Onwards and Upwards!

So having spent the past week feeling very disorientated and quite homesick, I am happy to announce that I seem to be finding my feet and starting to get into my new life in Grenoble!

Starting an international work placement has posed many challenges but I think that it has already helped me in terms of confidence and beginning to learn some valuable skills that will no doubt be very useful in future job interviews. This is because I have been put in a position where I am dealing with a range of different customers each day who more often than not speak French. I am therefore getting to practice my French a lot whilst trying to get my head around what I am doing in terms of the work load.

I had a day off yesterday and I was well and truly ready for it when it came round! I was exhausted as well as keen to do some sightseeing as I had not had much of a chance to do that in my first week here. I therefore climbed La Bastille which is a mountain from which you get magnificent views of the city and the surrounding French Alpes. Although it reached 28 degrees Celsius in Grenoble yesterday, and I got very hot and bothered walking up the steep slopes of the mountain, it was well and truly worth it for the stunning views! I went a bit over the top on the photography but am glad that I did as I now have loads of lovely pictures that I am in the process of loading onto the 'Photos - Grenoble/Rhone Alpes' page of the blog. I hope that you enjoy looking at them!

Anyway, back to the subject of life in general! Another thing that I did on my day off was sit down and have a browse online for activities in the local area that I could do in my spare time. I think this is very important as although I am really enjoying my work placement, I feel that I need to meet some people outside of work so that I am able to practice my French and have something to keep me occupied in the limited spare time that I have. I have luckily managed to find a choir to join so I am very excited about that! They rehearse every Tuesday evening in the city centre so I should hopefully be able to go most weeks. However, tomorrow I will be unable to attend as I am down for the evening shift at work which won't finish until about 10pm. Oh well! There is always next week! It took me a whole week to bring up the courage to contact a choir as I was worried about my French but I am glad that I did as they seem very welcoming in their emails.

So this week I am going to continue with my normal routine of working in the restaurant and reception until Sunday when I have decided to go to Lyon and visit a friend from Bangor who is an erasmus student at the university of Lyon. It will be lovely to see her and to see what Lyon is like!

So that sums up the last few days really! Having started off being unsure about being an erasmus student, I am starting to feel much more able to live up to the challenges and get the best experience that I possibly can!