First Few Days in Aix

Well, today is my third day in Aix and I've certainly been busy thus far. I'll try to give a decent summary of the past 72-96 hours, but you'll have to forgive my exhausted, jet lagged brain.

First, getting to France could not have gone smoother, which I am very thankful for. I was super worried a flight would be cancelled or delayed, or that I would get lost in Heathrow, but honestly I don't think my travels could have been any smoother. I flew out of KCI on Friday the 24th at 2:40 pm to Dallas, then from Dallas to London Heathrow. Somehow I majorly lucked out on that flight and ended up with a row of three seats to myself, which was awesome. It was easy to navigate Heathrow thanks to their abundance of signs. I had some time to kill before my flight to Marseille and during that time I ran into two other students who were going to IAU. Finally we were able to board the plane and we were off to Aix, via Marseille.

Once we landed in Marseille we quickly passed through customs – I waited maybe three minutes – and then we picked up our luggage. After exiting that area, people from IAU were waiting to pick us up, but my host family was already waiting at the airport. My host mom must have studied my photo pretty well because she beelined toward me as soon as I came into sight and knew exactly who I was.

I don't think I could ask for a better French family. There's my host mom, Emilie, my host dad, Bruno, and I have two French twin brothers, Adrien and Thomas who are 18 years old. They both go to school elsewhere, though, and I only met Thomas yesterday for a few hours. They are wonderful hosts and so far have been very nice and accommodating. Emilie is an English professor at the University in Avignon, so she speaks wonderful English, which is nice, although part of me wishes her English wasn't as good so that I would be forced to use French all the time. But, I am slowly able to understand more and more, which is exciting.

My first evening in Aix, Adrien showed me around the city, and while at the time I thought I would never be able to navigate it alone, I have surprisingly not had any problems thus far… *knocks on wood* Because Aix is such an old city (and I mean old. According to Wikipedia it was founded in 123 BC) it has narrow streets and alleys that go every direction. There are fairly tall buildings that line most streets, which combined with the non-parallel streets makes you feel a bit like you're in a maze.

My house is just two blocks from the main street of the downtown area and the Monoprix (a store similar to Target), which is super convenient. My walk to school isn't more than ten minutes. Classes start tomorrow, but yesterday there was a meet and greet for the students so we could begin to get to know one another. Orientation was today from 8:45-6:00ish, which made for a very long, information packed day. Imagine all of the boring parts of Truman Week crammed into one day and having to have all of the standard none-of-us-know-each-other conversations – "What's your major?" "Where are you from?" (nobody's from St. Louis, so there's not the "Where did you go to high school?" question) "What school do you go to back in the states?" (nobody's heard of Truman… big surprise there) etc. 

Anyway, it's been nice to meet students and I'm looking forward to classes starting tomorrow and to continue getting settled here in Aix! I know this is kind of long and rambling but I'm going to blame my jet lag on that. How much longer is that an acceptable excuse...? 

All My Bags Are Packed…

I'm ready to go. Well, mostly. I think. 

It's currently 2:23 AM and my flight for France, or France via Dallas and Heathrow, leaves in exactly 12 hours and 17 minutes. And, as the title of this post says, my bags are finally packed, with the exception of adding my computer, its charger and some snacks to my backpack. 

These past couple days/ weeks, as I've been preparing to spend four months abroad, have made me realize several things, including: 

1. There are way too many bad 10+ minute youtube videos on packing strategies. In hindsight I should have watched maybe half of one and then used the rest of those wasted minutes actually, you know, packing. 

2. It is possible for me to pack a large suitcase, carry-on and backpack for four months and still have a tiny bit of extra space. 

3. You have to buy/ do a lot of random stuff before departing the country for four months. Call the bank and fight with the automated voice commands they have, figure out how to get four+ months of prescription medicine at once, figure out international calling plans, think of an appropriate gift for a French woman of whom you know nothing about, make sure you are stocked up on items or brands you might not be able to find in France-- chief among them peanut butter and deodorant, figuring out how to blog, etc. 

4. I get my procrastination from my dad (that's a heritable trait, right?) But really, my dad was in charge of my phone situation and this evening around 6:30 pm we were still frantically trying to figure out how to unlock my phone to switch networks when we didn't submit the unlock request until two days ago. It's still not unlocked yet, but the problem is essentially solved. So, there's that. And I, in true procrastinator fashion, did not start packing until last night. For the past couple weeks people kept asking me if I'd packed yet, to which my response was always, "But I don't leave for another X amount of days! I can't start packing yet." And then it turned into two days before I leave and that excuse couldn't really cut it anymore. 

5. As excited as I am to be studying in France for a semester, a small part of me is actually going to miss Kirksville. Weird, I know. If you would have asked me three years ago, I never thought I'd miss Kirksville ever. But, more importantly, I'm going to miss the people there – my friends, not the townies, obviously (with the exception of my family who are residents of the town of Kirksville/ the greater Kirksville area…)

Anyway, I feel as if I've rambled on enough about my preparations. I need to try to get some sleep and mentally prepare myself for what I am sure will be the adventure of a lifetime. I wish I could just be in France right now so I could start figuring everything out, but I have many hours of traveling ahead of me still. 

I'll try to update this regularly-ish, but I don't want to make any promises I can't keep. So, until next time, I'll leave you with the link to the John Denver song from which I stole the title of this post. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoPT5Mq1pzQ

Bisous!