Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Je Suis Arrivée (and stuff)!

        I've arrived! I had meant to post earlier than this, but I've barely had any free time for the past few days. It's also awkward to sit around on the computer, being anti-social, when you're a guest in someone else's house. (See, Mommy? I'm getting the hang of this social norms thing!). In any case, I'll try to summarize what's been going on.
        Our flights (the first to Washington D.C., and then to London) were ridiculously early Friday morning- so early that it wasn't worth it to go to sleep. I'd gotten into a habit of staying up really late, so I handled this pretty well, but there's a difference between staying up really late and not going to bed at all. I slept a bit on the flight to London, but not as much as I wanted to, because the laws of the universe state that, no matter how exhausted you are, it's impossible to get any real sleep on an airplane.
         Our flight was during the day, which was odd- all of the other flights I'd taken to Europe had been overnight. I'd initially thought that this might mean I'd get an interesting view out the window, but for most of the flight we were above the clouds, and by the time we reached London, it was dark.
         I've wanted to visit the UK for years, so actually being there was very surreal. I spent most of the bus ride to our hostel enjoying the fact that we were driving on the left side of the road, and trying to take pictures of double-decker buses.




Well, I tried.














     
 I slept surprisingly well at our hostel, despite the fact that it was crowded and noisy and I was quietly freaking out about the next morning.

     



We woke up early the next morning and walked to St. Pancras Station, which looked just like a British train station ought to.


































    This next bit was a big deal for me. I'd have to take the train by myself into France, then transfer to another train- still by myself- and take that to Montpellier where (hopefully) my host family would be meeting me. I instantly found myself alternating between two different defense mechanisms: acting tough, and acting as pathetic as physically possibly. And in spite of everything, I ended up on the train.
    Since this was Europe, and therefore about ten times cooler than the US, I was taking a high-speed train. I'm not sure whether it was because of the speed, or because the air pressure in the train was weird, or because we kept going up and down hills, but my ears felt like they were continually popping. It was uncomfortable, but in a cool way.
       It was a grey, cloudy day, and I watched the scenery pass by very fast for a while. The Chunnel wasn't as exciting as it should have been. I'm not sure what I was expecting, really.
     After an hour-or-so I arrived in Lille, France, which was cold and grey and had giant flowers.









You thought I was joking.















       I'm sure I cut several years off my life stressing about figuring out where to go, and which car was which, and lugging my suitcase up and down stairs, but I managed to get myself on the train to Montpellier. It was a really nice train, and I had a great seat near the window, but it ruined its initial good impression by not announcing the names of the stops. I traveled through France for five hours, watching the countryside and hoping I would figure out when to get off. Most of the stops had fairly legible signs that I could see from the window. Most of them. The few that didn't really ruined the trip for me.
       It was nighttime when I finally arrived at the stop that I was pretty sure was the right one. There is nothing less inviting than a dark train station, and I didn't feel too great about getting off, but I found some courage somewhere. I immediately made a tourist of myself and took a picture of the sign.



















      My host mom met me just inside the station. I had been really, really nervous about this, because I don't do well with meeting strangers, even without a language barrier. Fortunately, she was very friendly, and she spoke REALLY SLOWLY. I understood everything she said. I was stunned. We got in her car and made small talk all the way to the house.

      Montpellier is a small city in southern France, right near the Mediterranean Sea coast. My host family lives just outside the city, in one of the suburbs. And it is ridiculously picturesque. Eventually I'll show you a picture of my street, and you'll see what I mean. All of the houses are sand-colored and small, with fences and nice green yards, and there are palm trees everywhere. It's nuts.
      My host family consists of a mother, her eighteen-year-old daughter, three cats, and a paranoid dog. Occasionally my host mom's boyfriend comes over to hang out. He speaks English fairly well, but my host mom and my sister really don't, so we've been doing most of our communicating in French. I think I've pretty much mastered the I-Think-I-Sort-Of-Know-What-You're-Saying-But-Not-Really smile and nod. It's worked out so far.
     This post is getting long, so I'll stop for now. I'll just leave you with a picture of the paranoid dog creepin' on me from across the room.

       





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