Ruth With InterVarsity Link: A Full Week

So much has been going on this week that I haven't had much time to sit down and actually put it into writing to give you a better idea of what is going on. Let me try to just sum up a couple of the things here!

Monday:
This was a day off in Switzerland and all the shops were closed. It was rainy and miserable but Andrew and I trekked over to my apartment for some cleaning. I came down with a cold and was sneezing and blowing my nose all throughout Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday:
I had the first part of my language placement exam. A grammar section and a listening section. It was quite tricky!

Wednesday:
I had the second part of my language placement exam. A written comprehension section, a written essay section, and a spoken interview part. My partner was a lady from the Czech Republic and we each had to speak for 2 minutes individually and then 5 minutes together. We were given different topics for our individual monologue and then for our discussion we had to talk about cooking. We sort of ran out of things to say so I started asking her about Prague and told I had been there. I figured, hey! At least we are still talking in French!
Every Wednesday afternoon, the GBEU has a prayer meeting so I went and met more of the people who make up the team for all of French-speaking Switzerland. The praying is all in French which can often be hard to follow but it is great for us all to get together and pray.
In the evening, I went to the welcome night for the French-speaking Swiss students. I guess this would sort of be like the equivalent of an IV large group except I don't think they have large group every week. They had a talk from an American who has been in Lausanne for 18 years and works at the university. He gave his testimony for the first time in French. I could understand him very easily and was delighted to hear that he had also been involved with InterVarsity in the US. After the talk they broke us into small groups and I went to the one for where I am studying. It was very hard to hear and they students were all speaking very quick French but I understood that they were all just deciding when their regular time for meeting was going to be. This is kind of the equivalent to IV small groups.

Thursday:
Andrew and I took my suitcases to my apartment in preparation for me moving in there. I then went to lunch on campus with the GBEU students from the night before. That was quite difficult to understand what they were even talking about. However, I think I mostly got their names down! In the afternoon, Rob and Phoebe, two students from Heidelberg, came to visit the Livos and to check out their international student ministry here in Lausanne. In the evening we all went to campus to set up for the first iCafé of the semester. This is a social night open to all international students (and also Swiss students who don't mind speaking English) and it happens once a month at the moment. The goal is to form relationships with international students and hopefully get them involved in other ways, including a Christianity Explored class and meeting one-on-one. It was such a wonderful evening! We had about 40 people and they were from all over the world! In fact when one student said he was from Bolivia it sort of felt close to home considering! There was one other American girl there who is doing an internship in Switzerland for the next 3 months. She is from Memphis, TN. Overall, the evening went very well with food and some activities designed to mix us all up and get to know other people. As the person who wrote everyone their name tag, I got to meet each person and attempt to spell their names. It was very fun.

Friday:
I arrived on campus and to my building where the School of French as a Foreign Language is located at 9:30 in order to get my exam results. I got placed in the first year of the diploma course which is great! I then went to two information sessions about the university in general and about my program specifically. There are 1,000 students in the School of French as a Foreign Language and they are from about 70 different countries! The common language is French as that is what people are there to study which means that all the information they are giving us is French. After and before the information sessions I talked to people around me in English (which many people also speak, sometimes better than French) or in French. One lady who was sitting next to me helped me to understand the courses a bit more and I was very grateful to her!
I am still learning how the university system works here as it is very different from my experience in Virginia. For instance, you don't choose classes before the semester starts. This is partly because their degrees are so specific that they don't really have as many choices as we do. Their programs are more specialized to the subject matter. But, once classes do begin you have three weeks to kind of try them out until you decide to officially be registered in them. For me, this means that even though I have assigned classes I must take, I do not have assigned times of the week for these classes. Most classes for my program are offered two times during the week and I must pick one of the times to attend. However, next week I could choose to go to the other time which may mean a different professor. It took me quite awhile to try and decipher this!
In the evening, I officially moved in to my apartment which is on the other side of Lausanne from the Livos and takes about 40 minutes to get to. After a quick stop at the grocery store near me I spent most of the evening cleaning the apartment and unpacking my things. It was nice to get clothes out of the suitcases and into drawers and dressers!

Saturday:
I spent the day exploring Lausanne with Rob & Phoebe being tourists. We went to some markets in old town, to the cathedral, and up a tower to the north of the city for some lovely views. I did not make it to the top as you had to climb some open air steps and my fear of heights kicked in like I haven't felt since I climbed the Eiffel Tower 4 years ago! But Phoebe very kindly took some photos on my camera for me. After that, we went the grocery store for food and then to my apartment for a late lunch. (Food is very expensive here that it is impossible to eat out.) Rob and Phoebe also helped me with some apartment things which was so very kind of them. We ended the day by going down to Ouchy (Oo-she) which is right on the lake. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Lausanne and we had some stunning views. Check out the photos below!

Sunday (today!):
We went to an English speaking church (with a service that started at noon) as Andrew was preaching and Claire was sharing about the ministry with international students here (which we call iConnect). It was a really great service and we had lots of great conversations with people. I met a couple from Canada who have only been here since February and we could relate to each other on so many things!