Brrr Paris!

Where to start? The first day felt like 12 days. As you all know, sleep did not come, but that kicked me in ass later in the day. I had breakfast with my family and friends at a local diner, my final banana pancakes. Ahh, but man, the food here knocks the socks of those final banana pancakes, lemme tell you. Boarding the plane was absolutely the most horrible thing. Everyone was crying, me, my mom, Bobby, my dad was a wreck (as predicted), even the customs guy was tearing up. It was rough. In a heartbeat I realized I was not ready to go, that mentally I had not prepared for this moment. I must have hugged Bobby 30 times, before I could finally pull myself toward the metal detector. The last thing I saw was everyone waving goodbye. It was absolutely horrible.

After about an hour of waiting, I finally boarded the plane (still whining like a big baby). Then, I saw something that took my mind off the fact I was leaving home. That's right, I was flying for 45 minutes inside a tin can. This thing was as small as my pinky finger. Talk about turbulance, I was about to scream out "we're going down!" about 40 times. I think the woman next to me realized my train wreck status, so she began talking to me. As it turns out, she went to St. Rose College, a school very close to mine. What a coincedence! She had also gone to school for speech pathology, which is exactly what my roomate is going for (callout to Rachel)!! It was freaky, but very interesting. Her husband, seated across the aisle with her daughter, was the only natural born deaf professor in the country at Syracuse University. It was extremely fascinating, and the plane ride from hell went by rather quickly.

We finally landed in Washington Dulles, and I went to meet the two other girls that had reached me via email that were in the same program. It was so nice meeting up with them, not only to cure a bit of our anxiousness, but to also make the 7-8 hour layover go a bit faster. Nothing to exciting during that time, and finally we boarded the plane. Luckily, this plane was a lot bigger, big enough to have 10 rows across with 2 aisles, not 4.

This was when I was ready to get some sleep and relax. We, that didn't happen. I ended up sitting to a kid who was 23, and going to Spain to study abroad. This kid and I must have talked for 6 hours straight, about everything from religion, philosophy, traveling, jobs, colleges, Canada (his original home), and more. It was a very cool talk, and by the time I closed my eyes for a quick snooze, we had made plans to get in touch if we ever visited eachother's destined country. Plane rides are most definetly the best place for meeting interesting people.

The two other girls and I met at the end of the terminal, and went nuts. We were finally in Paris. It was about an hour and a half later than our planned arrival, so we were mega jetlegged, considering it was about 7:30am parisian time. We caught a cab into paris after having a very difficult time with the moving floor (that is supposed to accelerate your walking time). The cab ended up costing 60 euro, which we split between the 3 of us, not bad. We had a bit of a time finding our housing, until some very nice french people helped out. The language felt a bit awkard on my tongue, but communicating was easy.

Ah, then finally our rooms! Well, first off, my door would open. Fantastic. So the main dude came, and helped me. There's quite the little dance in opening the door, along with some codes, and two weird objects that are laser censored to open the 97 thousand doors the just get into this building. Finally however, I entered my room. Yes! Opposed to what I was thinking though, the attendants suggested we immediatly start looking for housing. So on very very little sleep, we made our way across Paris with a few more students, and a map. Once we made it to the main office of our group, we had a quick lesson on where to buy a cell phone, and then started looking at ads. I'll keep you up to date as to what housing I find, for I have some interviews tomorrow. Is all I know is if you don't look at an apt. before you buy, you may end up with a turkish toilet (a hole in the ground for a toilet). This 21st century features is common among most studettes (or the cheapest housing you can find in Paris, smaller than the tin can housing.

After that quick session, we grabbed a "jambon bebe", or a ham sandwich. I bought myself an absolutely revolutionary Nokia pay as you go phone, sleekest thing around. (Just kidding) I then hit up a boulangerie for a baguette, and headed back to the room. I finally showered, which felt amazing except for the fact that it was made for a 7 year old child, and that I kept hip checking the tempature control, therefore causing myself to have 3rd degree burns by the end. Haha. I finally crawled into my twin bed after some apartment searches, and passed out (even though my room was 0 degrees due to Paris' fluke cold spell that only happened once we arrived!)

I slept extremely well, and this morning went to the petit introduction at the college I would like to attend, Paris 3- Sorbonne Nouvelle. Basically they informed us that housing and the fact that we may become extremely depressed due to culture shock was the main priority. We don't have to start worrying about academics for a while, which is a damn good thing. I need a major mental preparation for that, let me tell you.

So now I must go, I have to do some apartment searching with a friend, and there are many interviews tomorrow. Bonsoir!