Imagine a city totally surrounded by mountain tops, some jagged and covered with snow, some that look like a stone’s throw away with a national monument on top. From every window of the city, those mountains stand to form a postcard-worthy view and the clear river flows through the city, taking everyone’s breath away as it reflects the mountains reaching for the sky. Welcome to Grenoble, France, where I will be living for the next five months.
I’m in my dorm right now, which is in the center city, looking over those mountains. I live with Karen from Boise, Idaho in our small dorm room complete with lofts and a sink and French windows and shutters that make the visit back to a freshman-year living situation so worth it. Just two minutes away is everything we need: a tram stop (above ground metro system), a bakery, tons of bars, the EUS office, a grocery store, and a market. We’re set. We’re even less than 50 meters from two churches, which chime their huge centuries-old bells on the hour, every hour except thankfully in the middle of the night. You just can’t have a better alarm clock.
It’s been really great to know that I’m in a perfect city for me: it’s not crazy like Paris, but it’s no boring old-peoples’ town in a cold part of France. There are so many opportunities for an adventure. We were actually going to go skiing and snowboarding today, but surprisingly, there isn’t enough snow at the 20+ resorts within an hour from Grenoble. I think a hike is in need for later today; it’s just going to be hard to decide which mountain in our 360-degree view the best for our first hike.
A lot of us are in home stays; some in apartments with French students, and some in dorms. We’ve been having a lot of fun learning about where everyone else lives and getting together to hang out. The first night we got here, everyone just passed out. We’d had a crazy night in Paris the night before our train ride to Grenoble, which included but was not limited to: tequila shots, tropical drinks, a jazz concert, Ron Burgundy quotes, an American cover-band, going to the red-light district at 3am for tattoos, and somehow being shocked when the tattoo stores weren’t open on a Thursday in the wee hours of the morning. Needless to say, we all needed a break.
We had a weird speech from Alexis highlighting some things to be wary of, and then just walked around, eventually making it to the river where a strip of probably 25 pizza parlors awaited our appetites. Nothing too special for the rest of the day, but we decided to hang out and drink wine that night at James’ apartment, where he lives with some other French guys.
We’re an interesting group, all of us here at EUS. There are two others from USC, Casey from Philadelphia and Taylor from Texas. Kim is one of my good friends from Minnesota, Michelle comes from New Hampshire, Sharon is from LA, Rafael calls Canada his home (I think, why else do we call him Canada?) James is from Vermont, Laura hails from Minnesota as well. I can’t even begin to say where everyone else is from…those are just the people that I’ve seen a lot over the past few nights. A few of us were at James’ having a ridiculous time and never managed to get on the tram by midnight when it stops running, so Michelle, Kim, and I had to stay over that night. The partying has already begun.
Yesterday we kind of laid low, doing a little shopping and driving around in Alexis. Alexis drives like a maniac—we ended up four-wheeling it through some bushes. It's been crazy, we're about to have a dinner party actually tonight at my dorm, so I've got to go get ready! I'll be sure to update everyone on my experiences, wish you were all here.
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