Le Voyage

Bonjour tout le monde! Je suis en France! Actually I've been in for a little bit, but this is my first opportunity to post. Already I have many things to share. I'm not really sure where to start, so I'll follow advice from my favorite movie (full of good advice by the way): Start at the beginning, and when you get to the end, stop.

For a little side note, I'm not using people's real or full names. Those of you who know me well can most likely figure it out, but if not, a changed name doesn't change the story.

The travelling part did not go badly. Kay ran into a little trouble at the airport because her bag weighed 78.6lbs, and the limit is 70lbs. Thankfully mine was exactly 50lbs, so I didn't have to pay extra. We were fine until the first plane got to Detroit. The captain got on the intercom and informed us that there's a storm over Detroit and we have enough fuel for now, but if it doesn't move out soon we'll go to PA for a quick stop. Ummm, no. Kay and I had only one hour in between our scheduled arrival and departure times. Thankfully there were others with the same problem so the captain contacted someone an said we'd be fine. We finally landed and got to the gate, and we booked it from terminal 29 to 34, not far. Turns out other flights had the same problem and the plane was only half full when we got on. We didn't have seats next to each other but I knew I'd be sleeping so it didn't matter. I had a window seat but a guy got on, and someone had his seat to sit with someone else he knew, so I gave up the window for this kid. I must've looked narcoleptic: I fell asleep, tried to be awake and just passed out again. Luckily I can wake myself up if I slump over too much, so I don't I fell asleep on him. But hey, the French aren't as space-conscious as Americans, so I guess it's ok. Twice I woke up to him attempting to climb over me from and to his seat, it was kinda funny. I woke up for dinner, and managed to stay conscious long enough to fill out the little yellow card. Then I woke up for breakfast and stayed mostly awake until we landed. There was also one of the cutest babies I've seen in the row across from me, she never cried once, which really helped her keep the cute-statues in my mind.

So finally I get into the airport, Kay and I are trying to prepare ourselves for customs. We go up, say bonjour, hand over passports and yellow cards, they hand back the passport, we say 'merci', and we're in! I was a little nervous about this because attached to my visa was a slip of paper basically saying, just because you have a visa doesn't mean we'll let you not the country. But they did so no worries. Our next stressor was finding the people picking us up. It's quite nerve-racking to walk out of the terminal doors into a crowd of Tina asked if I was hungry and said we would stop for lunch. So my first French food: MacNuggets! They call it McDo's, pronounced MacDough's. Haha. It was amusing. Then we drove to a park to eat. I saw someone get arrested. We got back in the car, I slept again. We stopped once more at a factory outlet mall type place. We didn't buy anything but just browsed. Back in the car, back to sleep. When we got to Dijon we dropped off Pierre, and then continued to Tina's house. Gevrey-Chambertin is a really pretty town. If you're on facebook, I have some pictures of it there. If not... I'll try to upload some photos on photobucket or something.

So this was it. Those of you who know me in the slightest know that I don't exactly shine in social situations, and I'm very shy when meeting new people. So...newcountry/place, different language, new people, and two different cultures (they're Malagasy). We went in and la mere was there, she fait des bisous to me, which I should've expected but was too nervous to remember. For those non-francophones 'faire de bisous' means to do the cheek kiss greeting that the French do. We brought my stuff in and they gave me some time to settle in.

Although I had heard the term in class, I wasn't sure if the French actually use it...they do. One of the first questions la mere asked me was, est-ce que je peux tutoyer? For the non-francophones, The pronoun 'tu' means you in a familiar sense, in a more formal sense or with strangers, they use 'vous'. She asked if she could use the 'tu' with me. Bien sur I said oui. Another side note, I'll most likely add short french phrases here and there, If you can't figure it out, look it up. And this is where my journey truly began. Alors, a new post.