Adventures on public transport: Boston, Lincoln Woods and Hope St Farmers Market

It’s been a very busy last couple of weeks – my programme has officially started which has meant lots of seminars and getting started on research! However, now most of the admin of moving to a new country is finished (I have my social security number woop woop) I’ve also had lots of time for exploring and adventures.

The last weekend in January I went on a couple of trips closer to Providence: firstly to an indoor farmers market where a huge range of local produce (including vegetables, cheeses, baked goods) was on offer. Off the main corridor with temporary stalls selling food were artisan shops – most bizarrely a violin shop, but mainly clothes boutiques, a florist and handmade goods and jewellery.

A ludicrously sunny Sunday saw me join with a Brown Outing Club trip to Lincoln Park, which is just outside Providence. After a very kind bus driver let us off the bus at the point on the freeway nearest the park (no official bus stop!) we enjoyed a morning walking through the woods and admiring the lake. Much like my previous experience with university walking clubs, it’s a great opportunity to meet different people whilst enjoying being in nature and I’m looking forward to more trips with the BOC. The journey back involved a 15 minute walk along the freeway (with no pavement) to find the closest bus stop.

The winter so far has been unusually mild, but I’m not complaining when you get dazzling winter sun like this! There have been a couple of days where it has been below freezing, which makes walking around outside something you want to avoid but we’ve been particularly lucky with the weather at the weekends.

The first weekend of February was a bit grey but I enjoyed a couple of days in Boston. For a bargain price of $10 for the whole weekend you can get unlimited transport on the commuter rail between Providence and Boston. Before you get too excited, the trains are only every two hours which is quite a shock when the last couple of places I’ve lived in the UK have been big transit hubs. On Saturday I visited MIT campus and hung out with some friends, and on Sunday I followed most of the Freedom Trail.

This is a route that links a lot of the historic sites in Boston, and is handily marked by a brick route on the floor. Along the way are a lot of the churches, graveyards, monuments and meeting houses that make up the historic landmarks of Boston. I really enjoyed seeing the intermingling of new modern architecture and sites of historical influence, and the trail takes you past lots of the market areas and through areas with strong Italian and Irish heritage.

I stopped when I got to the Charles river as it was time to head back to Providence. When I got home and was looking through photos, I realised that I’d actually visited Faneuil Hall Marketplace as a wee babe in arms. Through some judicious use of google streetview I managed to identify the location of this photo with my Dad from 25 years ago, which was coincidentally in the background of this selfie that I took. Putting my research skills to good use there I think.

I’ll save my exploits of the current weekend for another blog post, but one of the great things about being in a new country is that even everyday activities can be a new experience. So far some of the unexpected ones: table service in bars, getting paid my salary via cheque and two trips to the social security office. Although this can be quite tiring at the beginning, it does make every day an adventure!

Study Abroad II: Postdoc Edition

I’ve moved to the USA for four months which can only mean one thing – reviving my Erasmus blog! If you want to keep updated on my adventures on the other side of the Atlantic I’ll be sporadically posting about life in Providence alongside some work stuff.

Jemima I thought you literally just moved to Edinburgh

You would be correct! In October I moved to Edinburgh to start a research position at the University of Edinburgh in Applied Mathematics. I’ll be heading back to Edinburgh in the middle of May to carry on with that position, but for the moment I’m basically on sabbatical. For the next four-ish months I’ll be at The Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics which is part of Brown University. ICERM runs programs that are 3 months long on specific mathematical topics and people from all over the US/world come to spend time in one place learning about and collaborating on that topic. I’ll be working on model and dimension reduction which ties in nicely with the grant I’m funded by back in Edinburgh.

Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh

Hogmanay fireworks

Where is Brown? America is a big place you know.

Brown is in Providence, the capital city of Rhode Island. Rhode Island is the smallest state by area, and Providence itself is quite small – the population is about a third the size of Edinburgh. It’s about an hour away from Boston by road or rail, and 3 hours drive to New York. (That is about the extent of my US geography so far…)

Cool! What have you been up to so far?

