We are approaching the end of my sejour here in France; I come home in 6 days! Here's what I have been up to these final weeks.

The sunday after Annecy we had a scheduled trip with the whole group to go see the Monastery of the Chartreuse up in the mountains and the chartreuse museum/factory down in the valley next to it, all of which is only an hour away from where I live. For those of you who don't know (as I did not before coming here) chartreuse is a yellow-green liqueur that is made exclusively by the monks from this monastery. You may have surmised that the color chartreuse in English is named after it. It is made by steeping a secret mixture of over 130 herbs and flowers in pretty much straight up rubbing alcohol for an extended period of time.  I don't drink, but I understand that it is very very strong, in taste and alcoholic content. An acquired taste for sure.

The monastery was absolutely beautiful. It was cloudy and drizzly that day, but still we were right up in the middle of the alps, and there was a museum about monastic life so it was awesome.










The following week was good, very very hot. The weather here has been either chilly rain or sweltering humid heat. But it hasn't been bad, a little nice to have some variety at least. But there is one thing that I'm mystified by, and that is the complete lack of A/C throughout the entirety of France. Houses, schools, workplaces... the only places with A/C are restaurants and retail stores. My little loft is at the very top of our building and I die of heat on the hot nights. I have a great window I could open, but after doing that for the first two nights here I was covered with about 25 mosquito bites. Even on my face I had a couple, you can see them in the pics in Paris. So much rage.

But now I've gotten at least a little accustomed to it. Still mystified as to why there's no A/C though. Seriously. Everywhere is so hot.



This past weekend I considered not going anywhere, because I am pretty exhausted of traveling everywhere. But the prospect of swimming in the Mediterranean on the Côte D'azur was enough to get me down to Marseille for two days. I cannot tell you the number of people, French and American, who told us that "there are no beaches in Marseille." While there are many other things to do in Marseille, let's just clarify that there are indeed beaches.  The water was turquoise and there wasn't a cloud in the sky the whole of our trip. We stayed in an amazing house just south of the city, right on the edge of the BEACH. I was with Kendall, Brand, Elli and Ana, and it was a much better group than the Paris trip. Although unfortunately there was still some puking involved, Kendall got food poisoning. It was still a great time. 

It was a lovely weekend. Despite that the traveling was still exhausting. I love it here and love going to all these cool places, but I'm pretty tired, and am looking forward to being home. So I'll be seeing all of you very soon! 

Á Bientôt!

Time Flies Like A TGV

So sorry for the lack of posts. That seems to be how it goes though. As I've been more busy and getting into the groove of things here I just haven't had the time/energy!

So you all saw the weekend trip to Geneva, that was lovely. I spent the following week just doing classes, I'm in a class much more suitable to my level, but I still feel like I suck at French. It's just so hard to pronounce! It was shockingly rainy and cold all week long, I had to wear the only long sleeved shirt I brought for like 3 days in a row. 

The city of grenoble has a pretty decent tram system (lightrail) but it's actually much faster to bike everywhere, and it's so flat in the city that it's very very easy. So I rented a bike from the city! I love it so much, my legs are getting buff and I get around so much faster than everyone else. Plus I get to know the city better and see more of it! It's perfect. 

Then this last weekend I spent up in Paris! I went with 4 other kids from my group and we rented a tiny little apartment up in Montmartre right behind the Sacre Coeur cathedral. It was lovely. There were actually several things that went horribly wrong over the course of the trip.  Most memorably, one of the girls I was with chose to stay out and become inebriated to the point of later covering a significant portion of the tiny apartment floor with Bordeaux vomit. At 2 in the morning. C'est la vie when traveling with people you just met. But despite that event and the many events that dominoed from it (flooded washing machine, not getting into the louvre, missing the first scene of the ballet we went to)  I genuinely had a wonderful trip. 

I love that street art more than anything, possibly ever. Adding Disney to something already so good can only make it greater. 

