Bonjour from France!
This summer I am spending 3 and a half weeks in Bordeaux, France, along with some traveling in between. I am on my second week at KEDGE business school after spending a long weekend in Barcelona, but I will get to that later. Studying abroad has been such an eye opening experience. It is nothing like the classes at home. We are fitting a whole three hour credit class into two and a half weeks. It’s intense but I have discovered that I actually love it that way! It is nice to focus on a single class and to work with students from different countries. A lot of the days we are in class from 830 am until 430 or 6 pm so it is all day, but they actually go by fast! the first half of the day is listening to a lecture while the second half is doing a group work/problems on what we learned. It makes the day go by fast and the group work creates relationships with my fellow students. I wish this is how school was back in the states!
Bordeaux is a great city! It is not very touristy so it isn’t super crowded and half the city is more modern while the center of the city still has it’s ancient architecture (as you can see above). I have also discovered how great public transportation is here! The have trams going throughout the city and I am able to get to school without having to deal with traffic and parking. Our “apart hotel” as they call it, is located right next to the center of the city and conveniently enough a supermarket is located right next door. It is a really great location and is only a tram ride away from school!
Our first weekend in Bordeaux we explored the city and found a lot of great parks and shops. That sunday we took a train ride to Arcachon where we climbed the highest sand dunes in Europe at La Dune Du Pilat! It was an exhausting hike but worth the view from the top.
We had a day off the following Thursday and did a wine and cheese tasting! That was probably one of my favorite experiences so far. Bordeaux is known for their wine and many chateaus. I never knew there was such a science to tasting wine! It was very interesting to learn about. After tasting one wine they led us down to this cheese cellar where we could cut off little pieces of cheeses and try as many as we wanted, it was awesome! I was only expecting a few cheeses but there were many to choose from.
Well gotta get back to class! I will let you all know later how the trip to Barcelona went!
au revoir!
Evie Rose