La rentrée scolaire

Yesterday was the first day of school!  The night before, Antoine came over to have dinner with Martine and me, and then I read my Fodor’s Switzerland book for awhile to get some ideas about where I want to visit.  So many wonderful places, not enough time! (or money…)  Then after getting all my things laid out for school, I finally went to bed.  Our classes start at 9:30 most mornings, so I catch the 8:45 train from Gland and arrive in Geneva about 20 minutes later.  Yesterday I woke up, got ready, packed my back with my things for the day, and had breakfast (yogurt and muesli yum) before leaving to walk to the train station.  Some other kids from my program live in Gland, too, so we all rode into the city together.  The train station in Geneva, Cornavin, is a very short walk from our SIT classroom building, so it’s very convenient. In the morning we had an International Studies Seminar lecture about International Migration, given by one our program directors, Heikki Mattila.  Mr. Mattila is originally from Finland, but he is in Geneva working for the International Organization for Migration (IOM).  Surprisingly the 3 hours went by pretty fast, and I was not bored at all.  For lunch we headed to Restaurant Manora, a cafeteria-style restaurant on the top floor of the Manor department store.  It’s really good and cheaper than most sit-down restaurants, but still not cheap!  I still can’t get used to how expensive everything is here… Then it was time to catch the tram out to Ecole Migros for our first French class.  I was put into the advanced class with 7 other kids from my program, and I’m excited because it’s a great group and our teacher is awesome.  Her name is Virginie, and she is Franco-Italian and lives in Evian-les-Bains, just across the border in France.  She explained all the activities that we would be doing throughout the semester, and then we did introductions (in French of course!) and an in-class essay.  I took it easy last night and did a little homework, some reading, and some Skype-ing, too.  I got to talk to Christine for a little bit, and Zach for a long time, so I was happy J  The weather was beautiful this morning when I left for the train station, and I took a picture of the vineyard that I pass on my way.

Yes, this is the route I take to the train station...

This morning we had our first Field Studies Seminar class, which Aline (one of our program directors) teaches.  She went over the syllabus and graded assignments for the semester.  We will be learning a lot of techniques to use in our field research, and we have to do several group projects and oral presentations in addition to an 8-page paper due the last week of classes.  It sounded like a lot all at once, but spread out over the next 7 weeks I think it will be completely manageable.  At the end of class, Aline announced that Virginie was sick today, so the Advanced French class had the afternoon free.  Yay!  After lunch, 6 out of the 8 of us decided to go to Lausanne for afternoon since we were unexpectedly free.  Good decision!  We stopped at the train station at Nyon to pick up our student rail passes (half price off all our tickets in Switzerland for the rest of the time we’re here!) and then continued on to Lausanne.  It was only about 25 minutes from Nyon, so not too far.  The first thing we did when we arrived was walk to the top of a pretty park and admire the beautiful views of the city, the lake, and the gorgeous snow-capped alps.  

Amazing :)

Then we continued down to the waterfront and walked along in a beautiful park, stopping to take pictures of each other and the boats that were going by on the lake.  It really was the perfect afternoon with perfect weather.

 Sophie and me by the lake

Quintessential Switzerland, non?

We had a nice time just exploring and then walked up to the old part of town…quite a hike uphill!  There really wasn’t that much up there, so we just poked around the few of the shops before getting a snack and eventually heading to the train station.  It’s hard to really shop here because everything is so EXPENSIVE!  That’s my only complaint about Switzerland so far, and as much as I love it I can’t even imagine living here because the cost of living is so ridiculous.  Martine made us a nice dinner, and now I’m just going to do a little work and maybe go out for a drink in Nyon with Sophie.  I really need to get in school mode and do some more reading, but it’s hard when there’s so much to do around here!

 Group (minus Fiona) in Lausanne