Arriving in Neuchâtel

I've been here for about a week and 1/2 now and things have been absolutely crazy. To give you a brief update: I'm living in La Tour des Cadolles, University owned apartments that once belonged to the hospital across the street that is being torn down as I write this. I live on the 3rd floor and I have a pretty decent view of the city from my room :) I share a bathroom and a kitchen with my flat mates (I think there are about 6 or 7 of us right now), who are super nice despite the fact that I don't see them very often.

I do however, see the people on the floor below me almost every single day :) I've become really close friends with two of the girls on that floor and by knowing them, I know the rest of their roommates (their floor is much more social than t
he one I'm on).

Last week was full of registration must-do's. It was actually quite difficult to get everything done. I must have gone between student housing and the registration office at least 5 times. If one building wasn't open, the other had a horrible line. When the other building was open, the person I needed to speak with wasn't available. When the other building DIDN'T have a huge line, it just wasn't open! Back and forth back and forth. It was a registration nightmare- but it all got done!


I also kind of feel like they prefer to pass the task on to other people... How to explain this... Ok, for instance, I had to pay my tuition- not a problem, but I couldn't pay it at the academic services office... instead I had to go to the post office. I'm... not entirely sure why it had to be paid there... but that's where I went anyway. Unfortunately, the post office doesn't accept visas and I don't have a swiss bank card yet (I have an account!... but no card) so I have to pay with cash. Alright, no problem, I'll just use this ATM over here to- oh but wait, what's this? I can only withdraw so much money a day???? Greeeeaaaat.

That little example kind of summed up my week. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. Oh, and for those of you who are DYING to know how I paid my tuition and rent- I did it at the bank where Geraldine (can you tell that I've seen her a lot recently?) made the transfer for me from my Swiss Bank Account which has part of my Rotary scholarship in it :)

Aside from all of the Admin stuff, last week was a blast! Mikey, an American who found this blog!, and I went hiking the Sunday before Registration and ended up in Chaumont. It was about a 2 hour hike and was totally worth it. We had absolutely no idea where we were going, but ended up right where we wanted to be on accident! Chaumont is a neat little city perched right above Neuchâtel. They also had an observation tower :)




And to give you an idea of where we were...


See that little tower in the middle/left part of the picture? We were at the very top! You can't really tell how high up that is since the photo is zoomed in so much- but trust me, it's up there. :)






On Monday I went to an apero/tandem and met a TON of people (mostly foreign students who are also learning French). For those of you who don't know, an apero/tandem, or at least this one, consists of a group of people who want to learn a language and divide into groups according to the language they wish to learn (this is the tandem part). For instance, since I was there to learn French, I sat at the French table and spoke French the majority of the night. The aparo (short for aparatif) was the drinks part :) Drinks and conversation. I dug it.

I also rented a pedalo (umm.. paddle boat?) with Tori, an English girl I met on a group afternoon trip to Bern, and went out on Lake Neuchâtel. It was awesome to see the city from the water.



After that, we met up with Cerena, the other Rotary scholar in Neuchâtel with me- yay! Mikey and Celia, a German foreign exchange student, for dinner. Tori and Cerena had been craving meet and decided that we should all go to a restaurant for a nice steak dinner (lucky Celia is vegetarian! but still found something to order ^_^). After dinner we frolicked around town taking various pictures and being marry!




Another day I took an afternoon trip to Bern with the Erasmus students. We didn't stay long, maybe about 4 hours, so I wasn't able to see much of the city. I ended up going back with Cerena, Tori, Celia and Céline, a girl from Belgium who is super funny, on Saturday- but STILL didn't get to really explore the city on account of it raining. We did get to go to a few neat shops though :P

Ahh and today, today I had my second day of class. I'll go into this on the next entry. o.o I'm kind of sad that I don't get to run around the city with my friends anymore, but I guess I can't do that forever :p