The past few days have been hectic, to say the least, but I am having a fantastic time! I'm surprised by how few problems I've encountered so far, almost no troubleshooting except when the cab driver took me to the wrong hotel (but I realized the mistake before I got out of the cab).
Yesterday I spent FIVE hours waiting for my train in Paris, which sounds horrible, but I met two American girls doing the same thing I'm doing in the south of France. They were really nice and hopefully I'll keep in touch with them.
After my wait in Paris, I took the TGV (train de grande vitesse AKA "the fast train") down to Dijon. Seeing my ridiculous amount of baggage, this middle-aged French couple helped me get everything on the train. So there, the people of France are nice! The train was like a sanctuary, comfy seats, very quiet and no one in the seat next to me. I fell asleep quite quickly. The couple then helped me take my stuff off the train. Many mercis to them!
At my hostel, I met two Danish girls, Kristina and Nana, who spoke English really well (I guess they watch a lot of American movies and TV series). I hung out with them for the morning and they showed me the bus system a bit. They were really fun! They told me about some of the people they had met on their backpacking trip, which was cool. Quote of the day from Kristina (about an attractive American boy they had met): "Brown hair, brown eyes, tan. Even his toes looked good and I don't like feet!"
Kristina and Nana went to wait for their train so I went exploring! First I found an archaeology museum, which was small but pretty neat. It was interesting to see a solely French, in fact solely Bourgogneuse, view of archaeology. Our museums are usually a mix of artifacts from cultures when they were at their high points so this local point of view was pretty cool, and in my opinion, more complete, starting with prehistoric and going through medieval times. It was also housed in a kick ass 11th-13th century abbey. I think I will be seeing a lot of medieval churches here in France... anyway enough art history stuff! From there I wandered around. There was some sort of International music festival going on and they had these weird things, like pipe organs combined with giant music boxes run by people in old-time-y costume. I found the main shopping street and decided I really like French style, and that my falling apart boots will be very easy to replace. Anyway I bought a pretty sweet adaptor (l'adaptateur, my vocab is growing!) and an alarm clock. My other goal was to get a phone today but the people in the store were swamped so I moved on. I don't have anyone to call here anyway!
Tomorrow I go down to Tournus and move into my apartment. One of the English teachers and the principal of the school are meeting me. Gotta love French hospitality!
Now that I've arrived, I've realized the title of the blog is a misnomer. This trip is anything but strange: it is amazing! I'm not sure why I thought it would be scary or awkward, but everything I do and each time I speak French I am so excited about what is to come. I'm sure there will be bad days (probably mostly from loneliness), but c'est la vie.
