I'm here!

This post is coming a bit later than I would have liked because the apartment where I'm living does not have Internet just yet. My apologies! I'll try to recap as quickly and completely as possible. I promise the rest of my entries will be a lot more interesting to read.

I flew out of Orlando on September 21^st. I used Orlando Sanford International Airport which was a pleasant experience. It's a lot smaller and more manageable than MCO, but not as pretty (I could probably have gotten there at 6pm for my 7pm flight and been more than fine). I flew with Icelandair which was a cool experience. Besides getting a layover in Reykjavik, I got to hear lots of Icelandic from the announcements given which was pretty cool. The worst part of my flight experience was probably watching No Strings Attached, a romantic comedy with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman. Natalie, usually your movies are so good! What happened?

I landed in Paris on September 22^nd around 12:30 (local time) with a backpack, a big rolling suitcase and a duffel bag, ready to brave the narrow turnstiles, escalators and winding hallways of Charles de Gaulle airport. Needless to say, going through a crowded airport by yourself with so many bags is not fun, so I didn't want to do the same on the RER and the metro and risk losing something (or getting lost myself with all those bags). I opted for a taxi from the airport and had an interesting discussion with a Moroccan cab driver about family, Arabic, cosmopolitanism, the U.S., and various other topics.

While in Paris I was lucky enough to stay with the parents of a friend I made when I studied in Grenoble last year. The apartment is in a great area in Montparnasse, not too far from Luxembourg Gardens. They live on the fifth floor of their apartment building and with the narrow, winding staircases in France I was really grateful that they had an elevator (even if it was so small that it could only fit my bags). I only spent one night there but had such a great time getting to know my friend's parents. It was the first time I had met them and my friend was not there, but they welcomed me with such warmth and hospitality. I didn't get to do much in Paris because I was really only there for the evening, but I did walk a bit around Montparnasse, go the train station and buy my carte 12-25 (a great card for youth traveling in France so you get discounts on the trains!) for the train the next day. The best part about Paris was enjoying the company of my friend's parents-- having dinner with them, having good conversation about a bunch of topics, listening to classical music, Stevie Wonder and Billie Holiday and seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up from a window at the top of their apartment. Even though I'm not super big on the Eiffel Tower as a figure of Paris, it was cool seeing it up close for the first time last year. It was much more impressive still to see it from a distance from my friend's parents' apartment window, knowing that it's what they can see every night and a real piece of life in the city, not just a tourist attraction.

I had to wake up early the next day to take a 7:45AM train to Pau. Even though the train station is probably about a 10 minute walk from my friend's parents place, walking with all of my stuff would still have been atrocious, so I was really grateful that my friend's dad made the walk with me, helping me with my luggage through the streets and even helping me get them on the train. It is five hours from Paris to Pau, which I thought would go by very slowly, but drifting in and out of sleep made it go by pretty quickly. I got to Pau around one in the afternoon and one of the English teachers I'll be working with met me at the train station. After that she and the main teacher I've been in contact with both showed me around the school, had me meet the principal and assistant principal, one of the other English teachers and some of the other staff at the school. Everyone seems to be friendly and helpful and I'm excited to get started.

For now that's pretty much it! I got a few groceries after I put my stuff into my apartment and on Saturday I wandered around downtown, stopped at the office du tourisme to get some maps (a must when going to a French city for the first time), got a SIM card and minutes for a phone and squeezed every second of life out of my netbook and iTouch using Internet at the mall. In general life is good, though I've definitely been doubting my sanity by deciding to do this program for the next seven months. The first month will probably be a bit of a challenge getting settled and starting my position at the school, but I think this will be good experience. I'm a bit lonely for the moment with no Internet at the apartment and no roommate yet, but once things start rolling I'm sure it will look up. In French at times like this they like to say "ça va aller," which means basically that things are going to be okay and I'm sure they will.