The program kicks off properly on Monday, so I’ve had a couple of weeks to get through a bunch of admin, keep going with work from my regular job in Edinburgh and start to explore Providence. I’ve been doing a lot of wandering around on foot and one of the most obvious differences is the architecture (I feel like I’m living in a film). I’ve been going around taking pictures of random people’s houses because the painted wooden style is so different to anything I’ve seen before. The green house on the left is mine (you can see my bedroom window on the top left). So far my favourite general features include: metal fire escapes with ladders that drop down if needed, multiple entrances at different heights (my house has three), balconies and porches in contrasting colours.

At the weekend we had snow! Obviously I brought my walking boots and felt brave enough to go and wander round campus (which looked beautiful)! Winter sun and a rise in temperatures meant that it started melting the same day, but icy patches in the snow remained treacherous this evening. I live on the North of campus, and the building where I work is across campus close to downtown. This means I have a very picturesque walk to work through the main quadrangle and College Green.

My house in the snow!

Wandering round campus in the snow

Speaking of work, my office is on the 10th floor and the views are pretty great. We’re on the corner and have windows on two sides meaning we get gorgeous views at sunset over downtown. The church in the left picture is the oldest Baptist church in the states. We can also see the courthouse, the river, and College Hill (which is short but very steep).

There’s lots to adjust to moving to any new place, let alone a new continent, so I’ve been documenting differences I’ve noticed daily. So far a stand out oddity is that locks and lightswitches are “upside down”: in the UK we tend to push light switches and power sockets down to turn them on, whereas here the general rule is up.

Similarly with locks, turning bolts upwards locks the door rather than downwards, and you put keys in the lock with the straight wide bit at the bottom rather than at the top. It took a couple of days for me to notice all of these and work out why I was struggling with opening and closing doors (spoiler alert: not jetlag).

That’s it from me for this riveting edition of the blog formerly known as Le Rabot problems. Tune in next time for more mundane observations into everyday life,  pretty pictures and a smattering of maths.

Get Ready All the Nayladds Coz Here We Go!

Eating my baguette on the top of a mountain.

More skiing – 7 Laux and back to 2 Alpes – meant I had a great weekend, but was potentially not the best preparation for the CCs the week before half term. Oh well, still managed to do well in one, and Calcul Diff is a subject I don’t feel like I will ever understand – not sure a lack of revision was detrimental at all.  Friday at 7 Laux was great – fresh powder, hardly anyone on the slopes and I could barely move the next day, so clearly a great time. Sunday was a bit more chilled, but the weather was beautiful and I got started on my très sexy goggle tan (thankfully now faded and magically making my cheek bones look amazing. Serious win).

Strike a pose – approx. 10 minutes after our arrival

Yes that is a Busted jump

Duomo in the twilight

Other than too many lectures and exams, not much of any excitement happened the last week of term, but this was more than made up for in half term with the arrival or 2 out of 3 of the non-French residing members of the Nayladd family! This came in 2 installments, in case we couldn’t cope with all the awesomeness at once. First of all Hope hit up Grenoble for all of one night before 4 of us (myself and the two Rachels) battled against French strikes (of course) to get ourselves to the land of fashion and food – Italy, and more specifically Milan. In only 4 days we managed to cram in what felt like most of the food in Italy, see some sights, laugh at ridiculously priced hideous outfits, go shopping, and generally enjoy our girly holiday. Highlights included lots of cheese, having a bidet in our shared room, looking over Milan from the roof of the Duomo (where we found some incredible statues), gelato, and pastries. Yum. The weather was beautiful, and we managed to bring it back with us when we returned on Wednesday evening.

