View of the mountains from our hike up Chartreuse
Some trees on Chartreuse
A barn
A small drinking pool for Dogs, with a fountain at the side for people.
Me and the Beaujolais wine
Tobogganing in the Alps
Monday, November 19, 2007
Hey,
Things have progressed fairly well since a week ago. Last Friday night I hung around the residence hall with they guys and girls from my floor. We mostly just drank and chatted. Most of my floor, and for that matter, building, is made up of international students. We’re mostly all here on ERASMUS too, although some are exchange students or master’s students on scholarship and there are also a few French students as well. Of the ERASMUS students, most are in medicine too! We decided too that after staying in Friday, we should all go out into Grenoble on Saturday night. It was a great night. I went out first with the guys to “The London Pub” which was a bar that was sort of a cross between an English pub (wooden) and an American roadhouse (London things plastered all over the walls, street signs, flags, etc). Then it played pub styled music. But it was full of lots of British students and there was a soccer match on tv. We had a bunch of drinks there and chatted and the girls arrived two hours later (after getting dressed) and we all went to a club. It was loads of fun, and it’s great to get to know the people better that you’re living with.
Monday started with my medical exam (physical), which upon passing allows me to go into my hospital placements here in Grenoble. It went fine of course, and because I hadn’t received a 5th booster shot for tetanus/diptheria/polio – which they didn’t understand would be given to me next year in Canada, they decided to give me one for free, just to be sure I was up to date.
So, I went in Tuesday to the giant hospital in Grenoble that is the Hôpital du Nord. It really is big, especially after being in Yeovil, where there are only two wards on each floor, this thing’s just a maze. Also, it was a bit more technologically designed i.e. bigger rooms to fit all the machinery and lots of room for patients who are waiting. I was lucky that radiology (my first placement) is on the second floor, right at the top of the escalator from the reception. So, it was easy to find. However, radiology starts half an hour later than the rest of the hospital because they have to wait for all the patients to arrive from other wards. So, there was no-one there when I got there. After much more explaining and figuring out, I was sent to a secretary who attached me to a Doctor. I was shown around the radiology ward (again, massive) and then went to another building for my first session, an MRI session. In French it’s IRM, you sort of have to get used to the fact that in French everything is similar in medicine, just the letters are often mixed up. Except for CT scan, it’s called TDM.
Tuesday went on longer than expected. After the MRI session, I attended a lecture with my firm of 6 people. It was pretty awful the moment the doctor handed me the pointer and asked me to point something out on a CT scan of the abdomen. I barely had a clue what they were talking about in the first place let alone trying to do French anatomy. But, everyone here takes their time with me, and everything is starting to come into focus, which I’m guessing is normal. The French students went on to afternoon lectures and I stayed to see some new interventional radiology. They were embolizing arterio-venous fistulas in the lungs of a patient using coils or plugs. It was pretty neat and new stuff. I also didn’t get out of the hospital until 7 pm. An 11 hour first day!
Normally though, as the week progressed we are done by 1pm. It’s a bit different from Bristol, but we have a jam-packed morning from 8am-1pm everyday with sometimes no break. I’ve been doing CTscans, MRIs, Angiography, Ultrasound and Radiography. Last week was on Vascular and this week I’m doing bones and musculoskeletal medicine.
Thursday night was the Fête du Beaujolais. It’s a French wine festival where they celebrate the cultivation of this year’s wine. It reminded me of a Thanksgiving Festival – but for wine. So, it’s basically everyone drinking cheap French wine. The French all say it’s horrible, but to someone who doesn’t know much about wine, I thought it was pretty good! The French festivities ended around 9pm, but after that it was just all the students and young people drinking wine in the streets. We had a mini party at the res, we had Beaujolais which costs €3.00 per bottle, it tastes like sweet wine because it’s so young, but has the same strength. We went through the streets of Grenoble, then went into a bar and drank a bunch of Beaujolais ourselves. I didn’t get into bed until 3pm that night, partly because I was out late, and partly because of all the people that were in the streets would allow the Trams to run, so there was no tram back at the end of the night, so I had to walk.
Friday was 8am start at the hospital. From the lack of sleep I wanted to get to bed early so I just had a couple beers and played some pingpong for an early night. This was also because Saturday night we were having a meal with all the international medics. The idea was to bring the ingredients of a dish from your home country for at least 4 people. An international potluck. We all met at the faculty of medicine and went out in cars up into Chartreuse (one of the mountains that overlooks Grenoble) to the house of one of the French students. There were 33 of us in total and about 8 of them were French.
This girl’s house was amazing. Here parents run a bed and breakfast, so it was a typical French chalet with a barn and a few buildings. There was a massive kitchen and a massive table that seated 20 people. We had had rain in Grenoble for 3 days straight during the week which meant that up in the mountains there was tons of snow. It was absolutely stunning.
We had our massive meal in which I dined on foods from Spain, Poland, Sweden (meatballs – like IKEA), France, Germany and Austria. I brought pancakes and maple syrup of course, and everyone decided it should be part of the dessert. Which also consisted of foods from Portugal, Belgium, France, Canada (me) and Poland. It was a huge meal and I made enough small pancakes for 33!
We finished our meal, chatted for a while and drank some amazing local French wine and spirits from the region. Then we all headed out and had a massive snowball fight and did a bit of tobogganing. It really reminded me of home, I haven’t really seen much snow like that over the past 2 years.
Sunday was a simply gorgeous day. I got up late and went for a swim. When I got back and was having lunch I was invited to hiking up Chartreuse. It was a beautiful hike we did 6km (3 up, 3 down) over 3 hours and over that time I learned to count to 10 in Arabic (Lebanese), Flemish and Swedish (as I already knew German, English and French) which where the 6 first languages of all the people that went on the hike. A Canadian (me), a Swedish, a Flemish, a French-Belgian, a German and a Lebanese. It was a beautiful hike and a great view of Grenoble. We didn’t climb to the top, but to one of the summits ¾ of the way up.
This week I’m doing bones and musculoskeletal radiology in the hospital, but not much else planned. Hopefully going to play a bit of squash.
-Pete
My floor from Residence de La Tronche at the Beaujolais festival in Place de Notre Dame
The Beaujolais Pisse-Dru that we drank and a signpost from our hike
The people I went hiking with at one of the summits
The international potluck
