Arrived!

So... I'm here! Yesterday, well sort of yesterday, I flew to Paris. On the flight I say next to a nice couple. I started talking with the wife a little near the end of the flight. They were originally from Yugoslavia in the Soviet Union (?), at least that's what I think she said. Now they live in Berkeley and her husband is a professor of civil engineering at UC Berkeley (I think their last name might be McKiv or something). At customs, the passport checker thought I was going to go take the test to become a French teacher, rather than just going to school. (This is time 1 of the day that somebody thought I was older than I am.) The bag the airline forced me to check came, so I'm not missing any luggage.

I managed to make it to the train area of the airport and saw an SNCF outlit, and I went there and got my 12-25 carte, mon billet from Paris to Grenoble, and un autre billet to get into Paris. Then I managed to get on the train, and man was it hot. I talked a little with the woman who sat near me, mostly for the purpose of arranging our bags in the most ideal fashion.

I got off the train at my stop, Luxembourg, and was making my way out of the train area when a gentileman from the same train I was on caught up to me and struck up a conversation. I missed his name, but he was probably 6 foot something and he ws black, probably between 25 and 30 years old. Turns out he was heading the same way as me and offered to show me to L'Oedon (that's the area of my hotel). We chatted the entire way. He lives in Paris but works a lot in Lyon and later that day was catching a train to Lyon. Eventually he asked me how old I was, 'cause he was wondering and then couldn't believe that I was only 20... Then he asked if I had un petit copain, which is apparently the same thing as un petit ami... I didn't know that. We part ways and I, bien sur, got lost...

After asking 5-6 people to help me, I finally found my hotel. It's in a little nook next to the Luxembourg palace... Next time, I should have directions when trying to find someplace... I got checked in, and went to the "2nd story" (aka the third story). My room was surprisingly tiny. I'm pretty sure that it was smaller than my dorm room. It had a foot on each side of the bed and 4 feet at the bottom of the bed. I basically could get out of bed and be in the bathroom, but it was sufficient. The first thing I did was take a 1 minute cold shower, treking my bags on my attempts to find the hotel had made the hot day much hotter.

Later I went and bought minutes for my phone, talked to someone at another SNCF outlit, and tried to withdraw money at an ATM, which failed. I went to dinner around 5, I had fallen asleep for 30 minutes and I knew I couldn't go to bed without eating anything. I was in bed at 6:20... and got close to 12 hours of sleep. I woke up a lot, but overall was fine.

This morning I checked out of the hotel and stopped in a grocery store and a small diner to get breakfast on my way to getting lost on the way to my metro stop... While lost I came across a different brand of ATM and that one accepted my card, so I was able to get Euros (yay!). I asked a man walking where the station was and he gave me directions and half escorted me until he had to go off on his way. I managed to get to Gare de Lyon without any snags. And all the way to Grenoble for that matter.

At Grenoble, I met up with Patrick (he's in charge of the Program) and Mallory, a participant. Rose-Marie (my hostess) met us there to pick me up and now I'm here in my homestay room. There is another girl staying here from Michigan University, but she's been here for a while. Rose-Marie has 2 children. One is named Katrine, I just met her and.... three of her friends as they came into the basement where I'm staying. I haven't met the other child or the girl from Michigan. There is a rule here, that if I break, for everytime that I break it, I have to put one Euro in a jar... and that rule is, that there is no English allowed in the house. Apparently I'm going to have to get used to talking only in French all the time... and fast.

That's all for now...