Blogs from Alsace, France, Europe - page 13

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 with a question mark meant on Taryn's computer and the news was not pleasant. My hard drive had crashed! Maybe the world was trying to tell me not to listen to Mariah Carey? Straight away Monday ... read more

Day 3……On the way to Colmar, France….after a fantastic breakfast with fantastic views we were on our way to Colmar, France. We had a little bit of a difficult road change which forced me into a power U-Turn, which brought me to an intersection which I found out was a no left turn intersection. This of course was a mere moment of excitement for Gail (she will kill me this year) after I made an illegal left turn and ran over some little bitty rubber things with reflectors on them that separated lanes (Alana tell Loraine she would be proud). Gail is now taking over…They were not little bitty, but tall, at least two feet maybe be bigger, reflectors…I could not believe that Larry ran over three of them… Thank goodness it did not hurt ... read more

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 wasn’t easy to find either now that I was in the middle of nowhere!) When I got back to the school I stopped by the sports office to ask the students who run it if ... read more

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 but he has a southern France accent that I’ve been told is really hard to understand. He speaks very very slowly though so I didn’t have any troubles. My evening class is about culture and ... read more

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 our keys while Taryn and Katherine watched our bags outside. The office was busy and the woman who helped me get my keys also taught me cultural difference #1 : where Canadians are polite and ... read more