day one

i am BE.YOND.TIRED. don't even ask me how i'm still functioning.
i've basically been awake since noon june 27TH and it is now 4:14 PM june 29th (france time.) i never want to sleep because i never want to stop taking it all in. but i will sleep well tonight.

on my first plane flight i sat next to an awkward indie white boy to which i did not say one word the entire time. on my NYC-CDG flight i sat next to the NICEST most HELPFUL expat ever named Taryn. she was from colorado and lived in paris to go to pastry school. cool! she told me some names and places and gave me her #.

i got off the plane and waited and met some people from my program. they were cool and i'm so excited to meet everyone. :) on the shuttle it was all american college exchange students (from different programs.) the french freeways have a serious graffitti problem, not that it's really a problem though. i got to use some french with the shuttle driver, initiating my comfort in speaking it. it's funny how scared i was compared to how i feel just a few hours later. i was the last one dropped off at my homestay. 8 rue emilio castelar, 75012. IT LOOKS JUST. LIKE. GOOGLE MAPS STREET VIEW. check it out. :)

smallest/cutest apartment i've ever seen. but that's just how they live! stack upon stack upon stack upon stack of tiny, cute apartments. every room has such a unique character. my host mom's name is veronique. she's so nice and relatively easy to talk to. i know more french than my roommate, emily (who's not really a roommate, since we both have singles) so i translate sometimes. the two cats, moustique and gala, are aborable. but hairy and sheddy. :p i'll post pictures soon! if my netbook can handle it...

there's one outlet in the entire room. so basically i have to keep on plugging and unplugging stuff and only charge/use one thing at a time. but that's not that bad, and this is how they live...all the time! so weird.

after i got to my homestay we immediately went out to have a look around the neighborhood. we walked to the train/metro station, gare de lyon, and to the marché aligre, one of the cutest open-air fruit and vegetable markets kind of like in NYC. (veronique's never been to america, so i tell her amusing anecdotes about my experiences in NY and CA. lul.) then we ate lunch at a corsican restaurant. i ate a salad but i started to feel woozy from fatigue. i still am. but i needed to write this first.

i'm actually pretty proud of my french. i'm not half bad at communicating, even if i make mistakes, i still get the point across. i felt like i gain more confidence in my french by the minute. it really IS just what i learned in school! it's not a magical mystery language, it's the same thing i've been learning for 6 years! chouette!

everything is SO. FUCKING. SURREAL. i feel like i'm not appreciating anything. here i am halfway across the world in a country i've never been to, living in this room, for a month. nothing has really sunken in yet. i've already experienced SO MUCH just in these 5-6 hours that i've been off the plane...i can't imagine 31 more days of this! aj;glakdgjf;adlfg

hopefully i will be better able to write and synthesize after a nap.


i hear the schoolchildren in the street. did you know, everyone speaks french here? :)