La Vie de Deux Mademoiselles a France

We woke up the morning after we arrived, so Jan 3rd, and had our free breakfast at the hostel. It was pretty good, not as good as the hotel, but certainly nothing to complain about. As evidence to this fact, our stash of foodstuffs in our room from the free breakfast consists of butter, jam, nutella, bread, fruit, cereal, tea, etc.

We then had showers, and took the bus then the tram to the university. The public transit system here is off the hook! We never have to wait, and the trams are awesome (basically like streetcars), also they play music on the buses. Grenoble definitely gets an A+ for transit infrastructure.

The campus is a lot like UBC, but with much larger and higher mountains. We found Nicole (our advisor) without problem and got a lot of our questions asked and some possible housing opportunities and resources. Basically once we left her office, we had much to do. First order of business: go to le banque de Lyonnais (LCL) and open an account and purchase liability insurance. But the banks aren’t open on Sundays or Mondays so we did that the next day (Tuesday).

After our visit to the university we went to the mall to look at cellphone plans and get Megan’s sim card removed. We had some tasty sandwiches. On our way back to the hostel we stopped at the nearby l’epicerie (grocery) to get some food to put in the fridge at the hostel. We got organic milk in a carton for 1 euro! We also got some produce, eggs, and yogurt. There are about a million different types of yogurt here!

When we got back to the hostel. Julien (the front desk guy who likes us) was working again…we think he does the night shift 4pm onwards. We still haven’t had to pay for any night other than the first! After we dropped our stuff of in our room we went down to the bar to get some dinner. The bar waiter gave us 2 free beers!!! Totally awesome. We talked a bit to some french guys then went upstairs to sleep as we were exhausted.

The next morning, we woke up and had our breakfast but also made some eggs ourselves to go along with the other food. Then we went to LCL (Le Banque Lyonnais) to open an account. Well this was quite interesting! I spoke a lot of french with my bank advisor (no one in the bank spoke any english, but a woman in line helped us a bit at first): “Nous aimeraions ouvrir un compte de l’etudiante ici!”. Well we were successful in opening an account, but must wait until we have a permanent address to get the liability insurance which we need to apply for our permanent residency carte.

Then we went to the university, but Nicole was out to lunch so Megan bought her usual sandwich at the great campus eatery and then we went back into le centre ville to look at a residence. This was a total failure, as there was  no space and the woman wouldn’t let us look at un chambre regardless. Then we trammed back to the campus (all this travel today has only been possible by Grenoble’s awesomely efficient tram system) to talk to Nicole. We got her to make some calls to possible housing locations to set up appointments. We then met with James Anderson (the man in charge of international students course selection). I will be taking a french language course, a french culture course (both in in french obvs). Three cours de specialises, and either 1 or 2 seminar courses (these courses are in english). The first day of classes is on january 17th. We are automatically registered in the french courses and need to pick whether we are taking one or two seminar courses to be registered in. But the other courses (cours de specialises) we can attend, but do not need to register in until later as attendance is not mandatory :)!!!

Then we went back to our hostel briefly, looked for some more housing online, ate dinner, and then caught the bus back to the centre ville to look at an accomodation appt Nicole had set up. This place is prime!!! Right in the downtown, on the third floor, such an old building. 2 other french girls. They may let Megan and I share the room (the best possible situation for saving money, unless we (or one of us) finds something we like better). They will let us know early next week once one of their roomates gets back, but we think they really like us as we stressed that we were there to learn french. And as everyone here seems to be, they were also impressed that we attend the IEP (Sciences Po).

Now we are back at the hostel, preparing to go out to le deuxieme semestre student integration at a bar downtown. that is all for now. Really loving Grenoble!

Bonsoir.