Elation

Hello everyone! Coming in on a month here in Grenoble! It is FLYING by. I'm already bummed just thinking about having to leave France. I'm obsessed, this place is everything I wished for and more. I am elated everyday just living this life, it's like a dream!

I know it sounds corny but its true! I've met some amazing people both American and French and I really feel like I'm putting roots down here. I can't imagine being home again. Don't get me wrong, I miss the comforts of my own home, laying on the couch with my puppy and playing with my little brother but if only one could feel how I feel right now. It's incredible. I'm taking in all of this experience as best as I can.

This weekend I am going to Geneva, Switzerland with three other girls from API. It barely cost us 20 dollars to get there by train and we're staying in a hotel right in the center of the city. Just a casual trip to another country for the weekend! It's crazy that people actually do this here!

I'll write again soon, I know it will hit me soon enough how much I miss my family and being at home but right now all I can think about is waking up tomorrow and living each day to its fullest while I'm here. If you're reading this I most likely love you and miss you very much! Talk to you all soon!

Grenobloise

Sorry for the delay my avid readers, lifes been crazy busy! I've started school, been settling into my dorm, going out on the weekends and getting coffee with friends practically everyday. Unfortunately I can't write that much today because I have some homework to accomplish.

I love Grenoble, this city is so beautiful. Every street you walk down at the end it opens into a cobble stoned courtyard full of restaurants and cafés all complete with breathtaking views of the french alps. School's going pretty well, I was placed into an advanced section and I'm struggling a bit but I think it is better to be challenged. I love my teacher her name is Béatrice and she's a nut, she claims she eats 3 pain au chocolat (the most amazing french pastry) a day, yet she's still a size double 0. All the women here are SO skinny and so fashionable, I strive to be like them everyday.

Occassionally someone will come up and ask me for directions thinking I'm a native of Grenoble, often it's americans who do it too and I'm very flattered. I think the fact that I wear so much black is the main reason why people think I'm french.

My friends and I have been trying to stay active because all we do is eat SO much bread. Our favorite bakery is so perfectly named "pour l'amour du pain" literally for the love of bread in english. Couldn't be any more perfect right? We've done a couple of hikes to burn off all the carbs and discovered some of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. Just the other day we started off on a hike in the woods and about 30 minutes in the woods opened up into rolling hills in the french countryside with the mountains as their backdrop. Around the bend we stumbled across a castle! Is this real life? I feel like I'm living in a fantasy world, I half expected the Vontraps to come running out of the castle singing.

I'll write again soon I promise! We're trying to plan a trip to Geneva, Switzerland this week and my mom comes in about a month and we're going to traverse France together!

Oddities

Here's the start of a list that I will be compiling to describe some "cultural differences" between France and the U.S.

1. Instead of pulling open a door to go inside you push instead (poussez in french, prounced poosay haha)
2. At school there are only holes in the ground for toilets, they're very clean and my quads get a good workout each time but my question is...what happens if you have to go number two?
3. The so called world wide web isn't world wide. A lot of the sites I use at home only work in the U.S.
4. When drinking tea, tea bags are put directly into the tea pot with the hot water instead of putting the tea bag in your cup first then pouring the hot water over it
5. It is polite to say Bonjour and Au Revoir to literally every single person you see, yet if a woman with a stroller runs over your toe on the bus, causing massive amounts of bleeding and some choice swear words in both french and english, she will NEVER say excuse me
6. Smiling too much is considered weird. If a girl smiles at a guy in a bar in france that's an open invitation!

Paris Je t'aime

Bonjour tout la monde! I'm in Grenoble, finally! Many long days of traveling and stress but I've finally made it. Of course I get nearly all settled in and I'm having a severe case of insomnia. Sleeping in new places is not really my thing. I'll contribute my lack of sleep to traveling, living in a foreign country, the language barrier, and being a dorm room all by myself for the first time.

All you blog readers out there, Paris was incredible. I forgot how much I love France and that city. The first day was insanity, since I missed my connecting flight and arrived a day later than everyone else, it was my responsibility to get myself to the Hotel Minerve in the quartier latin. I took a taxi parasien, which ran me about 60 euro ($75)! Crazy right! It was about an hour long cab ride and I was so relieved when I finally made it to the hotel. I tried to nap for about an hour but I was too anxious to meet everyone. I showered quickly then trekked on my own to the metro. I took the metro to La Musée d'Orsay, the impressionist museum...right up my ally. Unfortunately I was too exhausted to appreciate the art, hopefully when my mom comes to visit in Februrary I'll be able to drag her through there.

Later that day, me and some of the girls in my group went up to Montmartre and climbed the stairs to the Sacre Coeur, a church perched at the very top of the tallest hill in Paris. The view from the top is spectacular. The rest of our time in Paris was spent riding the metro, visiting museums, climbing l'arc de triomphe and taking pictures from the top of the eiffel tower (with a few crepes and some wine in between).

