It's hard to know where to begin when one has to recapitulate 3 weeks packed with events so let's just start with the mountains. Grenoble is actually a quite flat city (which makes it excellent for biking, I'm about halfway through renovating my landlord's bike, which I'm planning to buy) but all around it there's mountains. You don't always see them but sometimes when you least expect it they just appear as an almost breathtaking backdrop to the end of a street. The smallest one is the Bastille. That's the one with little see-through eggs going up and down from the last entry. It rises about 300 metres over Grenoble. The view from there is not bad at all. It still seemed quite small when we looked down upon it from the top of one of the nearby mountain tops, la Mountrousse, which rises about 1700 metres over Grenoble and 1896 metres over sea level. From there you could see Mount Blanc and a bunch of other more nearby mountain ridges where I'm sure I'll spend quite some time snowboarding this winter. It's also possible to go inside the mountains. We were to one cave, which apparently stretches about 16 km inside the mountain. Naturally, we didn't go that far in but it was still a really nice experience. The cave was excellently lit up in different colours, for example green, as you can see on the picture. Lummelunda eat your heart out is all I can say after that experience. Oh, and I had my first waterfall shower near the caves as well. Cold, yet refreshing.
The ”we”, who did the trip to la Mountrousse, are by the way most of the foreign students who will study at the different engineering schools here in Grenoble. This year we were about 60 people who took the intensive course in French, in 6 differently levelled groups. I was in the next best one, something that has proved to be quite appropriate. I'm far from being totally independent when it comes to the French language but I'm certainly a better speaker than the majority of the foreign students. I'm just glad that it seems that my two years at university seems to have helped laying a good foundation to build on.
I've encountered quite a few friendly people here from various places on the Globe including France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, England,, Scotland, Ecuador, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Basque, Finland, the US of A and so on and so forth. In addition to the mountain hike we've also gone bowling (I won on my lane, yaaaaaaay), danced Salsa (or in my case tried to dance salsa) and just in general had loads of fun. September 4th it was time to meet the other new students at the industrial engineering and management school here where I'll take most or all of my courses. I haven't quite understood the entire French school system yet but I know that these students have had two years of preparatory school with math, physics, chemistry, more math and so on, after which they all take a large national test which determines which schools they can apply to. This means that these new students are more or less kick-ass when it comes to math and absolute beginners when it comes to economy. This leads to a bit of problem for the foreign students when it comes to choosing courses since we have to pick them from all tree years here. It's tricky to make the schedule work to say the least. I've changed my plan quite a bit, I won't for example do as much programming as I thought, but I'm sure it will be fine. Well, not entirely sure but I hope at least.
The integration period (nollningen) at my school have so far been delightful. Just as in Sweden, there's a group of people who does a lot of work to help the new students learn to know each other and the town, without getting payed of course. There's been some ”soirées” with dancing and partying at different clubs, including one with a pool. A new encounter for most people I'm sure and certainly for the ones who got their cell phones ruined after being thrown in the water... 
Quite a few of the parties have been parties with so called open bar. You pay your entrance fee and after that it's all drinks are free. Luckily, I've been able to handle it quite well. It would be interesting to see how a party like that would work in Linköping. Here, I've seen vomit and vomiting but not so much of it. Anyway, so much for all the talk about the French drinking culture.
Two of the more noteworthy events during the integration (which is still far from finished, after all it's just been two weeks) have been a picture assignment and a ”rally” in town with the BDS, le Bureau du Sport. For the former, we were given little envelopes with different team names like ”les Has-beens”, les ”Biatches” or in my case ”Les Skieurs”. The assignment was to arrange a picture with a theme associated to the team name, preferably with a twist. As you can see from the result we twisted it quite well. The picture is taken from my window and the skis belong actually to my landlord (let's hope he doesn't read my blog AND understand English at the same time). As you can see we edited it quite a bit. Scieurs means ”sawers”...
The other happening was as mentioned arranged by the ”sports department” of my school. Basically another group who likes to arrange parties and from time to time show their hairy behinds (an activity the French seems to be quite fond of for some reason). My group (TuffGIngarna, GI is my school) did quite well I think. For example I've drunk beer under water in a fountain through a snorkel and shot a commercial for shampoo in another fountain, and I've had little shy French boy throw a pie in my face. All in all a sticky and wet but FUN afternoon in Grenoble.
Maybe I should mention another evening here as well. I thought it would be another night of simple socializing but hej vad jag bedrog mig. All of sudden I had more or less volunteered to be in one of the teams for an improvised theatre competition. Each team had a coach from some theatre group here in town and after a little warm-up I was supposed to be speaking French with a Scottish accent and improvise the scene ”a house by the sea”. Let's just say that the feeling I had before it started must have been a bit like jumping from plane for the first time knowing that your parachute is the size of a handkerchief. The ”battle” was played in several rounds with the audience deciding the winner of each round by vote. I didn't start off to well but I must say I excelled in one special round, ”1001 and one ways to...”. All the contenders from booth teams stood on a line and the goal was to take turns performing as many ways one could to do certain things. The one I got most comments for afterwards were in the genre ”picking up girls/boys at the beach”. I simply walked out on the floor and said: ”Je vient de la Suède”, (I come from Sweden). I should maybe add that I've got quite a few questions and comments about Swedish girls and how good-looking swedes are in general. It would seem I've got a bit a reputation here in school after that night but the comments have only been positive so it should be okay.
I'm sure I'll have more stuff to write about the integration as it goes on. For example I've already payed 110 Euros to go to the WEI (Weekend Integration) for three days. I don't know to much about it but everyone says it's worth the money. Besides, my French bank have been more than generous. Not only will they return me 40€ after the WEI. They have also given me 40€+33€+16€+a 256 MB USB stick to open an account. The account is free and they've given me a VISA card as well as an account with 4% interest rate. They claim it's a good deal for them. It's most certainly a good deal for me. Or so I hope in any case.
Grenoble once hosted the winter Olympics and sports are still important here, or at least in school. All engineering students are actually required to do some sort of sport every week. There is massive selection to choose including, skiing, snowboarding, climbing (indoors and outdoors), fencing (fäktning), judo etc. I chose climbing and skiing/snowboarding. I've alreadye bought a pair of insanely small climbing shoes. More about sports later.
I'll get an Internet connection on Monday (or so they say) and after that I hope you will Skype me. My screenname is horseradish. Why horseradish? Beats me...
And finally...
France isn't Sweden because:
People talk quite loudly during lectures and if you set a meeting at 7 in the evening it really means 7:30.
Take care everyone and write me comments. Hugs!
This coming month is going to a bit more loaded when it comes to homework. I've two group assignments. In one of them, the three of us have 30-page scientific text about car manufacturing (more precisely about optimisation, the best order to produce cars with the different features, like colour or extra equipment, on the same production line) in French which we need to understand and present by a two-page text and presentation, with questions from the teachers in the end. It IS a bit scary. The other assignment is to go out and interview a company about their innovation process and make a 15-page essay about it. We're visiting Caterpillar, the company that builds construction vehicles. This course also includes a written 2-page synthesis on another text plus a presentation of said text, about 21 hours of mandatory lectures AND a test. All this will give 1,75 ECTS which corresponds to approximately one (1!!!) Swedish högskolepoäng. To give a bit of perspective I managed to get 3 ECTS by doing an all-to-easy online French course. You had to work online a bit and then the examination was 2 half-hour tests. Do I need to add that the French are quite new with the credit system?
