C'est Mon Anniversaire!

Today was my birthday, which was very strange. It definitely did not feel like it. Pas du tout. Mais it was a good day, nonetheless.

This morning I discovered that the shutters are not as magnifique as I first thought they would be. They are wonderfully quaint and européen, but in the morning, when the sunlight is not streaming in through the lovely French window, it is very hard to wake up. My room was pitch black at 8h30, and when I finally worked up the energy to drag myself to the window and open the shutters, I was practically blinded. Quelle difference!

Here is a picture of our house with the lovely(ish) shutters! Isn't it the Frenchest house you've ever seen? It's absolutely parfaite!













Sam and I were called down to breakfast around 9h45 and we ate these fantastic pastries and drank tea from a bowl, which was very strange. Apparently every Sunday, Christine's friend, qui s'appelle Christine aussi, comes over for breakfast. She was very nice and lived in Phoenix for a while, so she was very understanding about the language gap. We also said "bonjour!" to Plume. Here is an excellent picture of him (and Sam, of course).

After breakfast, Claude walked us to the tram station, which is a 3 minute walk from our house, and he showed us how to use the tickets. We then took the tram into the Centre Ville to meet up with the rest of the group. We were given an impromptu tour of the downtown area, and then we stopped for lunch. I had an intense salad.

After lunch, we went to the Bastille, a fortress that overlooks the city of Grenoble. We took "les boules", these cable cars that look like bubbles, up to the top, where there was an excellent view of Grenoble and its suburbs.





This is a view from inside one of "les boules". It went right up the mountain side, but it was kind of scary, because the door did not close all the way so there was a little crack between the two rounded panels of glass that was very alarming.

This is what "les boules" look like from the outside! They're pretty nifty, non?

Here's a picture of me sitting in front of the view of Grenoble from the top of the Bastille. It really was an amazing view. On a clearer day, we would have been able to see Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in France, but it was a little cloudy.








On the way down, we stopped at the musee dauphinois and looked around for approximately 15 minutes. I'm planning on visiting on my own time, because it is free, and I think it will be much more interesting without the group, when I can look at the things that I want, and at my own pace.

The descent took a remarkably long time. I could not believe how many times we stopped and the guide (the academic director from the BU Grenoble program) pointed out these little buildings that we will never remember just from looking at their roofs. And the pace, when we finally reached the streets. Crawling! I cannot understand how they can stand walking so slow. I wanted to scream (at this point, I was very hungry and tired and so was not in the best of moods. This may have colored my perception of the afternoon's events.).

So as soon as we were set free, Sam, Brittany (a girl who lives near us) and I took the tram back towards our part of town. It takes about 15 minutes on the tram to get from the "downtown" area to our house. Not bad at all.

Sam and I tried to go to the local supermarche to buy a gateau for my birthday, but it was closed, so we went into a little pastry shop, which was kind of expensive, but we bought a decent sized fancy-sounding cake for 17€ anyways.

When we came back, we had some time before dinner to hang out, and then around 20h, Claude came up to tell us that dinner was ready. When we got downstairs, it smelled of fish and when I glanced at the table, I saw why: there were three little fish bodies, with the tail and the head cut off, but otherwise in pristine condition. They were sardines, and had been cooked, but when you cut it open there were veins and vertebrae (do fish have vertebrae? It definitely looked like a spinal column.) and I had to pick around the nasty looking stuff. Sam was very brave and ate everything. I was very impressed. I tried to will myself to follow suit, but I just couldn't. When they left the room, I made a face at Sam and she mouthed, "put some of it on my plate! I'll eat it!" I mouthed back, "No! They'll catch us!"

The rest of the dinner went better, we had an omelette with ratatouille (yes! I had real ratatouille! And it was delicious!), cheese (of course) and apple and cherry sorbet for dessert. Then Sam and I went over some of the house rules with Christine, who gave us all our breakfast materials to put upstairs in our huge bathroom, so we now have a breakfast station, with a water heater for tea and cereal and I have milk in my fridge...it's so amazing! And then Claude brought us a French DVD, les Poupees russes. We watched the beginning of it, but then decided to save the end for another day. It's really good so far.

Fun Fact #1: During the French revolution, the name "Grenoble" was changed to "Grelibre".

Fun Fact #2: Claude uses imdb.com .