All hail the great St Sharkesia

Not in fact a fashion shoot, but close

Loitering on the Duomo roof – also not a shoot, but you could probably have guessed that from the slightly dodge camera work

No rest for the wicked, however, as Katie joined us the next morning! We started as we intended to go on, with pastries, and a wander round Gre, went most of the way up the Bastille to watch the sun set over the city, before setting up shop as an exclusive creperie in the 5* Hotel Rabot for Pancake Day (only two days late) and film night. My room is 9m squared, with maybe 1.5-2m of that taken up by the wash area/wardrobe, so fitting four of us to sleep in there was interesting to say the least. Never let it be said that I am not a good host – it’s a good thing Hope isn’t very big and was able to fit under my desk (quote “I feel like Harry Potter”). Friday saw more wandering round Grenoble, picnicking outside and enjoying the unseasonably good weather, and finished in a great night out at our favourite bar Tord Boyaux – the Gre version of Po Na Na. It pretty much goes without saying that our friends were very impressed by our awesome moves. Another day brought another cheese for lunch and an adventure up La Bastille.  We decided it would be fun/hilarious to do AcroBastille which is a high ropes course on and around the Bastille. We prepared well by mounting the hill from Rabot and having to scramble over a wall when a gate was unexpectedly shut #Rabotproblems.

Why take a sensible photo when you can be silly?

We managed to conquer the Bastille with no more problems, and had a chance to admire the fairly gorgeous views over Grenoble pre-check in for what was basically an adult version of Raven (minus the made-up Celtic names and slightly silly outfits). When we presented ourselves at the welcome desk, the dude asked us if we wanted to do this other thing before we started on the high ropes course. I had no idea what he was talking about, and in his words “It takes about 10 minutes, it’s inside, it’s quite easy, there are a few obstacles and a couple of ball pits” from which I inferred that it was a soft play area. Amazing. Something clearly got lost in translation, as what it turned out to be was a pitch black ventilation shaft that you crawled around in, that was clearly not made for adults. Cue the four of us “I’m too big to get round this corner”, “My legs are stuck” etc while the kids behind were shouting at us to go faster. Thankfully we all made it to the end in one piece and didn’t have to be rescued by anyone, and it was actually fun if we overlook the multiple bruises that I still have on me. Plus I totally felt like Bruce Willis (or as Rachel put it, a worm) and like I was about to save the world.

Swaggin’ it up over Gre – clearly the pose of an action movie hero.

Continuing on the action adventure theme, we then harnessed and helmeted up to take on AcroBastille. It was so fun! Obvs the four of us mucked around at the back and had a great time scrambling over matting and up rocks, doing zipwires and balancing on swinging objects. The absolute highlight of the course was the two 300m zipwires. Whizzing super fast and watching the sun start to go down over the mountains and Grenoble with all the other visitors picnicking and enjoying the sun underneath was pretty awesome.

Nayladds together ❤

Final night and we made the most of our fully expanded stomachs to enjoy ALL THE FOOD at Chez Marius in Grenoble. As the trip fell halfway between Hope’s birthday and mine, we made it an unofficial fake birthday dinner and got to open our very mature and sensible presents (Taylor Swift calendar and matching crochet shark hats anyone?) while dressed up swankily and eating nice food. Hope and I wore our watching hats all the way back to Rabot, and on the walk down to the bus stop, and it was with sad hearts that we all said goodbye for the next few months.

Birthday dinner and an end to a lovely holiday

One of the best holidays ever, which made it slightly tricky going back to lectures, but was definitely worth it. Looking forward to the Maison de Mimis with these girls (plus Stephanie Hill who sadly was unable to join us for a week of bantz – don’t worry we’ll have enough time to make up for it) next year. Tune in next time for me marvelling at the amazing weather, a weekend away skiing and some photos from my 21st Birthday shenanigans.

Can I change my degree to skiing please? Either that or eating…

Jealous yet?

Just over a week after my last visit, I was back in Chamrousse – this time ready to hit the slopes with a load of my classmates from L3 Maths. Fresh snow, lots of sun and great visibility added up to a great days skiing. It was most bizarre looking over the snowy slopes down into Grenoble and the novelty of being able to see my hometown from the slopes (and even my beloved Rabot from the top of  the station) was not lost on me.

