The Dream

I survived my first week at BSB which was filled with the most amount of classes I will have in a week all semester. The scheduling is very strange over here and I do not have set days and times for class so every week will be different. 

Yesterday I spent 6 hours with the same professor learning about food and wine tourism and wine marketing. He is extremely knowledgable and is easily already one of my favorite professors.  While 6 hours of one class sounds like a lot, it went by pretty fast. The first segment of class which was an hour and a half long we literally talked about the best restaurants in Dijon, Borgogne, and all of France. He explained all of the deals at lunch time, the best wines for their price, and what the traditional meals were in each region of france. He also talked about the best Michelin 3 star restaurants in france which yes, I will be eating at at some point this semester. No I don't care if it costs me 250 euro. It will be worth every penny for the experience. 

The next segment makes me wish time away because we discussed the field trips we will be going on this semester. The first trip is to Beaujolais with other international wine management students where we will visit an estate and a distillery, eat a traditional French meal, and taste the crus from the 10 estates of Beaujolais. The next trip will be only for the 8 students from EcoGasrronomy and will be to Jura, a town about an hour from Dijon. Here we will have a very expensive traditional French meal prepared for us by a friend of our professor. We are fortunate enough to experience this because we are such a small group of students. We will also do sausage tastings, chocolate tastings, cheese tasting and pairing, and spirit tasting. This is all in a span of 1 day and is the day after our 5 day field trip to Germany for a Wine Festival. I think I am in heaven. The last major field trip for this class is to Southern Champagne. Here we will visit a small and a large estate, have sausages for lunch, partake in cheese tastings and champagne tastings. 

Well if that doesn't sound like exciting enough, in two weeks I will be visiting my other professors estate that has been around since the 1400's. 

One could say I am bouncing off the walls. 

Pics from the greatest pastry shop in Dijon. Not sure why I haven't been until today. 

Beingets 

Baguettes on Baguettes

Cheese and Olive Pretzels Yum 

Chocolate chip baguette. That happened during my lunch break at school today 

I can't begin to put this experience into words and I haven't even left Dijon yet. So surreal. I really am about to have the semester of a lifetime. I am so privledged to be here. Thank you mom and dad for supporting my dreams! 

Time is a weird concept to grasp over here. My weeks go by slow but my days go by extremely fast even though I wake up at 7 every morning and go to bed extremely late. By the end of my day I am extremely exhausted and have zero words to describe the life I have been living. It still does not feel real to me. Except when my friends and I try to book flights and train tickets in military time. We should honestly make this trip into a reality show because it's just too funny. We can't go anywhere without being super American. We talk extremely loud all the time so obviously we stand out. 

The weather here is not what I anticipated. When I looked it up at home I thought I would be living the life in 40 and 50 degree temps. Well uhh try 35 degrees when it's raining and dark out all the time. I can honestly say I have seen 10 minutes total of sunlight since I arrived in Dijon. But at least I'm not missing out on a beautiful day when I am sitting in the same class for 6 hours at a time. Yes that's right. The same class for 6 hours. It's wine and chocolate pairing though so how hard can that be. I also can not wait for the 18 pound box from home to get here because I obviously did a horrible job at packing my life in two suitcases. You're the best mommy! 

Oh and I got stuck in a bathroom stall tonight and that was probably the most traumatizing experience I've had in a long time. The doors and walls of the stall are attached to the floor and I legitimately got locked in. I was so close to climbing over the top of the stall with the 6 inches available. But once I stopped freaking out  after about 5-10 minutes I made it out haha. 

Hopefully I'll have more to share this week. Hope everyone has a great week and weekend! 

There is nothing else I can say other than sitting through French class is extremely difficult. Also that it gives me nothing less than a headache. I don't think I will ever learn or sound like I know what I'm talking about. But hey, at least I survived my first day of class and my train to Paris is booked! 

So today is my first day of classes at the Burgundy School of business and their way of scheduling classes is way different than what I am used to. My classes can change everyday so I always have to look up my schedule to see what time my class is at and the location. This has been difficult as I have been trying to plan trips around Europe. It is also 5:00pm right now and I am supposed to have my first French class at 5:30 but I have no room assignment. So Stressed! Entrepreneurship was very interesting this morning and I think it will be a fun but busy semester!