Back to School-Day 7- January 15th, 2018

My day started early and I got up around 7:15. The plan was to shower, get ready, eat breakfast, take the bus to the tram, and take the tram to campus. This all went pretty smoothly.  My breakfast was on the table, but I didn’t see Anne-Marie so I went to make my coffee via the electric water heater. I don’t really know the ratios for instant coffee, so I settled for super strong and bitter coffee today.

I had never taken the bus before, but I looked up the schedule and everything went well. I ended up running into Jonathon and Nick on the tram as well. We were all told to meet Celine at 8:45 so she could give us a brief tour of the campus before our class at 9:45.

The campus was very pretty, had gorgeous views of the alps and these cool grass and stone structures. The library was also fairly big and modern looking, unlike the ugly piece of trash Mugar library is at BU. About 90% of my classes would be in the science building, which inconveniently was pretty ugly and not nearly as nice as the library.

Here’s a few pictures of campus.

This is the inside of the science building, it sort of reminded me of a high school.

What was nice is that the science building has a student run cafeteria where you can get a decent lunch for 3.5 euros. I imagine I will be using that often.

My first class was differential equations. This class was only with BU students. There’s not too much to say about the class without boring my audience, but the professor was a bit dry, though pretty nice.

After class we had a two hour break. We went for another short tour of the remainder of the campus. There is another nice outdoor eating area by the library with a cafe and a few food places. I got a pretty huge sandwich on a baguette for 4 euros that was delicious. Despite being a little cold, we took advantage of the sun and ate outside with a bunch of the other students. I also used this free time to facetime my friend Mats in Hong Kong. He helped practice my French and gave some good advice for attracting French women.

A selfie with me and my sandwich.

Shortly after, I headed to my electric circuits class in the science building. This class was also just BU students, but French students would be joining us halfway through the course. We would also be forced to work with a French partner for labs, which seemed like a cool opportunity. The professor was super nice and taught well. I am looking forward to the class now.

(Also if anyone is wondering, all of my classes are in English except French obviously.)

Afterwards I had my modern physics class. The class had two professors as it was really a combination of two courses. One course was quantum mechanics and relativity, the other was nuclear physics. Despite being super intimidated by this course, I’m glad I’m finally at a point where I can lightly mention that I’m taking nuclear physics. The class was half BU students and half French students. Like circuits, we would be paired with a French student for labs.

The subject matter was pretty interesting, though towards the end I was getting pretty sleepy because one of the professor’s English was pretty rough and consisted of a lot of “ummm” ‘s.

After class, I headed back into the city to pick up my first food stipend from the BU office. After getting my cash, Nick and I made plans to meet up at the gym after getting changed at home. We did exactly that.

Being an American at very French gym, I made sure Nick and I entered together because I didn’t have my gym card yet. After some confusion with the desk guy, Nick translated for me and I was all set. Today was a biceps and shoulders workout, finishing with abs.

I hadn’t worked out for about a week and it felt really good to be back at it. All the weights are in kilos, so I had to do some math in my head for each exercise. Also considering Nick and I are likely the only Americans at this gym, the manager already knew our names and was very nice to us (in French).  I did my workouts as usual, and being super exhausted from the gym was a nice, nostalgic feeling of home.

After finishing up, Nick and I parted ways and I went to find some dinner. My phone was at 12% , so I started walking towards the closest place I found on google maps. I also attempted to memorize the way back to my house in the case that my phone died. This is a pretty common fear for me. I ended up going to some pizza place called Serge Pizza. As I don’t know French, reading menus can be difficult sometimes so I often resort to pointing to aid my French. In my best French, I said, “I would like that please”, pointing a plain medium pizza. I had success and was soon walking out with a hot pizza. If you’re ever craving good pizza in Grenoble, definitely don’t go to this place because their pizza sucks. It really was terrible. Despite the pizza tasting horrific, the frugal part of me made me save the other half of the pizza for another meal.

While walking home, I quickly google translated “Can I put this in the fridge” and memorized the phrase. Upon returning to the house, my new phrase proved successful with Anne-Marie. Everyone else went downstairs to eat dinner, so I took this opportunity to take my first long shower in Grenoble and to finally shave my ugly beard.

Afterwards, I returned to my room to do some of my physics homework, and of course, write this blog post.

I only have one class tomorrow at 1:30, so tomorrow should be an easy day. On another note, tomorrow is my birthday.

I already celebrated at home with my family and some friends in Hong Kong, so I am expecting it to be a pretty average day. Though when you’re studying what you love in a beautiful part of the world, everyday is anything but average.