In the beginning

This was actually written about a week ago, but I want to get into the habit of updating the blog and also keeping it complete, so here it is!


Things are going well here in Switzerland! The first couple of days were pretty difficult, but now that classes have started and I know how to go from door to campus without getting lost I am much more optimistic about life here. Right now I am staying in a small town called Le Mont north of the city and taking the regional bus to the downtown area before catching the metro to the university. The total commute is only about 45 minutes, but I would like to be closer to the main city and have a roommate so I'm not alone at home all the time!

I am taking 5 physics courses, including the "practical work" component- which will potentially become the area of my Masters thesis next year- involving meetings with my advisor and the other students in my group (which is the particle theory group) to do mini-projects. As for the classes, the system is a bit different here in that each course has a lecture component, and an "exercise" component. The exercises are led by post-docs and involve solving problems- like homework but in a class. So far, all the lectures have been in English but one of the "exercise" sessions was in French! Needless to say, that made it a bit more confusing than I would have liked. There are a few other international students from Portugal, Netherlands, Spain, India, etc. who appreciate courses in English, so we might try to convince the exercise leaders to conduct these sessions in English. However, right now I think I prefer the American version of homework- there is less pressure from time and more opportunity to try different ways of solving problems, get them wrong, then try them again.

I am making friends with some of the other students here, both the international students and the Swiss. We mostly speak French together, but some of the students don't speak French very well and prefer English. But we have all agreed that we would like to improve French so it is becoming the "lingua franca" so to speak! We will probably all get together for dinner this weekend or next week and spend some time relaxing together.

Last Saturday I went to visit Avenches, which is the old Roman city Aventicum. Aventicum was the capitol of Helvetia at that time (100-200AD). There was an amphitheater, at one end of which a tower was built ~1200AD, but some of the stones are remaining and even some of the old passageways. The tower was used during various raids, particularly from the Bernese, who ended up capturing the town at some point ~1500. The Roman theater was quite impressive and large portions are still remaining because it had been built into a hillside. Behind the theater, there were about ten cows grazing the field with their cowbells clanging noisily. All cows here seem to be happy grazing all day with their bells at various pitches- I haven't seen any cow with no bell yet!