France – Day 1

After traveling for over 24 hours on two airplanes and two trains, and lugging two bags and my bike box some odd thousand miles, I finally arrived in Grenoble, France. My host, Alain, picked me up at the train station and took me to my room. I am staying in student housing in Grenoble, which has a number of universities. I feel like I am an undergraduate again, except I have a private bathroom and no internet in my room (which I really miss). After registering, Alain took me to the grocery store and I bought some food, etc. Frankly, I was so tired, I didn’t know why I was there and didn’t end up getting much but water, soda, and some cookies, which ended up being my dinner. Then I crashed. My second day, I had been instructed that I need to get on Tram B and take it one stop. Then, go to a place called SMERRA, which was apparently at this stop, to buy a 21 euro student insurance policy. I have no idea what it covers or why I needed it, but it was a requirement for staying where I am. Strangely, it doesn’t cover theft, so I don’t know what good it is. Rather than taking the tram, I decided to walk, as Alain said it wasn’t far, and I really didn’t know which way to take the tram. I had a crappy map, which I figured out after walking around for a couple hours. I also had no idea what time it was, as I could remember what time zone I was in, or how many hours different I was than whatever time zone I had come from. Finally, I figured out basically where I needed to go and walked there, realizing that I had almost been there not 45 minutes earlier. Once I found the general location (the tram station where I was supposed to get off the tram) I walked around until I stumbled upon a map of the local vicinity and located exactly where I needed to be, which, as it turns out., is 10 feet from the tram station. So, I arrive 15 minutes before they take lunch, and the lady fortunately speaks some English, because I speak almost no French. That taken care of, I took Tram B to the other side of Grenoble to where I though Alain said I could get maps in English. (A stop called Cite International, which I thought sounded promising) So I get off the tram and walk into the building only to find a bunch of kids running around. Well, after walking around the building, then walking down the street outside, walking back to the building and asking at the front desk, the place I was at was a school. This made sense from all the kids running around, but the outside of the building said some stuff in multiple languages, including English, which I thought was promising. I actually think that the lady I spoke with was a little embarrassed. I asked her, in French, if she spoke English, and she said a little and something about having worked at “Cite International” for 20 years, which I took to mean that she thought she should have spoken better English. As far as I was concerned, she spoke great English, as she understood what I was asking, although she didn’t know anything about maps. She was very nice, and I was a little embarrassed that my French was so bad. Truthfully, every French person I have spoken with knows more English thank I know French (enough to get the message across) and all say that they only know a little. After that, I took the tram back to my room and slept for a couple hours. Then got up, went to the grocery store, bought some stuff for dinner and breakfast the next day and went to bed.