First week in Grenoble

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After 3 planes (Air France is great!), 1 train ride, and one automobile ride, I arrived in Grenoble on Wednesday Feb 15th, 2012. Then, right away, Bart Chollet (the collaborating professor at GEM) and I prepared our presentation for the business students. I was pretty jet lagged, but the presentation went well... The students seemed really excited about the project, and interested in learning about the virtual communication tool that they will be using throughout the semester (WebEx). My hotel in Grenoble is really comfortable and actually larger than my current apartment in Atlanta haha.

On Thursday I took a train ride to Geneva to attend a Management and Networks conference at the University of Geneva. The train rides to and from Geneva allowed me to see some AMAZING french and Swiss countryside with great views of the French/Swiss alps! To me, the most exciting part of this conference was hearing Dr. Martin Kilduff speak about network theory and then getting to meet and talk with him about leadership and networks afterwards at the happy hour! Also, that night, I went with the conference attendees to get some traditional Swiss fondue...

On Friday, I experienced some traditional French transportation (i.e., my train was delayed and then re-routed to Lyon). When I finally got back to Grenoble on Friday evening, I wandered around for a while to find dinner. I found a bar that had a sign outside that said "plat du jour 8.50 euro", so I thought that sounded promising. However, when I went inside and tried to place an order with the three words I had just learned from an i-phone translation app, the guys inside told me that they only served food at lunch, and just drinks from then on. I think they must have felt sorry for me, because a few seconds later, one of them was cooking the most delicious salmon and potato dish I've ever had 😊 The guy that spoke the most English out of the two of them asked where I was from, and when I said "Georgia" he said "oh oui... Georgia on my mind" lol

Here are some things I have learned:

- restaurants don't serve food all day...

- street signs are on the buildings not the street corners

- the showers in both my hotel rooms are TINY!!

- Switzerland is not a member of the EU, they have their own currency, I now have 40$ in Swiss currency that I will probably never use.

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