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Published: September 9th 2009
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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 and flaky than ones in Canada. So so good! Then we walked to our school (and accidently took a half an hour detour) and found the lecture hall for orientation. We ended up sitting with some really nice British exchange students. After we filled out a long form for student cards we headed down to the lobby where we were accossted by IEP students who wanted us to join sports teams/clubs/banks/other things Strasbourg has to offer. I was talking to one of the orientation guys from the school and his girlfriend is actually studying at SFU right now, which is kind of
cool.
Next we went to this hour long lunch type thing where we could just walk around and talk to other exchange students. The food looked really weird and I couldn’t really tell what it was so I tried to pick one of the most normal looking sandwhiches (no success).
Foreign food experience #2: I still don’t know exactly what was on the sandwhich but it was some sort of pink slimy meat that looked like raw salmon to me. I was told that it was “smoked salmon” but I’m not buying it. I didn’t take any chances and avoided the rest of the sandwiches. We then took a grammer/short essay exam to determine what orientation french class we should be in. We had to write about the similarities and differences between our political system and the 5th Republic. Needless to say, I know nothing about the 5th Republic and just wrote a bunch of junk about Canada’s political system. Good thing the test wasn’t about content... Katherine, Taryn, and I were all put into different groups for orientation.
After that was over we went to the Virgin megastore to buy cellphone and after waiting for an hour,
the guy told us he had no sim cards left to activate our phones so we’d have to come back the next day. There were only 3 phones left of the cheap kind we wantd to buy so he promised he would put them aside so we could get them later (why was I sceptical about this? Hmm…) The next morning after class we went to get our phones and he had already sold one to someone else! He was convinced that he sold the phone to one of us. He even showed us the name and photo of the girl who bought the phone (is that legal?). Obviously she wasn’t one of us, why else would we be there to buy the phones!? Anyways, I just picked a different one and got out of there as quickly as possible.
After attempting to get our cell phones Monday night we went to this restaurant with the exchange student group for
Foreign food experience # 3: tarte flambée. It’s similar to pizza because it has a crust but the toppings are very different. It had a cream sauce with onions and then cheese, bacon, and mushrooms on it. It sounds
like a bad combination but it was actually really good. I think the sauce tasted something like scallopped potatoes. I liked it much better than the sandwiches at lunch anyways. At dinner, all the exchange students I was sitting with (from Sweden, Germany, Austria) spoke English the whole night! Not that I tried to stop them, but I thought it was kind of strange that they would rather speak that than French. It’s also crazy that everyone speaks English! I really didn’t think they all would. Most people here speak 4 and more languages.
Tuesday
My French class was interesting, I thought we would be doing a refresher grammar course or something but the prof just lectured for 3 hours on how to analyse French articles (which is pretty much what I’ve been doing for the last 2 years at SFU). He also went on a lot of tangents about Strasbourg and French culture. He was nice though and I did learn a bit about how things work in France.
On the tram, a crazy (possibly drunk) old guy started talking to Katherine and me, asking where we were from. Then he asked if we knew some
guy from Quebec (I’m not sure if he was referring to someone famous or just someone he knew) but he would also just ramble off to himself so it was hard to tell. We just said no, he seemed very shocked. He told us that Quebec is great…and he winked at us a bunch. Oh the fun riding transit can be!
For dinner we went to one of the university restaurants and finally had a meal with vegetables. It also had
(foreign food experiene #4) something that we decided to call baked eggs with spinache (or something green) with tomato paste and cheese on top. We really couldn’t tell what it was but it tasted half decent so we ate it.
We also did a 2 hour walking tour of the town with the ERASMUS group (the foreign exchange group) which was useful. On the way home, Taryn and I stopped in this empty restaurant near our rez and asked the guy working there if he knew of wireless internet in the area. He said he didn't think there was any and that I had a
très belle accent.
Wednesday
Today we did a tour of
the European Council. They told us a lot about the history of European politics. Unfortunately I was falling asleep the whole time and didn't hear much of it... I'm sure I'll learn it in my classes anyhow. We also got bank accounts today (Mom, Dad, you can send me money now! haha). For lunch we went to the university restaurant near Katherine's residence and I ran into the guy who helped us find wireless the first day we were here.
I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but tonight we're having McDonalds for dinner because it's one of the few places with wireless!
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anonymous
non-member comment
Yay! I like your updates. You seem to have had a lot of foreign food experiences in a very short period of time. I hope your stomach is more forgiving than mine!