It's snowing today! Well, it snowed a bit yesterday as well, but today it's really snowing.

We started orientation yesterday, and our professors were going to split up the girls who tested high into intermediate or advanced by giving us all oral exams, mostly just talking about yourself and answering questions. I was asked to go to the Smith Center at 10 am for just that purpose, yet after sitting there for 45 minutes with the other girls, they announced that four of us had been put in advanced and the rest were in intermediate. The four of us in advanced were never given oral exams, they just went off of our written language tests. So.... why tell us we had to be tested? Maybe so many girls begged to be in intermediate that they wanted to keep things fairly balanced.

Then Geneviève, the Assistant Director of the Smith Center and our grammar teacher, came in to give us information about our class. We meet three times a week for an hour and a half or just an hour, and we'll have homework for each class. Additionally, we have a map and some readings that correspond to specific parts of the map and we must select one each week to go visit and do the reading related to it, then write something about it.

Afterwards I came back here for lunch only to head back to the Smith Center (from now on abbreviated SC) for a practical tour of Geneva. We saw the supermarkets and post office (both of which aren't very useful now since we've all been to the supermarket at least once and walked by a dozen post offices), the train station, the île Rousseau on the river, and some department stores. Anna Botta, our director, led us and pointed out a lot of stuff. Unfortunately she speaks very softly so we couldn't always hear her well.

The tour ended at the post office so about 10 of us went in to open bank accounts (yes, you can open a bank account at the post office, and access your money from any post office in Switzerland). The poor lady at the desk was very flustered when she saw all of us and she got a few of the tellers to help her. Those who were left with her needed her to speak English, which she did, but occasionally she didn't know a word so I had to do a bit of translating and explaining in French for her. When she finally got to me at the end she asked if I preferred English as well and I told her, in French, that French would also be ok, I understand both. I apologized to her for the group stressing her out so much.

After depositing my eight hundred francs (!!!) I looked up at the clock and realized it was four pm.... which is when my class at the SC started. So I ran down the street to the SC and got in at 4:03 or so only to find the professor and one other girl. Two of my classmates were still missing! Another arrived shortly after me, and so we were waiting for just one. 4:10 comes around and she is still not there. The professor starts asking us about our French levels and says that I speak very good French. 4:15... he asks about what we study and why were are in Geneva. 4:20... she still isn't there. I'm considering going into the Assistant Director's office and asking her to call the missing girl. We all only recently got our phones so we haven't exchanged numbers yet. Shortly before 4:30 we hear her come in. She had forgotten about the class and only realized at 4:10 so she ran all the way to the SC from our residence.

Then we had class for the next hour and 15 minutes which focused on the history of Geneva. The professor is this really cute old man but his voice puts me to sleep because its so deep and sing-song-y (like all the Genevois) and it was so close to dinner time, I was starving. When he finally let us go I came back to the residence all ready to scarf down some food only to realize that the other three girls on my floor also had the same idea, and because they hadn't had class until 6 they got there first. Drat my luck! That's something I will need to figure out for the future.

Today I have grammar class and then we are going to the Red Cross, and after a little free time we then have a presentation about living in Geneva. More later!