Presentation tomorrow

School is finally winding down. Well, at least the crazy class schedules are. I have a presentation tomorrow, a paper due the following Monday, another paper due the day after, and then my last paper due May 15. So tomorrow's presentation is for Production and Operations Management. We had to do this huge research project on Nespresso and determine everything from the mission to the market strategy to the buying center to the internal/external analysis using all sorts of tools and then we had to make conclusions and suggestions based on those results. We had a group of six, with a total of five questions to answer. Tomorrow our teacher will assign each group one of the five questions to present, so we're all a bit nervous about that. As a group we decided that whatever question is called, the person who prepared that question will present. Well, my partner and I did the first two questions, and since I'm the native English speaker I got picked to be the presenter. So I have a 40% chance of presenting by myself tomorrow for 10-15 minutes. This should be fun. I hate presenting, but I have gotten used to it since I started college, especially with Learning Communities and the semester abroad; it seems like I'm always up in front of a crowd. I'm hoping the Canadian girl in our group gets to present because she is an awesome speaker and would do way better justice for our group than myself. But we'll see, the odds are against me unfortunately. In other news, the American family from church had their baby (well, 2 weeks ago but they just brought it to church today). It is a little girl, number 5 in their family of all girls. The other girls came over and sat by me before church started and they were telling me about how much they enjoyed the invisible kool-aid my parents brought. I think they were more excited about the kool-aid than having their new baby sister at home! So I'm going out of town this weekend, hopefully Wednesday but more than likely Thursday. Not sure where yet, but it will be lots of fun. Hopefully my camera batteries come before then! (I went through 6 AA batteries during the day trip to Annecy!)

Annecy

I went to Annecy (Ann-cee) yesterday with a friend from school that I hadn't hung out with before. We had a great time; Annecy is such a beautiful mountain town. We left super early (by French standards) and had a nice breakfast of hot cocoa and chocolate crepes by the canal. Then we went on a tour of the Palais de L'Isle, which is a triangular shaped building in the center of town which was built back in 1325 and was once used as a prison. We got to see the dungeons and hearing rooms and the little outdoor garden. Then, we hiked up the hill to the Chateau, which had a beautiful view of the city. We walked around the inside, and there was an art exhibit about strange animals and it was very... unique to say the least. (Check out the pictures below, you'll see what I mean). Then we went to the actual castle part (well, the tower) and there was a mini aquarium on the ground floor and then some exhibits about Lake Annecy on the other floors. Did you know it is the cleanest lake in France? After the two tours, we headed back down the hill and went window shopping. I don't know what it is about France but it makes you want to shop! After that we had a nice lunch along the canal; I had a green salad and a potato with creme fraiche and chives and 3 different kinds of cheese. And some walnuts. It was a different taste as far as potatoes go. Then we took a nice leisurely stroll along the lake and walked over to the Imperial Palace. I think it was a town hall or something at one point, but now it is a hotel and casino. A really nice hotel/casino. We went through the lobby and found some chairs on the balcony and hung out there for a bit, just watching the lake. That was pretty much my day, it was very relaxing, just what I needed :)

And now for the pictures:

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La Belle et le Bete

It's been a really long week, and apparently my friends here have noticed. So, last night 2 of them showed up at my door with Beauty and the Beast (in French) and stuff to make hot chocolate floats. It made my day, very thoughtful. It was interesting to watch the movie in French with subtitles, all the songs were in French too which was cool. It was a nice end to a long week... tonight my roommates are throwing a party at the house, so hopefully it doesn't get too out of hand and I'll be able to sleep at a decent hour.

Long Week

To say I'm tired would be an understatement. Of the last 48 hours, I have spent 27 of them at school, whether it be in class or working on my group project that is due tomorrow. It is a 3300 word report, plus an appendix. All in all, it is approximately 43 pages long. Yesterday it was 33, but my group decided we needed more detail on some of the parts. In addition, we had to make a video to mail to Canada to our professor. So we finished the paper last night and the video tonight. Since I am the only native English speaking in the group, I was automatically chosen to be the voice of the video. But, we are finally done. I would say that between the 5 group members, we spent approximately 120+ hours on this project, from writing the questionnaire, translation, taking it to the streets, imputing data, running some analysis, etc etc. So much work, hopefully we get a grade the reflects the effort put into it. Now it's time for bed, but unfortunately I still have 6 hours of class tomorrow, and another 6 on Friday. I need a vacation!