I live there

As well as skiing, one of the great things about living in this region of France is getting to try out all the local dishes.  Mountain food seems to involve lots of cheese and is fairly stodgy compared to a lot of other French cuisine, so it is right up my street. Omnomnom. Or as the French would say, Miam. One of the best known and well loved regional meals is tartiflette: lardons, onions, potato and Reblochon cheese in  a dish and baked in the oven. It is probably a good thing that I don’t have an oven in Rabot, otherwise I would have probably doubled in size over the winter, as tartiflette is the ultimate comfort food. Over the past few weeks I have sampled some two other variations –  Ravioliflette and Croziflette. Ravioles are another Dauphine fave, and are tiny cheese filled ravioli. In ravioliflette (not sure this is a legit thing, but everyone loves a portmanteau) you substitute the potatoes for ravioles and courgette. ALL THE CHEESE. Croziflette is a marginally less cheesy version, which swaps in crozets (tiny pasta squares. No, really really tiny) for the potatoes. Eating croziflette and listening to Disney songs in French definitely made for one of the cheesier evenings of my life – which can only be a Good Thing.

Look how pro I look!

Last weekend saw another ski excursion, this time to Alpe d’Huez – one of the bigger resorts in the local area, and home to the one of the longest black runs in the world. Sadly the weather was absolutely shocking, and less than a third of the station was open. Sad face. As the morning went on, more and more lifts started closing – fair enough when they were having to stop every 5 minutes because of the wind, leaving you bobbing up and down looking over the slopes – but Rachel, Lizzy and I still managed to have a fun day, including the now traditional hot chocolate (and this time crepe) stop.

Cream with a side order of crepe

To continue on with the food and hot beverage theme of this post (or indeed my life) I have been experiencing a fun tour of Grenoble’s café culture over the past few weeks. Via a very Hot Fuzz-esque connection, I was put in touch with Marie, a French student in Grenoble who wants to improve her English. She has lived in Grenoble for ages, and hence knows all the good places to go and eat/drink and be merry. Thus, my consumption of hot chocolate and other exciting things with cream and sprinkles on has grown exponentially (I don’t include 30 centime coffee from the machine in the maths department, wonderful as that is) while having to explain the unexplainable (not to mention almost non-existent) English grammar system.

Sprinkles! And cream! And the most pointless handle ever!

So as much as I would like it to be, I am actually out here to study maths. I joke, I still like maths. A bit. The courses this semester are a bit of a mixed bag – as previously mentioned I am very happy to be doing applied maths and computery things, and these courses are interesting and going well. Théorie de la Mesure will involve quite a lot of learning, but I think is doable if I apply myself correctly. Calcul Diff on the other hand is quite a different animal, but I am reassured by the fact that everyone else in the class is finding it rather tough as well. The other main change this semester is the number of contact hours (25) which is double the amount of time we would spend in class back in Bath. Combining this with 3 days a week that finish at 7.30pm is proving a bit of a challenge, but I am still managing to fit lots of fun stuff in around the edges. This weekend’s plans include 2 days of skiing at 2 different stations, being a cultured French person and going out for drinks, and probably some revision for my up coming exams…

