Please be patient, we're having some technical difficulties... The last month has presented me with a series of technological and administrative difficulties. One December afternoon, I was singing along to cheery Mariah Carey Christmas carol covers, when my itunes keep stopping and my computer began lagging. None of the programs on my computer would respond so I tried restarting it. This is when, what I came to know as the "folder of doom," appeared alone on a blank grey screen. I tried multiple times to restart it with no luck. I looked up what this mysterious symbol of a folder w [View Full Entry]

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Alicante Saturday morning I woke up and quickly threw together the things I needed for the week into my backpack. Taryn came to my door and we only had a few minutes left to catch our bus when she realized she was still wearing her slippers! After throwing on shoes, we then rushed out of our rooms to catch the bus to meet Katherine (we almost missed it, but didn’t thankfully!). Nothing like a rushed beginning to our trip! From there, the three of us headed over to the train station to take a train to Basel, Switzerland where we next [View Full Entry]

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I have been in France for almost 2 months! I can't believe how quickly the time is going now that I’m pretty much finished with all the administrative paper work, and am getting into a routine with school. I absolutely love the classes I’m taking. From Gender and Politics to Sociologoy of International Relations, my classes are a lot more specific and I find them mre interesting than what I was taking at SFU. Although, I must admit, I am now grateful for the million french grammar courses I took, and my professors that drilled the proper technique for writing a [View Full Entry]

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Thursday Attempt #2 at finding a pool to go swimming at! This time I was going with a friend and I knew where the pool was, so you would think there wouldn’t be a problem right? Guess again! The pool was so full there were probably 15-20 people in each 25m lane! I did about 3 laps and then decided to leave because swimming in such a crowded pool was pointless; I had to stop every 2 minutes. So exactly one week after getting lost trying to find the other pool, I found myself once again lost for a place to [View Full Entry]

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On Thursday I had class until 12 and then I wanted to go to a swim class for triathletes at 12:30. I looked up the pool address in a trip planner type thing on the transit website and followed those directions. Two trams and a bus later, I could not see a pool anywhere around. I stopped and asked a man on the street where the pool was and he told me that it was on the exact opposite side of town. By this time I was already late, so I decided just to go back to the school (which [View Full Entry]

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Class has begun! The boat tour was a pretty interesting way to see the city. It took about an hour, and there were headphones so you could listen to a commentary about Strasbourg. Fun fact: the city has 27 bridges! I have officially started classes! We got a list of courses we could pick from on Friday, and this week we went to any classes we were interested in, we just have to hand in our course selection by the end of the week. Monday I went to a class about the history of the European concept. The prof seems nice [View Full Entry]

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La Fin de Semaine Saturday Taryn, Katherine and I met at a street market to shop for fruit and stuff. I bought a loaf of bread and a bagel for less than 2 euros. I also bought a few oranges, apples and a kiwi, a pear for under 2 euros! We’re going to try and shop there every weekend if it runs throughout the year. Next we headed to Ikea (round 2) to get a few things we hadn’t picked up the week before. On the way back we also stopped at a grocery store called “Simply”. We carried 2 (almost) [View Full Entry]

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Monday Monday morning Taryn and I met Katherine for breakfast at one of the university cafeterias near our school (there are about 10 around the city). Breakfast there consists of tea/coffee with a piece of chocolate on the side, a glass of juice, a third of a baguette, and a (foreign food experience #1) croissant. Now you may be thinking, “hey croissants aren’t that foreign, we have those in Canada!” But I can’t even begin to describe how amazing these croissants are. They have this weird filling stuff in them that is delicious and they are less dry [View Full Entry]

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Saturday My hands are raw and sore from lugging around over 100lbs of suitcases. My shoulders ache from carrying my huge back pack and sitting uncomfortably on the plane. I’ve now been awake for 32 hours. The departure from YVR went smoothly and tearlessly. After gathering our luggage at the strasbourg airport, we hailed a taxi (the driver laughed at home much luggage we had) and headed off to our first stop : le cité universitaire Robertsau, soon to be home to Taryn and me. I went into the residence office to find out what we need to do to get [View Full Entry]

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Only one week left in Canada! This time next week I will be on the other side of the country! I have a one hour layover in Montreal and then a three hour layover in Paris where I will switch from Air Canada to Air France and finish the last leg of the flight to Strasbourg. Strasbourg, the city I will be living in for the next year, is located in north-eastern France. It's only 5km from the German border. It has a population of 700 000, of which 50 000 are students. The city has 3 Universities, and I will [View Full Entry]

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