[UNC Summer in Grenoble] Moving into dorm

June 1st, 2015
The rest of the fellow classmates for the Summer Study Abroad program all arrived at Grenoble train station around 2PM.
After we received our tram passes from Damien,

we hopped on to the B-tram that took us to where our summer residence is.
It felt cool that I was actually taking the tram that I was seeing earlier that day.

and the tram was pretty packed thanks to all of our suit cases.

After getting off at 'Condillac Universites' station, we walked a bit

and reached this building, where we spent our summer.

After signing a lot of papers and paying our deposit fee,

my summer roommate and I were led to our room.
The room was pretty small, but I think I remember hearing something about the room that it's normally for one person.

France is normally not that hot during the summer, so it was kind of difficult to find buildings with air conditioner. Yes, that means that our residence was also AC-less.

and it just had to be the record-breaking heatwave when I was there!
The heatwave sure made my life miserable.

Anyway, on each of our beds we had a Universite Joseph Fourier bag, which had goodies like a USB flash drive, a pen, a map of Grenoble, and etc. inside.

The room also had a sink, a stove, a mini-fridge, a microwave oven and some plates, so it was possible to make some simple food.

Not having a cooking knife and a cutting board made it very difficult for us to really "cook" something good.

This was the bathroom of our room.
Each room seemed to have a different looking bathroom, and ours had a sink, a small shower booth

and a sky light!
Yeah, it was pretty cool, taking a shower in the sunlight!

Unfortunately, it wasn't good for us all the time.
On cooler days, it was a nice opening to let in some cool breeze, but at a risk of letting in some bugs as well.
On super-hot days (in other words, most of the time), opening it let in some hot breeze, and closing it created an incredible green-house effect.

.... and that made our room one of the hottest rooms in the building.
As a person who is extremely weak against heat, everything was just unbearable....

If you had noticed that i had not talk about the toilet yet, it was because out toilet was in a separate room.

I thought this was actually a pretty good idea, because even if one of us was using the shower, the other one of us could still use the toilet.


and if you recall the third picture of this post, our room did have a balcony.

and the view was pretty nice!
but who cares about the view, if you're always stressed out because of the inescapable heat

and lastly

Outside of the lobby of the 0th floor (instead of starting from 1, european buildings start from 0, kind of like Java code), we could see the Alps!

It was cool to see snow-covered mountain tops in the summer.
I mean, it's not a thing that I could see everyday.


Well, I stayed in that residence for 6 weeks, so i tried not to complain too much.
However, the heatwave and the air conditioner-less room made the residence extremely uncomfortable. My body could not stop sweating, and it became all gross and sweaty again shortly after taking a cold shower.

It was nice to have a tram station within walking distance, but the tram ride to the city center of Grenoble was a bit long, which made eating out kind of difficult and a big commitment.

There were many problems other than that as well (like the wifi, keys and etc.), but it was only for 6 weeks, so no big deal
Except for the "not having an AC in the heatwave" part. I can somehow stand the cold, but I really can not stand the heat. If it weren't for the heat, I would have remembered this place with much happier memories.

[UNC Summer in Grenoble] First Morning at Grenoble.

June 1st, 2015
After being knocked out in bed for a long while, my friend and I woke up on the morning of June 1st.
First thing we did was to get outside and get some breakfast!

We first headed out to the big, main street of Grenoble, called 'Cours Jean Jaures.'
This was also the place where my friend and I found the taco/kebab place on the previous day, so we thought it might be a good idea to start off the day by looking around this street.

and surprise surprise!
We found a baker shop, called 'Sesame.'

My friend and I treated ourselves with a muffin.
I ordered a chocolate muffin that was a bit bigger than I expected (which is good), and very delicious!

My friend and I were appreciating the scenery of 'Cours Jean Jaures' along with our breakfast muffin.

The exclamations still continued from last evening.

After finishing our muffins, we decided to explore Grenoble.
We didn't really have anything better to do back then

I have to say,
the main street of Grenoble is gorgeous!

So much nostalgia is filling up my heart as I'm posting right now!

This is where the Train station is.
It was only necessary to go slightly North East, following the tram rail track, from Cours Jean Jaures.

If you remember what happened in the previous post.....
..... just keep in mind that not having access to Google Maps on the first day of arrival to a new place may cause a lot of confusion, and a huge waste of time.

Back to the big street before heading East this time.
and Yes, this is one heck of a land/cityscape!

This time, we followed the tram rail and headed South East, because that's where the cellphone carrier shops were located.
We were trying to find the places beforehand, before other classmates arrived.

After successfully finding the locations of the cellphone carrier shops, we were making our way back to 'Cours Jean Jaures.'

Here's a nice blend of the detailed city architecture and the tall mountain in the distance.

This was another place that seemed to have a lot of shops and restaurants.

and on to our right..

We found a small park!

Well, it was not really a park.
The official name of this place was 'Place Victor Hugo,' which seems to get translated to something like "Victor Hugo Plaza."

What a peaceful scenery!
Even though this is deep within the city of Grenoble, I really loved the plaza's peaceful and quiet atmosphere.

My friend and I decided to sit at a bench and enjoy the peacefulness.
I personally love doing nothing and just appreciating the peace and quiet from time to time.
Too bad life is busy... I should have been born in Sweden or something...


As the time approached 11 AM, my friend and I returned to Hotel Trianon, grabbed our stuff and checked out, and headed over to somewhere near the train station, because we were supposed to meet the rest of the arriving classmates at the Grenoble train station around 1 PM or 2 PM.

Since, both of us still had about an hour to spare, we decided to have a light lunch.
Oh, and I loved the atmosphere of this street, and the feeling of eating outside.

