When in France...?

WARNING: This post is over 3,000 words. Feel free to dip out at any time. Also, pictures to come soon.

Friday, January 16.

“Just do it” should be the slogan for not only one of the world’s most prominent athletic shoe companies, but for every experience related to studying abroad.

Yesterday was a long day, but here’s an attempt at summing it up:

It started with a 7.5 hour plane ride that left Chicago at 6:25 p.m. central time. Let’s be honest, I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t going to sleep on the plane. I’m not the type of person that can fall asleep wherever they are, so I happily welcomed by all-nighter and embraced the free veg-out time it allowed me (plus I got to watch that new A-Z show, New Girl, The Middle and more so the TV on the plane was pretty quality for the most part. Movies, not so much, but I allowed myself to get sucked into a lame Nicholas Sparks movie).

I sat next to Mary, a fellow Mizzou student who I know from reporting, so the ride went by quicker since we talked for the first couple of hours. We laughed about the woman sitting kitty-corner from me as she spent an hour looking at the same page of a magazine and took pictures of some of the other Mizzou kids on our flight as the slept. You know, really mature ways to keep entertained on a plane.

An adorable European playing the piano.

After we landed and got our bags, we had that first moment of what the hell are we doing when we realized that nobody knew how to get to the TGV (high-speed train) stop that’s in the Charles de Gaulle airport. Despite the fact that speaking French to native French speakers is definitely one of my top five biggest fears, I decided that I wasn’t going to get anything out of this experience unless I tried, so I asked two security officers in broken French how to get to the stop. They told me it was in terminal 2, which contradicted what I had learned from my mom before she left (she said terminal 1, but oh well) but we figured they probably knew what they were talking about seeing as they work there and what not. Although this first French interaction wasn’t 100% successful, I was proud of myself for being the first one of our group of five to step up, especially since my heart was racing the whole time.

 

These directions were a good starting off point, but not too helpful, seeing as we asked five more people within the next half hour or so for help getting to the station within the airport. I asked the info desk, eventually in English since I realized he spoke it, and stupidly thought he meant the elevator down to the shuttle stop was outside when he pointed and said “right behind me.” Turns out, French people, like any reasonable person, mean literally right behind them when they say right behind, because the elevator was tucked into a small corridor behind the wall backing the info desk.

After maneuvering the airport shuttle and arriving at the TGV station (and lugging probably 70+ pounds of luggage between those effing narrow metal poles that are at the top of every escalator just to annoy anyone traveling with four plus months of stuff), we had to figure out where the heck the ticket station was and the actual platform. The next train was at 12:52, so we had plenty of time, but we ended up needing it. It took at least 15 or 20 minutes just to figure out where Kenzie and I could buy our tickets-the French don’t believe in proper signage apparently-and when we finally did, I held up the whole line because I had just gotten a new pre-paid travel card with a PIN that I hadn’t memorized yet. As I shuffled through my stuffed folder of papers, the three layers I was wearing suddenly resembled a fur coat in the middle of summer. My stress levels increased as the number of people in line behind me did as well, and I just asked if I could use another form of payment (thank God I got Euros for Christmas). The woman behind the desk was extremely patient and kind, and although I could tell she was a little annoyed, I think she appreciated my attempt at speaking in French,

After the dreaded ticket office experience, we got some much-needed downtime waiting for our train. We spent the next hour and a half taking in the quality people watching opportunity that the station provided: a redheaded man with a baguette sticking out of his backpack (possibly the most French thing I have ever seen) playing the piano (yes, there’s a random piano in the station that anyone can play for free), young French children in adorable matching coats speaking in the most adorable accent of all time, people glaring at us because we’re loud and young and American (although we soon learned the people behind us were American, which is awkward because I loudly said wow those guys are glaring at us, idiotically assuming they wouldn’t understand what I was saying) and best of all, people charging their phones at a little bike-power station that generated energy each time someone got on and peddled.

Before we got on the TGV I had my first completely successful French-speaking encounter when I ordered a sandwich at a little stand. The cashier was young and very friendly, and I appreciated the fact that he didn’t seem to be annoyed by my imperfect pronunciation (I’ve quickly learned that everyone was right when they told me that people are a lot nicer to you when they can see that you’re clearly trying your best to speak their language correctly). The only downside to this scenario that I was so preoccupied with planning what to say when I ordered that I didn’t attempt to decipher the list of ingredients next to the two different types of sandwiches, so I ended up pointing at one that looked sort of like a caprese salad but was really tuna and deviled egg (thank God my mom got me a travel cutlery pack-I scraped those bad boys off right away when I finally reached my seat on the train).

