Hello All! Today is the FIRST DAY OF CLASS and I am SO nervous. Today I have my Textes et Contextes de la Renaissance à nos Jours, and it's in the University building right in Parc du Bastion. Perfect location. It's a class in french, and so I'm slightly horrified I'll have absolutely no idea what's going on, and won't be able to participate (but then again I'll never see these people ever again so why not toss a hail mary and go for it, I guess). I can't wait to report on it later (if I have time amongst the monstrous amount of reading I'm sure I'll have to do). ALSO, great news. Yesterday I discovered that one of my friend's roommates is in my class at the Grad Institute (he actually is a student there studying international relations and law), so we're going to go together tomorrow! For those of you who know me well and know how time complusive I am, you'll know what a HUGE relief this was, knowing that I'd have someone to help get me there on time on the first day! Haha.
As I'm attempting to write this to you I can't help but chuckle a little bit because I'm writing it from the Smith Center, which has the French Keyboard, so instead of having the qwerty keyboard, the Z and the Y have changed spots so every single time I've attempted to write a word with a y in it I've hit Z and had to go back. Haha. $
ANZWAZ I digress ;). Saturday I went on the Welcome Cruise which was meh... I met a guy from lebanon who was really nice, and then we were talking with this guy from portugal also (he was talking to my friends roommates who we smuggled on the boat...they're not actually in the program haha), but it was pretty much an hour of being cold and cramped. Then they gave us wristbands to get into this bar/club for free so me and the guy from our program chilled there for a while and me some other guy from China... I spent 8 francs on a beer and was, again, not having a killer time, until we sat down and I met a really really nice girl from Australia, so hopefully I'll get to hang out with her again!
After this, we headed back to CUP1 and went up to my friend's room to have some wine and relax and simultaneously try to decide what we would do later that night. I ended up going back to the first bar that I ever went to with my roommates and three of our floor mates and we met another friend there. We waited what seemed like forever to snipe a table from people... but we got it (it was the same one we got last time...maybe we'll turn into FRIENDS or How I Met Your Mother....) and we planted for quite a while. From here, we went back to CUP 1 (this time to the friend's who met us at the bar's apartment) and hung out with her roommates (one of which is the one I have class with at the Grad Institute tmr) until the wee hours of the morning talking about politics. Haha. Of course.
Yesterday I did some serious sleeping in, and then went to meet a friend to 'find our classes' (we ended up looking online...) and went to a café.There, it hit me again that I was actually in Europe. I was doing a bit of reading while drinking a big mug of hot cocoa outside (it was a nice fall-feeling day), and I just looked around at all the chatter and people just taking it easy, relaxing and catching up with one another. Nothing like the rush to get coffee in the US and the inability to spend leisurely hours enjoying it. Also, I noticed that my friend and I were the only ones doing work there. Everyone was interacting with one another, which really blew me away. It made people watching very interesting! After this, we went to the market that's up every weekend at Plain Palais and I got an empanada for lunch, and a bag full of greek olives (grandpa, they're still not as good as the ones you get!). I also got a pair of awesome high-heeled boots that I'm wearing to class today. Yay walking.
I'm going to go eat now, but I will do my best to update you all on how class was today! Fingers crossed it goes well!
xx Edie