Semester 2 kicks off in earnest

Sunset from the Rabot – not too shabby

After my travels round Europe, and the trauma of exams, it was quite underwhelming to be back in lectures again. However, it was a nice chance to see how much things have changed since I first arrived in Grenoble on a hot September day. As well as a significant drop in temperature, I now feel like I have a vague understanding of what is going on (logistically that is, mathematically not so much!). My French has improved significantly – although English obviously comes slightly easier, I have few problems with conversation and comprehension, although groups of people talking at once can still be a tad overwhelming. This is all very good news, as my lecturers this semester are delivering a lot more content orally (rather than writing everything on the board as is usual in maths) and speak a high level of French very fast. This is challenging now, but would have been impossible at the beginning of my time here.  Also, I’m taking more courses this semester, as opposed to 2 heavily weighted ones last term. This is good because I get to do some APPLIED MATHS! Woooo. Pure maths is not my favourite area of all time, so it’s great to be doing some programming and numerical analysis (no sarcasm, this is genuinely my jam). Confusingly enough, our lecturer for programming is Scottish, but the course is delivered in French, and the coding is in English. I feel like I could have an identity crisis by the end of  term, but learning python is going to be super useful for life.

Chair-lift selfie, basically compulsory

As the conditions before Christmas weren’t amazing, I’ve been trying to take advantage of the snow and go skiing as much as possible. I have happily found a skiing buddy in a friend from Bath who is out here on placement, so we’ve taken the horrendously early 7am buses to 2 Alpes for some super fun times in the snow. Ridiculous antics include dropping poles off chair lifts (me), throwing oneself off a chair lift (Rachel) and varying amounts of falling over (usually for no particular reason). But never fear, apart from some very impressive bruises, we’ve made it home in one piece. Hopefully over the rest of the season we’re going to venture out to some other stations, especially since due to some timetabling changes I’ve got a couple of 3 day weekends on the cards.

2 hours from Grenoble – love my life

Views over Grenoble from Chamrousse

Last week was great fun as two of Rachel’s friends from Bath came out and enjoyed a stay in the 5* Hotel Rabot (highly recommended by 100% of guests). Sadly Rachel and I had lectures, but Kate and Felice had great fun climbing the Bastille, wandering round town and eating Crous lunch aka the standard Gre activities. Saturday the four of us went on an adventure to Chamrousse, and had an great time wandering in the snow and feeling like we were in Narnia, enjoying the mountains, watching Nordic skiers and doing our best impersonations of hobbits (second breakfast is a concept that I feel duty bound to incorporate into my daily life). We finished the day, and Kate and Felice’s stay, with the world’s largest jacket potatoes in Le Village in Grenoble. We practically had to roll up the hill, but we felt we deserved it after all the walking that had been done.

And because my life revolves around food, we’ll finish up with pancake day. But wait, I hear you say, Shrove Tuesday hasn’t happened yet?! Yes, this is true, but although Mardi Gras (or Carnaval) is big in France, the equivalent of pancake day in the UK actually takes place on Candlemass (40 days after Christmas I’ll have you know). Similarly to back home, this has little to do with religion and lots to do with food, so a bunch of us went round a friend’s and made delicious crepes with ALL THE INGREDIENTS (think mince, onions, multiple types of cheese – we are in France after all, creme fraiche, ham, nutella, maple syrup, the list goes on). Yum. Most of the evening was spent discussing exam results and semester 2, which makes it sound a lot less fun (and need I add bantz) than it actually was. This is perhaps an appropriate point to add that in spite of my worst fears I managed to (with the help of the jury) pass everything in first semester – a situation that I thought I would never see, particularly since only 9/20 French students on Parcours A passed. Needless to say I am  absolutely thrilled, and still slightly disbelieving. It made the stress and manic revision over Christmas all worth it – here’s hoping I can replicate my clearly successful method for second semester!

Me chilling on the tram with my ski gear, because Grenoble. Also an accurate representation of how I felt post exam results.

On the Beautiful Blue Danube

View up to Castle Hill

When your University gives you a week off to do work experience, turns out what they actually mean is go on holiday for 5 days to Hungary. At least that’s why Saturday 11th January saw 8 of us from L3 Maths on a flight from Geneva to Budapest. Upon arriving at a less than inspiring airport, we managed to navigate the highly extensive public transport network to find our hostel. Things started looking up the moment we exited the metro, and found ourselves surrounded by beautiful buildings. After depositing our bags in our 12 bed dormitory, grabbing a picnic supper at, bizarrely enough, Tesco, and meeting some other Francophones, we headed out to. But standard Saturday night this was not – we were going sample some of the hot baths for which Budapest is known. We wandered for about half an hour through Pest, across the Danube into Buda to get to the Rudas Baths. I do appreciate the irony in travelling to a different country for spas when I have never been to the ones in Bath where I usually reside, but in when in France/Hungary… These are some of the more traditional Turkish style baths, and were the absolute best way to end a long day of travelling.