We decided to have some pieces of sushi.
I was very surprised to see a slab of slate being used as a plate.

This is my friend, being very French.
I guess he really had to drink some wine, because it's France!

Well, I don't drink, so none of the alcohol related fantasies(?) are relevant.

This is a picture that I tried to capture both the mood of the street and the sushi, but ended up being a shot of just sushi.

After the lunch, my friend and I headed over to the Grenoble train station to meet rest of the classmates and Damien, who was kind of like the guide(?) of this Summer Program.

[UNC Summer in Grenoble] To Grenoble, France!

Allow me to backtrack about 4 months in time and start talking about my summer study abroad in France.

May 30th, 2015

This was the day that I had to leave for France.

Before heading to the airport, I had to check out of my Maymester dorm, and leave the rest of my stuff that I won't be taking with me to France at one of my friends' place.

I also got a ride to the airport from this good friend!

and here I was at Raleigh-Durham International Airport!

Thanks to the dorm check-out taking longer than it should have, I arrived at the gate right at the boarding time. I wasn't even able to get lunch...

First flight was Philadelphia-bound.
It was such a small plane with 2 and 2 seating arrangement.

Approximately an hour and a half later...

I arrived at Philadelphia International Airport.
It was a pretty big airport.
There were parts that were a bit older.

and there were also this part of the airport that seemed to be built recently.
Most of the international flights seemed to be at the newer terminal.

Well, thanks to the first flight getting delayed, my transfer flight started boarding immediately when I got to the gate.
Yup, I had no time to get some lunch. I was dying(?) of hunger.

I boarded the Paris-bound aircraft, and approximately 7 hours later...

I was able to see some French landmass(?) through the window!

Before I knew it, my feet were already touching the French ground.
I was really at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport!!

One of the things that was the most shocking when I arrived at France was the Language Barrier.
Everything was written in alphabet, but in French, which I know nothing of!

Another thing I was shocked about was how quick the immigration was.
I've been to mostly Korea, Japan, and the U.S., and their airports have immigration that take quite a while. (Especially the U.S.)
It was also unnecessary to fill out a customs form!

I was starting to like Europe already.
Go EU!

Then I walked over to the CDG airport train station.
Now I had a lot of time.
My flight landed around 8 AM, and I even had enough time to take the 8:30 AM train instead of the 9:58 AM one, all thanks to the super-short immigration process!

Well, since I had the extra time, I used it to explore the train station.

This was one of the things that grabbed my attention!
It was a cellphone battery charging station, where you generate electricity by turning the bike pedals!

Very eco-friendly, I see.

This is what the outside(?) of the train station looked like.

It was a bit chilly outside.
Yeah, I got excited about anticipating a nice and cool summer in France back then.

After taking a couple of pictures, it was about time to take the train.

I headed for the platform.

This screen displayed the information on the incoming train.
If you look closely, you can see that the incoming train is actually 2 trains connected together.
Apparently, the train would separate at Lyon, then the front half would go to Marseille and the rear half would go to Montpellier.

and Here comes the train!!

Here it is!!
The TGV!

I think I took these TGVs 3-4 more times.
The train was not shining new or anything, but it did seem like a veteran train that had been doing the job for quite a while.

and what do you know?
The interior seemed like it had been renovated! It was pretty clean, unlike the exterior.

This was actually my first time riding a high-speed train, and somehow, TGV got to be the first!

I had a lot of trouble sleeping on the airplane, so I barely got any sleep during the flight.
I was so tired when I was on the TGV, that I couldn't help but doze off throughout the entire train ride.

but there were some times when I was awake, and when I was....

I took these pictures of the rural France!
It was nice, because I was expecting Europe to be densely populated pretty much everywhere, and these sceneries were against that expectations.

I was too unconscious to actually take note of how fast the train was moving.
However, by the looks of the slightly motion-blurred pictures, which were taken at shutter speed 1/600 ~1/1000 second, the train seemed to have been moving very fast.

After a moment of unconsciousness...

I started to see a cityscape.

and I got off the TGV at Lyon Part Dieu station.

This is the only picture I have of the Lyon train station, because I had to run as fast as I could to catch the transfer train to Grenoble.

I made it,

but almost missed it...
thank goodness that I didn't!

About an hour later, I started to see a lot of mountains as the train was approaching Grenoble.

I finally arrived at the Grenoble train station!

Ohh Boy!!
Is this what France looks like??
I awed at the scenery.
but shortly after that, I was starting to get annoyed by the heat.
It was kind of warm there, since it were a warmer part of France.

and I was lost because my phone had no access to the internet....

Fortunately, one of the passerby couple helped me out using Google Maps,

and kindly led me all the way to Hotel Trianon, where I spent the first night in France!!
That lovely couple was a life-saver!!
Merci Beaucoup!

I chose this hotel because it was cheap, close to the train station, and was close to the city center!

Anyway, I checked in at the front desk, and holy Wow...
It was impossible to communicate through English!
Luckily, I booked through Booking.com and the printed out confirmation was just enough to get me checked in!
(The lady did say some other things, but I couldn't understand any of them...;;)

Then I went to my room.

What a tiny room.
I think this room was as small as, if not smaller than, the typical hotel rooms in Japan.

I was supposed to wait for a classmate of mine, but I fell unconscious in bed because I had barely gotten any sleep on the train or on the airplane.
Good thing that I set an alarm before helplessly falling asleep, I would not have been able to let him in if it weren't for that alarm!

When I got up, I ran to the train station, but couldn't find him there. When I was waiting back at the hotel, he came knocking on the door of my hotel room.


Both of us were extremely tired.
We just got some kebabs and tacos, took a shower, and then went straight to bed.


Stay tuned for my adventures in France!!