Advice for incoming students

I sent an email to Chef Paul, who was one of my favorite instructors at Diablo Valley College

Anyway, just in case he passes the address of this blog to his students, or somehow this site gets discovered by someone who would like to go to this school...I thought I'd write up a little bit of advice for students who are curious about going here.

Some of it will be focused on HOIII only, but a lot should still be applicable.

Bring everything with you
Seriously, bring absolutely everything you can. When I was originally packing there were many things I left behind because A) I wasn't sure if I'd need it B) I figured I could just buy it here or C) I didn't want to bring too much stuff.

Bring it.

The thing is...Bluche is a tiny village. Montana and Crans, up the hill, are bigger but still fairly small. Bluche has absolutely NO shopping/stores except for what you can buy through vending machines (candy, smokes, sodas) and what you can buy on campus...and they destroy you on pricing of things. Montana and Crans have regular stores (supermarkets and basic electronics) but again the prices of things are tough to swallow. On top of that getting to Montana/Crans isn't particularily easy...and definitely isn't convient.

The things I really am wishing I had brought with me are...sadly...really basic things. I'm talking about stuff like pens, pencils, ruler, stapler, hole punch, tape, etc. It's not like you can catch a bus or drive to 7-11 to get white out...it's something that will take over an hour.

Bring your own laptop
That's what I did and I am VERY happy about it.

The school will sell you a laptop for 3,000 CHF (Swiss Francs). That's a phat chunk of change. And I did a little research...and found that you could get the same machine for about 1,000 less. The school kinda screws the students in that regard.

The laptop the school sells you is actually a VERY good machine...but the keyboard layout is very different than the US and will cause you endless heartache. You can contact the school in advance and they will tell you exactly the min specs that are required.

Patience
Everything runs at a much slower pace around here. Service in restaurants, travleing, waiting for stores to open, the school, the people...everything is much slower than I am used to. It takes some adjusting for sure. Don't think you can have a sit down meal in a restaurant and be out of there in 30 minutes. It simply isn't going to happen.

Brush up on your language skills
If you speak ANY language other than English...brush up on your skills before coming. French would be the most useful, but German, Spanish and Italian come in handy too. This is a French part of Switzerland so that is the most common language for people and signs.

Smoking is EVERYWHERE
If you recently quit smoking...you are screwed. If you get sick from the smell of cigarettes...you are screwed. If you think smoking in a restaurant is gross...you are screwed.
Smoking is everywhere around here. Thankfully you can't anywhere in the main building...but everywhere else it is really commonplace.
I get into semi-arguements with some of the Europeans about this. Personally, I thinking smoking in a restaurant is disgusting. They totally disagree. It's annoying to say the least.

That's about all I can think of right now....I'll probably have more later.