Me up a hill – note the fetching (hand-knitted by my Dad) bonnet

The next day we went up Gellert Hill, from which you can look down over the cities. This has become another accidental theme of my Erasmus year, having done it in Lyon, Grenoble (hard to avoid when you live where I do) and Avignon. Well, what can I say, it makes for some good pictures. The weather was cold but good, and we then walked along the banks of the Danube before making our way back to the hostel via the Houses of Parliament (largest in Europe don’t you know) and St Stephen’s Cathedral. After surviving on picnic style food since our arrival, we went out for dinner to a Hungarian restaurant and ate our fill of goulash, stew and other such yummy things. From there, we moved on to the coolest bar I have ever been to – it looked like an enormous building site with random junk in each of the (numerous) rooms, with various bars, djs and seating areas.

Outside view of the synagogue

On Monday Rachel, Sarah and I visited the largest synagogue in Europe, which was very impressive. The building itself, outside and in, was beautiful, and the Holocaust memorial gardens were very moving. The Jewish community was decimated during the occupation, and never really recovered, and it was interesting to discover more about this dark period in the recent past.

Inside the synagogue

The afternoon saw the second of our bath excursions, this time to Széchenyi – the biggest spa complex in Budapest. This did not disappoint. As well as multiple indoor baths of varying temperatures, there is an outdoor 38 degree pool in the central courtyard. Life doesn’t get much better than floating in a warm bath, being surrounded by glorious architecture with your friends. At least not until there is a 20 minute firework display which you can see perfectly whilst bobbing around in the water. Totally relaxed and very happy, we made our way back for dinner via a castle constructed in various styles that was like something out of a fairytale, more incredibly beautiful buildings, and the metro. Dinner was more soup, stew and Hungarian delicacies.

Yes, every one of my holiday snaps does look like something out of a holiday brochure

Feeling like a princess in a fairytale

Our last full day in Budapest was as busy as all the others. We headed to the central markets were we admired all of the stalls, bought pastries, ate traditional fast food (can you sense a theme yet!) and found souvenirs and postcards to post back to our families. Full of beans (quite literally in my case) we then took the public transport boat all along the Danube. Starting in mid afternoon allowed us to admire all of the sights, as well as sunset, and the totally different atmosphere of everything being lit-up at night. Plus, we all know that a Tabeart holiday isn’t a holiday without a boat trip of some form. An hour or so later when we disembarked, we clambered up to Castle Hill and Fisherman’s Bastion (yet another fairytale castle in the old town) and admired the city and night from on high. More food, drinks and dances later, I was more than ready for my bed.

Parliament from the Danube

Big spenders at dinner – 1 euro = 300 Hungarian forints

As our flight was mid-afternoon, we had a fairly relaxed start to the day and I had the most ridiculous breakfast of my life. We went to a chocolate cafe where they have a ridiculous number of hot chocolate flavours, meaning that I started my day with salted caramel hot chocolate, a huge slice of cake, and chocolates – all for about 5 euros. Pourquoi pas! After that it was time for one last longing glance at this beautiful city, a final metro and bus ride, a plane journey home, a coach to Grenoble, the bus to Victor Hugo, the tram to Notre Dame, and a walk back to the Rabot, where I collapsed, exhausted to sleep the sleep of the righteous.

Potential contender for most ridiculous breakfast of all time?

