Our lectures last week were on public health, health systems, international health regulation, and anti-aging medicines. 3 of the lectures were taught by Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger, who was commissioned by the UN to advise on the field of anti-aging medicine. She has also done a TED talk and wrote two books. The lectures were really fascinating and it was exciting to have the opportunity to learn from such a distinguished professor.
The title of this post was really a nod to my French classmates. I never realized how tough this language is; at this point I've had 12 hours of French instruction and I can now count to 100 and tell you my name. Other than that I'd be tempted to throw my hands in the air and say, "Je parle Américain" (I speak American), as one of my classmates so eloquently put. I hope that after 5 weeks of this intensive language study I'll be able to say a bit more, but for now I think I'll stick to writing these posts in English.
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| View of Lausanne from the Cathedral |
On Friday, the group went to Lausanne to get biometric scans for our visas. We got to spend the whole day touring the city, which is gorgeous. We met our home-stay coordinator, Christina, at the train station in Nyon in the morning. When we arrived in Lausanne we toured the cities largest cathedral. We climbed nearly 500 steps of a winding staircase to the top of the cathedral. The view was breathtaking. You could see the entire city as well as Lake Geneva and Alps off in the distance. All I could think of while I toured the cathedral was how much work went into the church in the nearly 100 years that it took to build it in 1170. It reminded me of the cathedral in Ken Follett's book "Pillars of the Earth".
After visiting the cathedral and doing our biometric scans, we had lunch on the lake front and visited the temporary Olympic Museum. The real museum has been under renovation for 2 years, but it re-opens in November. I've heard they have one of Michael Jordan's shoes on exhibit, so I will definitely making a trip back to see the full museum. As my friend Rose says, "anything for MJ".
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| Lausanne Cathedral |
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| A bird carved out of a carrot at a Chinese Restaurant on Friday |
On Saturday, I went took the boat across lake Geneva to Yvoire, France with my friend Edgar. The boat ride was about 25 minutes and cost 13 Francs with my 1/2 Pass. The 1/2 Pass is a card you can buy that cuts the price of all travel within Switzerland. It was about 200 Francs to buy a pass for the year, but since Swiss travel is so expensive, I expect the pass to pay for itself by October. Anyway, back to Yvoire. It is a medieval village that has turned into somewhat of a tourist haven. We only spent about 1.5 hours there but we had enough time to check out the village and its famous "Garden of the 5 Senses". As always, the views from the shore of the Alps were incredible.
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| Yvoire Castle from the Garden |
On Sunday, I joined my friends Amedee and Edgar in Nyon to go swimming. We found a really cool public swimming area, where the locals were laying out in the sun and drinking wine from the snack bar. After swimming we found a nature trail and walked around the outskirts of Nyon, before grabbing a bite to eat at the local kebab restaurant. We also went to check out a church service that was conducted in English. It was pretty cool to see the community of English speakers with all different types of accents in the middle of a village in Switzerland.
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| Amedee and me swimming in Nyon |
Today was back to business as usual. We had a research methodology lecture in the morning and our usual french lesson in the afternoon. I ate lunch at the castle in Nyon and the views were the clearest I've seen them since I've been here. It seemed like everywhere I went Mont Blanc was in full view!
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| The view of Mont Blanc in the sunset from my terrace in Sygny |
À demain!
Mary
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