News

So I have some good news. My group finally finished our paper for our Marketing Research and Consumer Behavior project... it is about 30 pages long, single spaced with graphs and such. We're about half done with the video part, we just need to record voices. Other good news/bad news: I got my computer back today and didn't have to pay. Bad news? The hard drive is French, which mean all pre-installed programs are also French... and I don't think you can change the language on the programs, so it has been hard using things. I've been at school for 12 hours now, and I'm probably not leaving for another 2-3 hours... talk about a long day! I'll be glad when this project is in and this day is over.

I hate Bugs

All of them. I was greeted in the shower this morning by a huge spider. Last night, a huge spider by my doorway... last weekend? Another huge spider by my window when I got home. And, there have been ants all week in the house as well. I really really hate spiders. Especially the big ones, and these ones are about an inch across the fullest part. I have to get other people to kill them for me, but they all want to save them and put them outside and I want them flushed down the toilet. I sprayed the one this morning with insecticide and it took awhile for it to die. Ana laughed at me and then cleaned it out of the tub. I don't want to go in there, there may be more spider lurking around. How do you get rid of spiders for good?

Another Crazy Week

So tomorrow jump starts another week of insane scheduling... tomorrow is my least-busy day of the week, with only 5 hours of class. Rest of the week I have about 7 hours or so, including Saturday. Luckily though, I've worked really hard this weekend and I've accomplished alot on the paper/project that is due Friday that I had to restart.. So that's a blessing. And, Ana needed a camera card tonight because hers was full so I lent her one of mine... and it totally had pictures on it from my first few weeks in Grenoble! All is not lost, which is another blessing. So I definitely have some of my pictures still, we'll have to see if the rest of them turn up on the computer... I'm thinking about skipping my Wednesday classes the following week so I can take a little trip somewhere.. somewhere where the people speak English, so maybe London?? Scotland? I'll keep you posted.

Oh what a night... or week rather.

This has been a hectic week. I was using my wonderful macbook on Monday night and it froze (which is odd, because that has never happened before). So like a logical person, I tried the force quit command and when that didn't work I manually shut it down. When it came back on, it was a blank screen with a folder with a question mark in the center. Oh no, I thought, what happened to my computer? I shut it down and turned it on again and the same thing happened. Great.. just what I need. I borrowed Ana's computer and googled it and it turns out that my hard drive (or disque dur) died. It just crashed. Apparently it is a fairly common problem for macbooks bought during the time I bought mine (August 06) so if you have one too you might want to back up everything, because I sure didn't. So after asking a French girl for some technical words, I went to the Apple Authorized Reseller of Grenoble and I tried to explain my problem (in very broken French) and he tried to explain what it was (in very broken English). And it is covered under warranty, but if I want them to try and recover my documents and such, it is 70 euros an hour (roughly $110). But, it has all my school work for the past two years on it, and all my projects I've been working on all semester here (one is due Friday, and I have to start all over..) not to mention the hundreds of pictures from France/Ireland/Spain. So I've got my fingers crossed that they'll be able to recover some things... meanwhile, I have to wait until Wednesday when he's supposed to call and let me know the status. Hopefully I'll get it back, but it sounds like they're going to ship it to the US to get it fixed, or at least get the parts from there. So I am without my own computer until then. Luckily, one of my roommates is on spring break this week and he has a macbook too and he left his computer with me to use to work on my project for the week.. and he doesn't get back until after the project is due, so I'm really grateful for that. I'm just hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. Looks like I've now got hours and hours of work to do on papers and projects for the rest of the semester since I'll more than likely be starting from scratch... and on a side note, if I want to get my old hard drive back I have to buy it from them, and it would be at least 90 euros, and if you take it to a professional place to recover it in the US, it will be anywhere for $500 upwards (according to Apple Technical Support). So I think if I've lost everything, thats the end and I'll just have to steal pictures from everyone else. Sucks, but I don't want to spend $500 + trying to recover pictures when I could go back to both places for less than that... So that's been my week. And its been rainy and cold and they're doing construction on our street so I've been up early every morning. Oh well, c'est la vie. (That's life). I'll keep y'all posted on any new Mac issues. But the moral of the story: Back up your hard drive. You can get an external hard drive for less than $100 and then you won't have to worry about paying someone way more than that per hour to *try* to recover it.

