L'arrivée

I arrived in Paris two days ago at 7 in the morning, landing in Charles de Gaulle airport.  I've spent a lot of time in CDG, but I've never actually stepped out of the airport (it's always the connection hub for Nantes and Rabat), and the other three times I was in Paris, I arrived by train or car.  After explaining to the surprised program manager that my big suitcase was in Nantes and I was not going to be living out of a carry-on, I was tucked away on a shuttlebus and ferried through Paris morning traffic from the airport to the 13th.  After about an hour commute, I got to the apartment and was met by two American Comforts of Home workers, who kindly introduced me to the apartment.

I paid the extra deposit for a single and I ended up with one roommate, Kathy, and we also ended up with an apartment meant for four people.  Alongside two enormous bedrooms, we have a dining nook, a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room with too much extra space.  Since I showed up first, I got pick of the two bedrooms, and chose the dark one with the large closet.

I slipped downstairs after unpacking so that I could hop over to the tiny grocery store just to the side of our apartment building.  I bought the basics, namely tea and puff pastry, and then tried to get back into the building.  I got past the front door easily enough, but right when I'd arrived, the Comforts of Home staff had switched out the key I'd been given at the airport for one in a brown envelope.  It turned out to be the key to the old lock, and after struggling with the key for about twenty minutes, I finally called the staff.  Quite frankly, I'm glad I had this issue so early in the visit.  Also, Comforts of Home arrived almost immediately and helped me back in and were so sweet that I didn't even mind.

Our welcome program at Sciences Po started today, and instead of allowing us time to adjust to Paris and explore the city, they herded us into a lecture hall and managed to find thirty dozen different ways to say "we're so happy to have you here at Sciences Po" and spat business hours and email addresses at us without offering corresponding papers.  We finally made it through a frankly useless tour with a guide whose words barely left her mouth and sprinted off to Monoprix to stock up on supplies.  One electric kettle, a collection of green teas, a hairdryer, two laundry baskets, and a whole bunch of food later, we walked out and braved the metro.

With the mushrooms, ham bits, eggs, creme fraiche, and a sheet of puff pastry, I tossed together a little quiche in our new pie/cake pan and Kathy boiled up some ravioli and we felt especially grown up and plan on continuing our cooking adventures.

Paris so far has been limited to an odd tour and a lecture hall, but I know that after a few weekends I'll discover a few gems.

L'arrivée

I've been here in Nantes for about six days now, which have all consisted of orientation and vacation. Touching down in the airport felt almost akin to coming home, and while that seems stupid when I say it, since I was last here for a week two years ago and my three month stay was nearly two years earlier; I still feel comfortable here.  It's not all familiar; two paper stores have closed and the Sephora moved across town, but it's still Nantes.

The orientation in Vannes was almost stupidly French; they gave us picnics and bikes and told us to explore a tiny island and a town encircled by an ancient fortress, after which they served us proper three course dinners with red and white wines to try.  It's a little shocking to have the program provide alcohol; not because I'm stuffy and disapprove of liquor, but because my previous experience abroad was in the Muslim country of Morocco and there wasn't a drop of alcohol to be found where we were, and here in France the director of the program is circling the table, pouring us glasses of Merlot.

Here IES has had no issues communicating exactly who is living in the house, while in Rabat they failed to mention the two brothers and tiny granddaughter in addition to the listed couple and two daughters, here they indicated a couple with grown children, but for the most part it is just me and Danielle.  She's supportive of my language progression and enthusiastic about my stay here and helpful with my search for ballet classes and an excellent cook, so I really lucked out.  She still seems to like me even though I temporarily knocked out the power with my obnoxious American power strip.  That thing is going right back in my suitcase.

The last time I was here, I either took the tram to school or I biked, if the weather was nice and Meije was available to guide me on my bike through the streets.  Here, I take the bus, which terrified me initially.  I have hardly ever taken a bus; growing up in Sammamish, where you have to take a ten minute car ride to see anything that isn't a house or a tree, did not prepare me for city living, and even in DC, I don't take the bus simply because I don't know how and I am scared to ask people.

But here, Danielle accompanied me to school the first day, told me which bus to take home, and gave me a few tickets.  There was no choice but to learn fast, and I feel as though I have.  I bought my billet mensuel, which allows me to ride any bus and any tram at any time as many times as I want for the month of September for about 34 euros ($44).  Even considering that September has already started, since one ticket for a one way trip is 1.50 euro, it's a pretty good arrangement, especially because now my socially anxious self can't use the price of a bus ticket as an excuse to stay home.

It's orientation week now, which means a lot of PowerPoints and handouts and little French classes that are a little too disorganized--by which I mean we were just playing hangman for about an hour with the most complicated French words we knew.  Other activities include finding places to eat lunch, leaving the room when other students speak English, and texting my mother stupid pictures.

We've received our student ID cards, and mine has the super smug picture of me that I've been using for all of these study abroad adventures.  Tomorrow we'll get to use them at the university and I'll get to see where I'll (hopefully) be taking most of my classes!