Bonjour everyone!
I have finally got the chance to add a little to this blog. It is Monday afternoon here in lovely Strasbourg, and I have finally settled in. I had a horrible time getting here. I missed my flight from London because of the poor British rail system and then couldn't get back into London from the airport due to the power cut that day. I ended up paying $130 on top of my $400 rail pass to take the Eurostar to Paris! I then took the 4 hour train ride to Strasbourg and ended up at my house by taxi Friday evening. I went to see Phone Booth that night with some students from ISU and then saw Pirates of the Carribean the next night with about 20 students. I was still really tired and jet lagged so spent most of Sunday chilling and sleeping.
I live on the main floor of a house with 2 other students. One is Will from USA and one is Fabio from Italy. So far its been good, Will and I have been making dinners while Fabio eats McDonalds everyday in between studying.
Monday was registration day, Tuesday was the opening ceremonies. I got to wear my suit and we had catering from the Hilton Hotel at the school. We started classes on Wednesday and then saw the presentation of the summer student team projects on Thursday - very impressive. There was a BBQ Thursday night during which time the 4 of us Canadians had a good chat with one of the ISU founders who is Canadian as well. Friday we had more classes - introduction to business and law! Then it was the closing ceremonies of the summer students. The had people from ESA (European Space Agency) there and the VP of Boeing! In the afternoon we got to talk to both of the founders of ISU for quite a while. The other guy is American, Peter Diamenta? and founded/started the X-Prize! That was very cool. After the graduation ceremony, we went out to a pub then to a bar. Peter, bought us a round of drinks and asked ME to dance! I was standing there dancing with the guy who started this school and has put up 10 million dollars for the x-prize!!!! It was unbelievable! At 2:30 we left the bar and were going to walk home - about 1.5 hours. But we ended up going the completely wrong direction and getting lost. So we headed back downtown and took a taxi, whose drive just made up a fare to charge us! Got home at about 5 am!
I slept in til 1:30 Saturday because there are these cool wooden shutters that go on the outside of the window so my room can be totally dark! Went to the Auchan (which is an enormous Walmart) and waited 30 minutes in line to buy stuff even with 50 tils open, yes 50! Chilled Saturday night and went to a cool little street/hops festival in a small village north of here yesterday.
I was supposed to get internet at my house Friday, but the French suck at doing things on time. So maybe tomorrow, who knows. Once I do, I will post some pictures and keep in touch more regularly!
Miss you all - keep in touch!
I'm loving it here - so cool!