This day started out with everyone meeting at La Maison du Tourism (essentially translating to the Visitor's Bureau). Anxiously I gathered up as much reading material as I thought I could handle. To this day I am still sifting through this information, mais ça va! (but it's ok)! At least I'm at the point where it doesn't require my undivided attention to understand one article. At this point, after about a month of preparation reading Le Monde on my IPad and also magazines like Elle (tous en français) this has made it possible for me to read and comprehend most of what the articles are striving to convey.
So after we had a brief meeting at La Maison du Tourism Marie took us on a tour of Grenoble, speaking in franglais. Elle est une vraie française. (She is a true French woman). She was born in France, and went to college at the Sorbonne in Paris (one of the world's most prestigious universities.) Our other tour leader is named Anna. She is American and actually participated in this program about 12 years ago, ended up meeting her husband here, through her host brother, and now has two children. Both leaders are wonderful and so kind. I know they really care about each individual and want to see everyone succeed and have a good time.
So today Anna was off duty and it was Marie's turn to lead the group. Besides just marveling at how beautiful everything was I also learned a lot about the town. I am just going to share a few things that I found incroyable (unbelievable). There are tons of homeless people here because the weather is so nice and they all have dogs because having a dog prevents you from going to jail. Also Grenoble is a town of numerous drug dealers, donc elle nous a dit "faites-attention!" (so she told us to
be careful.
So after we had a brief meeting at La Maison du Tourism Marie took us on a tour of Grenoble, speaking in franglais. Elle est une vraie française. (She is a true French woman). She was born in France, and went to college at the Sorbonne in Paris (one of the world's most prestigious universities.) Our other tour leader is named Anna. She is American and actually participated in this program about 12 years ago, ended up meeting her husband here, through her host brother, and now has two children. Both leaders are wonderful and so kind. I know they really care about each individual and want to see everyone succeed and have a good time.
So today Anna was off duty and it was Marie's turn to lead the group. Besides just marveling at how beautiful everything was I also learned a lot about the town. I am just going to share a few things that I found incroyable (unbelievable). There are tons of homeless people here because the weather is so nice and they all have dogs because having a dog prevents you from going to jail. Also Grenoble is a town of numerous drug dealers, donc elle nous a dit "faites-attention!" (so she told us to
be careful.
After the tour Marie set us free in La Place Victor Hugo (that's a tram stop with all the excellent shopping). On the to-do list was to eat and then find a pair of flip flops for the shower. Done and dusted (as my British teacher used to say), in other words I was able to accomplish both things.
The rest of the day was dedicated to a placement test and then I took it pretty easy after that.