Proper Crimbo

Saturday 21st December found me at Grenoble airport, less than a week after impulse buying plane tickets to go back to England.  Almost everyone else was returning from skiing holidays with loads of luggage and equipment, so I felt fairly smug about only having hand luggage. This was until I was queuing for check-in and heard the woman behind the counter asking if people had food or not.  As I hadn’t been planning on going home, I hadn’t organised presents in advance, so I thought it would be a nice idea to get some typical French food to take home for my fam. This meant between my two bags I had 2 types of cheese, 2 types of ham, a jar of speculoos paste and a massive yule log. After having to take off my hat, scarf, unpack my bag to get my laptop out and even take my hoody off, fairly predictably my bag was pulled over. I stood there and watched as the man started taking all of my food out. In the hope of saving some cheese, I said “I think that’s everything” only to see him pull out more food. Thankfully a woman came over and let me keep everything apart from one piece of cheese – not sure I understand why, but as a percentage not bad on the cheese smuggling front.

May have brought a recorder back to France for skype duets…

It was super exciting to be reunited with my family after so long apart, particularly my brother and sister. Lots of recorder playing, Christmas piano duets, and silly behaviour went on – tricky to believe I know.  All of us decorated the tree together, watched our traditional ridiculous dvd of tv Christmas specials from our childhoods, ate every mince pie in England and lazed in front of the fire.  Somehow I also manage to persuade my family that Christmas should be Sound of Music themed, which meant we spent Christmas Day itself dressed in a variety of curtains and tablecloths.

The Vonn Tabearts

As well as catching up with family members various, I also took the opportunity to carry out the best Christmas surprise of all time. As you know, Rachel, one of my best friends from university, is also studying in Grenoble and she had planned to meet up with two of our other friends in Bristol for a girly catch-up. As I live super close to Brizzle I decided to crash the party, but keep it a a secret from our friend Hope. Hope had been worrying a lot about me travelling alone over the festive period, and it was really really really hard for the three of us not to tell her, but the look on her face as she got off the train was so worth it ♥ We spent the day eating, drinking cocktails, shopping and talking about cats, which for us is about as perfect as it gets.

This sums up how excited Hope was, and not just by her new cat apron.

Apart from this I was fairly boring and didn’t really venture from my house during the 2 weeks I was home. Apologies to those of you I didn’t visit, but public transport was a nightmare and I basically just lay around, watched tv, ate food and avoided revision. This was made even better by the fact that my parents cooked me all the nice food that I can’t have in Rabot – ie anything that involves an oven, meaning pie, pie, more pie and roasts. Yum yum yum. I returned to France (this time with English cheese) on the 3rd January ready to get my game face on for the exams. Or so I thought. Our end of unit exams were 4 hours long each, Algèbre on Monday and Topologie on Tuesday. I won’t dwell on them apart from to say that they were the hardest exams I’ve ever sat. Mathematicians in the UK, think STEP levels of torture, but it counts towards your degree when you don’t do very well. Talking to the other people in my class, pretty much everyone found them harder than expected, but that still doesn’t make me excited for results in the next week or so!

So this is 10 minutes from my bedroom… #luvinlyf2k14

In an attempt to not go stir crazy in my room/cell in Rabot, and because it had actually been possible to go outside, unlike in the UK, I did a bit of exploring up the hill towards the Bastille and found the best spot for a picnic of all time. It’s sheltered by the walls of the Bastille, a flat place to sit overlooking Grenoble and only a 10 minute walk up from Rabot, which means it’s super quiet as who would ever want to go to Rabot. Jks #rabot4lyf
It was pretty awesome to be sat outside in a t-shirt in January eating my picnic and just hanging out on the side of a hill. Definitely somewhere to return with friends and some wine to watch the sun go down. Sorry to rub it in to everyone who is living in the swimming pool formally known as the UK.

Good location for a ChaOS gig?

