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.
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 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.
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