Day 5

12:45 AM French time

So I had a somewhat spotty internet connection at the first hotel/bed-and-breakfast, so posting here was problematic. I've moved to the second hotel now, which is in more of a tourist area, so the internet is a little more stable now - YAY!

I've taken a few pictures over the last couple of days and will post them this weekend, probably in some backdated posts. I didn't actually bring a paper journal with me on this trip (I carried enough other junk with me....) so the blog is my travel journal. It's easier for me to keep everything in the right date order, even if it isn't necessarily easy for you all to read it!

So....the end of the first week in France, and I think things are going well. I am slowly slowly slowly starting to remember more of my French. What I do not remember is how to conjugate any verbs beyond "to be", which makes forming sentences a bit hard. But I can pick up a few words here and there in conversation at work, and read parts of the menu/order dinner! Work is going well, although this is clearly not a group that only works 35 hr/week like we all hear about in the US. That's ok, it's keeping me busy, but it makes for very long days, especially considering that an "early" dinner here is 7:30 pm. Tonight we got to the restaurant at 7:15 for drinks, and I got back to the hotel (a block away) at 11:30!

I am falling asleep at the keyboard now so I'll cut this short with just a couple of links for you to check out. Tomorrow Olivier (the product manager I work with) and his wife Fernanda are taking me to Chamonix to take the cable car up to view Mont Blanc, which is the highest peak in Western Europe. They promise me fondue at the restaurant! And Sunday Olivier, Fernanda, and I are meeting up with Liliane (project manager at work, she is the new French employee who is doing training with me) to go skiing at Flaine! Skiing in the Alps! I am going to possibly be in over my head, but I cannot wait!