The trip to Grenoble, was très stressé. SO many people. I guess I should have done some squats and stretches prior to boarding the TGV train, because I sure wasn't cut out for what I was in for. I lugged my two ENORMOUS suitcases weighing about 110 pounds total and my duffle bag which is about another 30 pounds about a mile in the train station. Marie our resident director who we lovingly refer to as our french Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music walks like there's a constant angry pitbull chasing her. Keeping up with her usually causes me to break a sweat and re-evaluate my physical fitness.

The three hour train ride to Grenoble was pleasant enough, the public transportation in this country is so efficient I was extremely impressed with how fast we got to Grenoble. Ma vie à Grenoble is starting and the ups and downs are already hitting me. This experience is going to not only teach me a lot about france and its culture but also teach me a lot about myself. À demain, I am very tired!

Layover

Made it to Montréal, going to have to wait a whopping 5 hours for my connecting flight to Paris. I practically took a slingshot from Boston to Montréal, a fifty seat jet that shook the entire way. I resisted the urge to kiss the ground when we landed safely in Canada. Dealt with some very pleasant (note the sarcasm) customs officials on my way to the gate. I'm already overwhelmed by all of the french! The t.v. in front of me has been playing Canadian news in french and every passenger that walks by me has been speaking french. I love it, I cannot wait to get to France to hear it 24/7. I think I should have been practicing more before my departure though, I'm a little rusty. Hopefully getting thrown right into it will do me some good.

Here are my absurd, yet valid fears. I don't ever make it to Paris, everyone in my study abroad group has already made friends and they view me as "that girl who couldn't figure her flights out", I starve to death because I'm too anxious to leave the gate to venture out and get food, people in Paris will look at me funny because I know I already smell from traveling.

I haven't even begun to write about the AWFUL customer service that Air Canada has. On my second trip back to Logan, the woman at the luggage check in gave me a hard time about one of my suitcases being too heavy! Is she FO REAL? Honestly after all the hassle I've been through they should have let me ship my freaking car for free. I sat on Air Canada customer service for thirty minutes trying to finagle my way into business class. I guess I should have known that if they wouldn't let my luggage be over weight then they most definitely weren't going to bump me up a class. The woman so rudely told me that it wasn't their fault that my plane was delayed and that she couldn't help me! What's with these people, I work at a restaurant and if a customer so much as hints that they don't like their meal they get it for free! Blast, looks like I'll be roughing it in the back of the plane riding coach with the rest of the cool cats.

For now, I'll suffer in silence knowing that in a mere 10 hours I will be in Paris, France the most beautiful city in the entire world. Let the jealousy really sink in, it'll be worse when I start posting pictures of the eiffel tower....

Air Hell

Ah the joys of air travel. My plane to Montreal was delayed an hour so I sat in the Air Canada terminal at Logan for a total of 5 hours today and didn't get anywhere. Lots of stress and tears but I'm safe back at home for the night. The earliest flight I could get was tomorrow at 1:45 to Montreal putting me into Paris on Tuesday at 8:45 am. Looks like I won't be making my orientation meet up time at Charles de Gaulle.

I've never even flown by myself before so this lovely day full of air hell was quite the experience. At least now I know that I'm really not quite as cut out for the Amazing Race as I have previously thought. I need to build some thicker skin I guess. I figured everything out, dealt with the air personnel in the politest way possible. Looks like I'll be getting there late, but late is better than never. Wish me more luck on my travels, hopefully things go smoother tomorrow.

Bonne Journée

One week and I'll be in France! I've been spending my days watching Audrey Tautou movies, listening to Edith Piaf, and updating my cheat sheet with useful words (it seems a real lapse in my french education that I've never been taught the word for spoon). How am I supposed to eat my glace de chocolat without a cuillère!) My obsession with France and everything french has and always will annoy the hell out of my family. My stepfather so poignantly calls the french "frogs" and cannot for the life of him understand why I would ever want to spend 4 months in a country that despises everything American.

Ironically enough, I'm watching An Education at the moment. A film I've never seen before about a young innocent British girl who falls for an older man. She is equally as obsessed with everything Français as I am. Is this how annoying I am? Every other word in her sentences are french, snobbishly placed there to make her friends think shes cultured. What she really doesn't know is that her pronunciation is atrocious...well that really was me sounding snobby wasn't it.

Any-who, in the attempts to prepare for my vie en rose I've made myself extremely sick to the stomach. I can't stop thinking about worst case scenarios, missing my plane, getting lost on the metro. AH, this girl in this film just said that's "beaucoup trop chere pour moi" and the woman she said it to completely chastised her. Excuse my side note, but its irritating. I've got to make a conscious effort to only speak in English around people who speak English and attempt to speak french around my soon to be french friends.

Well I've rambled long enough, I hope this rant didn't make you not want to read my blog about my trip. I'll be in Grenoble, France for four months and if you like reading amusing anecdotes about foreign cultures here's the place! I'm hoping to do some traveling around Europe and the countries bordering France. Wish me luck on my travels, I'll post from Paris when I make it there!