Post exams, Rachel and I went on a day trip to Lyon. It was great to go back when there weren’t 30 bajillion people there, and we had a wonderful time seeing the Roman ruins on top of the hill, going to a automaton museum (because #rabolo) and looking at expensive jewellery in the windows of all the shops. While we were swanning around and having a second holiday, everyone else in our class was doing oral exams. However we rather sensibly substituted these for French lessons, as we decided that a 30 minute presentation on a maths topic picked on the day from 4 you had prepared sounded like something not very fun at all. It’s been quite weird having as much holiday after the exams as we did before, but it’s been really nice having some time to chill where there is no coursework or exams to prepare for.

Mozart’s Magic Flute in the automaton museum

So next time, prepare to read about the second half of “work experience week” aka L3 Maths take on Budapest, see a selection of the 400 odd photos I took there (not even an exaggeration) and wonder if I’m actually studying out here or just having fun. Sometimes I’m not sure myself.

Ski ski ski and the Dream Team Assemble

The last week of term brought on the usual round of Christmas concerts, nights out and getting ready to go home, only with a few added differences. Firstly, I spent the final Saturday of term on the slopes at Les Deux Alpes, not something that is part of my normal routine in Bath, I have to say. The Ecole de Glisse runs up to 4 trips a week, but up until mid-December I had been super busy and hadn’t had the chance to check out my new skis.

Doesn’t everyone spend their Saturdays doing this?

Walking down from Rabot at half 6 with all my kit was a bit of a struggle, but being on the slopes by half 9 more than made up for it! It’s been unseasonably warm this year in our part of the world, so quite a few of the runs were closed due to lack of snow, but I was happy to be back on the pistes after a 5 year absence. My fears about having no idea of what was going on were unfounded, and I managed to fall over only once – sadly this was a complete wipe-out for no reason in front of a bunch of tiny French kids who all laughed at me. Oh well.

#skilift #selfie #gottabedone #hashtag

 Having to navigate with a piste map myself was something new, but I managed not to get lost. It was great fun taking various chair lift selfies, and the weather was great, if a little blustery at the top. Thank goodness for goggles, and next time I go skiing I will definitely be wearing my hand-knitted (by my Dad) bonnet to keep warm. Exhausted but very happy, I returned to the main square at the close of the station for green chaud (hot chocolate with Chartreuse in it) before the bus trip home. As there were a few of us from our corridor who had gone on the trip we decided to take a taxi up from the station, there being no buses on the weekend. Good shout.

The following day saw the start of concerts various, and kicked off with a joint orchestra-choir performance in a tiny church in a village about half an hour out of Grenoble. This was very reminiscent of early ChaOS concerts, in that the performance area was tiny and I spent the whole concert standing (including for the whole of a Mozart Symphony). Monday saw the reunion of the Dream Team as our friend Richy Rich from Bath came out for a stay at the Hotel Rabot and to watch some concerts (we tried to sell it as a fact-finding mission for ChaOS but I’m not sure the SU were having any of it).

Dream Team at the Bastille

As well as the second of our Choir-Orchestra concerts, a trip up the Bastille (which is obligatory on any visit to Gre), CROUS lunch, some museums and the Christmas market, we organised a Franglais soirée with the rest of the students from our class, as well as the Franglophones and our English visitors. A great time was had by all, with some epic dance moves, and interesting mix of French and English choons and some weird and wonderful drink choices. The Po Na Na of Grenoble didn’t fail to deliver, and my Erasmus anthem of Shakira ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ was played along with some classic 12 bar blues and other French songs that sounded a bit like Casio Keyboard demos.

Flavoured wine in Gre’s answer to Squeeze the Cheese

Due to various issues with my travel plans to Austria, I decided to book last minute flights to go back to the UK. This meant that after Rich left on Thursday, I had 2 days to get my act together before my glorious return to England. This mainly consisted of me trying to cram as much stuff in my hand luggage as I could and wondering how much cheese I would be able to smuggle back (see my next post for more detail). But in all a fitting end to a crazy first semester as an Erasmus student in Grenoble, and looking forward to what the next part of my adventures will bring.