Pictures from Dijon

Dijon (like the mustard)

I went to Dijon this weekend with my study abroad program group and it is an absolutely beautiful city. We arrived in the morning and had some free time, so we were able to check out the open-air market (which had clothes, jewelery, purses, etc) and also the indoor food market. It was really fun, and they really do have a ton of mustard. I think they have about 30 varieties of Dijon here. So after walking around and having lunch, we had a guided tour of Dijon. She talked about this beautiful park (Place Darcy) and how the huge fountain in the center of the park was the first source of water found in Dijon and how it was used for drinking and such. Apparently Dijon used to have about 30 towers around the city, because it was a station used during the French Revolution. There is only one tower left, but unfortunately it is on the outskirts of the city and we weren't able to see it. They also have a mini Arc du Triompe (probably spelt that wrong) looking statue in the center of town with a beautiful flower garden in front of it. I'll have to post some pictures when I get them from Cesar (my poor camera eats batteries...) We also got to see two churches, and the Palais du Justice and there was a wedding going on there. Their weddings aren't anything like American ones, well at least this one wasn't. The bride was wearing a short white dress, nothing fancy and her husband was wearing a real simple suit. We also saw a bachelorette in Place Darcy. It is a French tradition for a newly engaged bride to get all dressed up (like in a costume, this bride was dressed kinda like Cruella de Ville with her face painted half black/half white) and they go around with their bridesmaids with a sign saying she's newly engaged and they collect money for the bachelorette party. If you donate money, they're supposed to give you something back, like a piece of candy. So that pretty much sums up the tour of Dijon. Dijon has three specialties: Dijon mustard (obvious), cassis (it is a 15-20% alcohol content black currant liquor that you're supposed to mix with white wine or champagne as a kir), and gingerbread. So the second day (today) we got up and went to Beaune, which is right outside of Dijon in the same region of France and we had a tour of the last family-owned mustard factory in this region of France. At one point in time, there were 250+ factories. The name of the mustard manufacturer is Fallot, and the lady said some of the varieties are shipped all over the world, and that you should be able to find it in specialty shops in the US. So we got to make mustard. Yes, we took some mustard seeds, salt and vinegar and ground the heck out of it. It was really hard to do. We tried the "mustard" and it was really bitter. It is supposed to sit in an open jar for 48 to mature before you bottle it to sell. We got to see some of the old machines that they used, and at the end we got to sample four different types. We had one Dijon mustard that was made with this white wine from the region, one that was made with cassis, one with the gingerbread spices, and one with tarragon. It was fun. I bought alot of mustard and some cassis jam. We also went to an old hospice that had really cool tiled roofs, they're tiled in patterns because the land is relatively flat and in the old days people used to see the roofs from a distance and they knew that was a place they could go if they were sick and needed help. They still have the beds lined up against the wall, and the guide said that it was generally 2-3 people per bed because it was always crowded and also because it would keep them warm. They were tiny beds too, like twin size. Anyway, we had a 3 hour drive home, and now I'm back in Grenoble. I made some spicy meatball subs tonight for dinner because I found some hot ketchup in the store the other day and was really excited so I bought some. They turned out really well. Hope all is warm and well back in Texas. I miss it :)

Back to school

It's already April! I would say it seems like I just got here, but it doesn't. It feels like I've been here for a really long time. I'm having a good time, but I miss the Texas weather. I've had a pretty slow week this week, but I'm grateful because I don't think I could have handled a 20+ hour week after the long break. I can tell the semester is on the downhill slope, because I've got a test on Friday, a group project due next week, and 2 papers due the following week. And tons of random case studies with questions that I have to answer. It will be a busy month! I have two long weekends in May and I'm trying to plan my trips. Any suggestions? I really wanted to go on the school trip to Croatia, but it was sold out... I may still go, it is supposed to have really great beaches. I also want to take a little trip to the French Riviera, and Germany and Italy before I go home. This weekend I'm going to Dijon with CEA, and we're going on a tour of a mustard-making factory. Sounds like fun!