Université Catholique de Lille - The Early Days

Mardi
1 Juillet

I woke up at 8 am in complete darkness thinking I had woken up way too early. Little did I realize that I had pulled my curtains shut the night before and when I did draw them,  it was bright enough to make me think that I had missed the whole morning. Here in Lille, the sun rises a little before 6 am and a little after 10 pm. I absolutely love the extra daylight for exploring. Since I'm only here for 4 weeks, I'll take all the time I can get, and today we spent it at school.

Everyone in the program is split into 3 dorms. Our dorm is the farthest away from campus so we all had to take a 10-15 minute bus ride to meet up with everyone else for the welcome orientation at Université Catholique de Lille (Yes, Lille Catholic University. See French isn't so hard).

The main building of Lille Catholic University

When we got there we were seated in a large lecture hall with more room to move around than an American college lecture hall. The ESP team introduced themselves and what we were getting ourselves into. They were all so loving, funny and especially welcoming. Some were from France who spoke English and some were from America who spoke French. Although my favorite was a lady who reminded me of a sassy McGonagall who insisted that she was "British, not English". She told us the stats: 140 kids in the program, 20 different countries and a handful of people to help up out along the way. I've already met people from Iran, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Australia, Hawai'i, Italy, Argentina and Spain. The lust for travel and knowledge definitely brings people together.

From there, we went on a campus tour to see where our classes would be and where the main buildings are. Honestly, if I were to walk past the gorgeous main building I wouldn't know it was a university. Most of the buildings are spread out between streets and next to sandwich shops. I even mistook our engineering building for an office building.

Across the street from the school

After the tour we each got an envelope with our meal pass, student ID, and purple bus card. It was a little overwhelming having a bus card and knowing that I could go anywhere in the dense, knotted and confusing streets of Lille. Luckily, I only need one bus to go from school to the dorms and back. Bus 12 is my best friend. I'll tackle the other routes eventually. This feeling of being overwhelmed and excited is so addicting, much like traveling. It's probably an addiction to feeding the mind, which doesn't sound so bad.

We then went over to our first class of the program called Current Practices in Renewable Energy. We were all so stoked and ready to learn something new, and learn we did. We soon remembered that sometimes engineering is tough, and to get to the good stuff, you've gotta get through the rough stuff. One of our teachers for this class read over slides about graphs and figures of energy use worldwide, a review on thermodynamics, and criteria for our project for 3 hours. Definitely not all sunshine and daisies. However, we perked up a bit when he told us that we would be taking field trips to see renewable energy generation sites including behind the scenes work at Lille's Metro Station. Needless to say, we were all still thrilled to be done with the first day of class.

When 6 o'clock rolled by, we headed to the main hall for a meet and greet including booze and bit sized desserts. Everyone was being so friendly and laughing, probably due to the language barriers and drinks. Let's just say that all of us upped our charades game from occasionally needing to act out what we were trying to say.

Meet and Greet yummies

An hour and a half later, we were kicked out of the hall because they needed to close up. We managed to catch bus 12 back to EuroLille, the city's huge mall and the closest stop to our dorms. Yes mall, yes the souvenirs will be coming!

US-Belgium game. Heartbreak. I thought I would be hearing the French driving around as if they had nothing better to do except super-glue their hand to the horn  and yell with their heads out the windows. I guess neighbor Belgium isn't that important. It's, how you say, quite loud at night when France plays in the Cup, and even louder when they win. We'll see how Friday turns out.