 That's pretty much the whole apartment. The cute blonde at the top is Ana, my friend without whom I could not have survived the weekend with. Then that's Adriana, the Bordeaux spewer. She wasn't even apologetic the next day. In fact she was quite rude. Some people... 

I've seen a ton of cathedrals between here and Italy, but Sacre Coeur is still my favorite one. It's just so beautiful.

The last girl on the left is Elli, who was also very sweet and I was glad to be with. 

We went to the two museums I really wanted to see: the Rodin and the Orangerie. The Rodin is a beautiful sculpture garden and the Orangerie is a little impressionist museum, with Renoir and Monet and some Picasso and such. Both were beautiful.

Picasso

We also walked around Paris a bit. Ana wanted to go to the Pont Des Arts, which is the bridge with all of the love locks on it. We went there and she put the lock that her and her boyfriend had signed on it.

We walked over by Notre Dame and there was a choir singing when we got there and it was quite lovely. 

The next day we went to see a ballet at the Paris opera house (the hunchback of Notre dame) which was excellent. Then we went to the Paris cemetery. I have a thing for cemeteries so I absolutely loved it, and I saw the graves of Oscar Wilde and Chopin.

We stopped by the Shakespeare and Company bookstore which was awesome. 

We went home on Monday night. It was a long weekend due to Bastille day, the French Independence Day on the 14th of July. I made it home to see the fireworks from our apartment in grenoble. 

The Tour de France passed through Grenoble yesterday, right in front of my apartment! We went outside and watched it pass. It was about 95 degrees outside and I was about to pass out just standing there waiting for the tour to pass through. The cyclists had just completed a massive mountain climb as they came through, and I cannot even imagine how awful that would be. But anyways, it was cool to watch. They were all very spread out, so the video only has a group of a few riders in it.

I just barely got back an hour or so ago from a day trip to Annecy, which I had never heard of before coming here but is essentially a smaller French version of Venice situated on an amazingly clear lake in the Alps. It was absolutely gorgeous. Apparently it's the 2nd most visited place in France after Paris, but it wasn't too crowded. 

So that brings us up to date! Only 2 weeks left! I'll try and get a solid couple more posts in before then. 

Picture Time

The City of Grenoble as seen from the top of the tram station. I live in that little red circle all the way to the left. The university is just a little to the left of that, and the city center is just to the right of that, where all the buildings are clustered together closely.

The little bubble shaped trams that go to the top of the mountain above the city. They're very cute. There's a small fort at the top of them that used to defend the city.

Up close of the "bubbles." 

This is what the buildings look like in the older center area of Grenoble. Pretty standard French/Italian style stuff, very pretty.

The apartment buildings where I live. 

I live with a host family on the 6th floor in an apartment building with no elevators. I have to climb 12 flights like this one in order to get to my room. I'm going to have great legs come the end of my stay here.

These hydrangeas
 are in front of an apartment complex I walk past every day to get to and from the tram station. That picture isn't edited (#nofilter), they are really that pretty.

Celebrating the 4th of July in the Park.

Our 4th of July Lunch. Due to a lack of Fireworks and American Flags, this was the most American thing we could think of to do. 

This Saturday (July 5) myself and 3 other girls from the U took a day trip to Geneva, Switzerland. It's a 2 hour train ride from Grenoble. It was a beautiful city. An expensive city, but very nice; even just the food was so expensive. Also I have never seen so many nice cars in one day. Maseratis, Lamborghinis, the latest and greatest Mercedes, Ducati motorcycles, every Audi make there is...it was fascinating.

Back in the Swiss homeland, hooray!!

We hung out at the beach of lake Geneva for a while, even though it was a bit too chilly to get in. It's a really pretty lake, very clear and fresh.

 Blue steel.

 Making friends with the swans on the lake. 

In front of the beautiful fountain and lake and city.

We went to a volleyball tournament that was going on on the beach (Kendall on the right plays volleyball for the U) and we got these sweet free hats. Never turn down free stuff!