Je Suis La!

I'm hanging out in my precious little room in Nantes, waiting for my host mummy to get home from work to make crepes for lunch. It's been a crazy 24 hours or so.

When I got to my gate in Chicago, I sat by a bunch of people who looked to be about my age, assuming that they were probably also studying abroad in Nantes, or at least France. And correct I was. They were all from Illinois Wesleyan, and mostly going to Nantes. The flight was incredibly uneventful, except that I actually managed to sleep a bit. I was on the aisle in the middle section, and there was a open seat between me and the other guy, which helped ALOT. Upon arriving in Paris, I got my huge suitcase and got my passport stamped and then was off to the train station in the airport. Apparently they don't really do customs in CDG, because they literally just stamped my passport and didn't even ask me any questions about what I was doing there. It was ridiculously easy.

There was a three hour wait or so in the train station, but since I was with a bunch of other people, it was okay (our numbers just kept amassing as the day went on, and by the time we got off the train in Nantes there was probably about 20 of us). I managed to buy a train ticket in French, and order a baguette sandwich and a coffee. I didn't exactly anticipate problems, but it was rather reassuring that I am intelligible in French. I rather wanted to stay awake during the train ride, to see the picturesque scenery and whatnot, but I mostly failed. It actually wasn't a particularly pretty ride, since it's rather dreary in France right now, but there were a few cute little villages. When we arrived at the train station in Nantes, the large group of us went to the exit, where we expected to be met by an IES person, as we were promised in the information we had received. No such luck. So we were all standing around like lost children, which was highly unproductive. If I had been by myself, I would have just gone to get a taxi, since that's what we were supposed to do anyways. But I didn't want to leave the whole group, so me and another girl convinced everyone that we were indeed supposed to get taxis and go to the IES center. It was a little frustrating.

So we arrived, got all our luggage upstairs by means of a tiny little elevator, then I chatted with people for about 45 minutes until my host mom arrived. The IES center is in an old building downtown, and seems like it should be a good place to hang out and such. I didn't really get to thoroughly explore, since I wasn't there for all that long.

My house is about 20 minutes or so from downtown, not really within walking distance. It's really cute and well-decorated and not really what I expected. It's probably a newer house, but by nature of it being European seems much classier than a newish American house would be. Another thing I noticed right away was that all the houses on my street are white. How dull. There's a small kitchen, living room and a sunporch thinger downstairs, and four bedrooms upstairs with two bathrooms (one is just a bathtub and a sink).

For dinner, for which Corinne's boyfriend Michel was also in attendance, we had a cheese omelette, some baked veggies and a salad. After came the cheese (my host mom tells me she likes cheese alot, so I do hope we shall be eating lots), and then la galette des rois, which you can read about here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_cake. It's traditional for the festival of the Epiphany. Of course, I got the "feve", the trinket inside the cake, which is now sitting on my desk. It was also super delicious. I told my host mom that I enjoy cooking, which she is quite excited about. She's hosted quite a few students before me, and she said that I'm the first one who knows how to cook. I'm not really sure what to cook though... She also told me that she doesn't really eat a lot of meat, mostly fish and veggies, which is awesome.

I've spoken the most French in the past 24 hours than other day in my life, and it's nice to know that I can get by just fine. I watched the news for a bit yesterday and could understand basically everything. Corinne said my French is quite good, which is reassuring.

I didn't have a chance to post this before orientation, so I'll do that now, then write about orientation.