Today started off better than the one before, as I actually woke up to my alarms. Additionally after some research, I was ready to face the European shower again (I would have showered the night before, but that is frowned upon in this household). I had learned that the key is to sit down in the shower. This seemed weird to me, but I gave it a try and had some decent success. I was clean and there was no water on the floor. While I missed standing up in the shower, the whole situation reminded me of a relevant Winston Churchill quote from when he was once asked about his success:
“Economy of effort. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down”.
I think the Europeans might be onto something.
Anne-Marie made me a breakfast of brioche and coffee, in its typical bowl fashion. What’s perplexing to me is that A-M was drinking her coffee out of a mug.
I finished breakfast, grabbed my stuff, and headed off to the BU office for my second French lesson. In this lesson, we learned some more essential phrases, verbs, and of course, fruits and vegetables.
French can be funny some times. I learned the word for lunch is “dejeuner” and breakfast is “petite-dejeuner”. Breakfast literally translates to little lunch. Additionally, the French word for potato is “Pomme de terre”, which translates to “apple of the ground”.
Just when we thought class was over, our professor took it to the next level by taking us to French farmers market so we could put our new knowledge of fruits and vegetables to the test. She gave us a tour of the market intially and then said our assignment was to buy something only using French. She stayed nearby to coach us as needed.
Here’s a picture from the market, snapchat lowered the picture quality as usal
After some browsing, my friend Dylan and I agreed to buy a baguette, sausage and cheese that we could split for lunch. We also bought oranges, so our knowledge of fruit could be utilized.
For 5 euros each, we successfully bought, in French I might add, two types of goat cheese, a fresh baguette, and two dried sausages containing goat cheese and walnuts. We took them back to the office and ate them for lunch. As expected, they were delicious.
Here’s a picture of my stereotypical French Lunch.
The advanced French class was about to start, so I decided to head out and climb to the top of the Bastille with a few of my classmates from “dumb French”. Not to be confused with the Bastille in Paris, the Grenoble Bastille is on a mountain and the has iconic, spherical gondolas that go up to the top. The gondolas are always under repair in January, so we decided to walk up.
Despite it being forty degrees out, we quickly worked up a sweat and were soon in just t-shirts. It had switchback trails going up the mountain, but was still somewhat steep. Rather than explaining in words, here a bunch of photos I took.
The Bastille from the Ground, as you can see graffiti is very popular here.
There was a ton of cool looking stairs like this and and views the whole way up.
Cool Jesus rays in the distance
Graffiti, vines, and a view, what else do you need .
Some of my classmates I went with.
The fort was super cool and had bunch of passageways to go through. As expected, the view was gorgeous from the top.
We hiked a slightly different trail to the bottom, soaking in the views as much as we could. It only took about 30 minutes on the way back since it was all down hill.
My classmates headed back to their houses and I went back to the office to meet up with my friend Nick. Nick was in the advanced french class and had a lesson after ours.
My phone was about to die and I was very paranoid about getting lost in the city. Fortunately I was able to get back right before my phone died.
Nick and I had been actively looking for a gym in Grenoble, and Nick found a relatively cheap one and signed up the day before. They don’t speak any English at the gym, so Nick came with me to help me sign up.
The gym is called Moana Club, is close to my house, and was relatively cheap. Filling out paperwork in English sucks enough already, and it was only worse in French. Fortunately Nick did all the translating for me and would tell me what to write on the sheet. 15 minutes later, I was signed.
Afterwards, I headed home. Being at home in my free time pretty much just consists of hanging out in my room alone. I usually take this time to write my blogs or just relax. That’s exactly what I did. After a while, I heard the dinner bill ring and headed downstairs.
It was just Jessica, Anne-Marie and I for dinner this evening. Because Andre wasn’t there, I think A-M made more of an attempt to converse with us in English. With Jessica’s translating skills, we were able to actually converse with A-M for the first time.
She would speak in her crappy English, and we would speak back in our crappy French. She told us some interesting stories, and I attempted to talk about my day. She told us that her husband Andre was once in a helicopter that crashed in Mont Blanc. Granted it was not a funny story, but the only words she knew in English were: “helicopter”,”accident”, and “not death”. So in short, it was hilarious. Then she told us one of her previous exchange students was in military school and had learned about the accident in class.
I may have misinterpreted this story, but she also said that her older son married a study abroad student who stayed at the house years ago. Too bad she didn’t have any daughters for me. These conversations made me excited to learn more French so I could converse more with A-M.
The actual dinner was some type of fish, and some potato and egg salad. I’m not a huge fish fan, but I enjoyed the meal. It was finished with the usual “pain et fromage”.
Afterwards, I was exhausted and went to bed pretty early.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
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