpecker cartoons in french.  At 7, we met in the lobby and walked to dinner together.  The city is wonderful.  The architecture is old fashioned and european and just the way I imagined it.  The most incredible part is that the city is completely surrounded by mountains.  You can look around and see buildings, houses, roads; then all of a sudden there is a mountain.  Its beautiful!  Anyway, we walked through the wonderful downtown to a nice restaurant where we ate outside, which was great.  The best part, besides the food and getting to know everyone, was that a little old french woman watched us eat the entire meal (3 hours!) from her apartment window overlooking the restaurant.  She just sat there, leaning out her window the whole time.  It could have been a scene from a movie about a bunch of american kids attempting to speak french, while the locals are amused.  The food was great!  So far I have had nutella, fromage and bread, all the staples of french cuisine.  However, the french eat other things as well!  I had 'un saladier grenoblais' for dinner, which was a delicious salad with cheese, lardon (similar to bacon) and some other things.  It was delicious.  

Today I moved in with my host family, after lunch and a tour of the city.  My host famille, who I will refer to as the Von Trapps to protect their identity, have 3 childen: a 17 year old son, and 15 year old girl and a 13 year old girl.  And preparez-vous: They have a guinea pig!  They also have 4 cats and a dog!  They all are very nice and I understood about 1/4 of the things they said to me.  But I'm getting better already!  I have much, much more to write, but I'll save it for a time when I can organize my thoughts better. 

Preface: Avant le Voyage

Bonjour!  Today, I leave Maine to spend the semester in Grenoble, France.  Grenoble is located in the French Alps (southeastern France), near Switzerland and Italy.  With a population of about 160.000, it is bigger than I'm used to but I'm sure I'll know my way around in no time.  While in Grenoble I'll be staying with a host family, which I'm sure will be a wonderful and eye-opening experience.  Armed with my gift bag full of maple goodies, blueberry delights and a book of Maine photography, I hope to charm my French hosts with my bubbly personality through copious hand gestures and bumbling french.  My journey starts tonight when my flight leaves Boston.  Tomorrow morning I arrive in Zurich, Switzerland, where I'll board a flight to Lyon, in France.  From there, I'll take about an hour-long train ride to Grenoble.  This is something I'm looking forward to about being in Europe: trains.  I enjoy trains immensely and look forward to riding them on every possible occasion. 

Other things I'm looking forward to:

1. French cuisine.  To my understanding, the people of France have determined a way to survive exclusively on baguettes, cheese, crepes and nutella.  On the occasion that they crave meat, they may have chicken cordon bleu.  This diet sounds wonderful, although I look forward to discovering if the French, in fact, eat other foods.
2. Cobbled streets and Vespa scooters.  Europeans have mastered the art of driving on cobblestone.
3. Beautiful mountains.  Grenoble is in the Alps, thus I hope to be able to reenact my favorite moments of the Sound of Music whenever possible.

Things I am concerned about:

1.  Milk (my beverage of choice) will not be readily available to me as people will expect me to drink wine.  This concerns me because a) I don't want to lose my lactose tolerance and b) I like milk better than wine.
2. I will mistake a bidet for a toilet... embarrassing.  Keep your eyes open for future information about the bidet situation.
3. Perhaps it's only an urban legend that French women don't shave their legs, in which case I shall be extremely disappointed.

Since I haven't actually left the country yet, I'll leave my ramblings for now.  I have a Bill Bryson book to read and I hope to have better luck reading it in transit than Meredith did with her Bill Bryson book. I'll post some updates as soon as possible and try to include some pictures.  Thanks for all the well-wishes and I'll miss you all!  Au revoir!

p.s. I'm in the airport and I just saw the crew for my flight walk by!  Exciting!