Here's a pic of my dog to help you get through this.

Getting to our seats on the train was the next item on my list of most stressful experiences of the day. While we knew our seat and car numbers, we had no idea where our seats actually were, so we just got on through the first door that looked open/that other people were using. Kenzie, Julia and I ended up having to lug all of our bags through three whole cars before we got to the car where our assigned seats were. At first this might not sound that hard, but please realize that I was carrying potentially the widest rolling suitcase of all time (which had weighed in at exactly 49 pounds back at O’Hare, score) a smaller yet extremely heavy rolling suitcase that I had carried on, as well as a Jansport backpack stuffed to the brim and carrying my computer and a bunch more on my back. The aisles on the train were two narrow for me to roll my big suitcase, so I had to lift it and carry it through all the cars as French people-maybe even a few Americans as well-looked at me and snickered

When we finally reached our car, a young guy who spoke English kindly tried to help me, but when he told me he didn’t think my big bag would fit on the luggage shelf,  I decided I had worked too hard to give up. I ignored him and used every ounce of working muscle I had left to lift the bag up a foot and half or so and shove it between the bar and the bag next to it. It fit. Girl power.

If you don’t believe me when I say this was hard as hell, please note that I’m sitting here writing this in bed the next morning and it hurts for me to lift my arms or roll my shoulders, they’re so sore. I also took a 2 minute shower simply to deep-cleanse my skin with soap the second I got to my room and unpacked it because the experience had produced so much sweat.

The transfer at the Champagne-Ardenne station was super quick and easy since a kind station employee pointed us in the direction of our connecting train, and before we knew it, we were pulling into our new home for the next four and a half months.

I realized I didn’t have enough euros to pay for my first month’s rent-or at least according to what the email I got last week told me I would have to pay when I got there, but I ended up having to pay less than half of what I expected-so Kenzie and I traveled up a busy pedestrian walkway full of hotels and cafes that the guy at the “le office de tourisme” outside the train station told us was home to a couple cash machines (note: saying “ATM” in a French accent won’t do you anything-he was like “is that an American bank?”-just ask for a cash machine or memorize the French term before you leave, which I should have done). While it was annoying to have to walk even more with all of our bags, this was our first chance to see our new city, and I was instantly in love.

Kenzie and I barely said a word to each other as we looked around in awe at the beautiful art deco buildings around us. The area was such an interesting mix of the old and new, and I loved the juxtaposition of the newer buildings that were put in place in the 20’s-when the city was almost entirely rebuilt after being severely damaged in WWI-with the old, uneven streets that have bared witness to an inconceivable amount of history.

Me and five people's worth of luggage.

Once I had my cash, we walked the block back to the station and hopped into a cab to take us to our residence. The ride was easy and not too long, and our driver was kind enough to help us with our luggage. To my surprise, there was a woman at the front desk of our residence who spoke English, so she told us which documents to sign and gave us our keys. We paid and went our separate ways because I was told I was in another building. Little did I know that my building was not one of the three 5-story towers that comprised the complex we were standing in, but a completely separate building down the road.

This is where my Knight in Shining Armor comes in. First of all, I’m an idiot at told myself there was no way the towers were connected to the main building we were in, so I went outside and tried to get into the tower next door, only to realize that door was for the postal service. I tried to get back in the side door I had gone out of but it was locked, so a nice French-speaking boy let me in. Now, let me just say that it’s really hard to tell if you can trust people when you’re in a foreign country. This guy (note: his name is so hard to pronounce that I couldn’t even begin to attempt to tell you what it might be, all I know is that it starts with an M) was tall, cute and kind of shy yet extremely kind and helpful, so I let him show me up to my room (he even took one of my bags for me). I was too tired at this point to refuse help from a nice stranger, and my thought process was that he was just showing me upstairs, so I would be fine.

I quickly realized that the people at the front desk suck at explaining things because when my key wouldn’t fit in the key hole, the nice guy-who had walked down the hall to put something into his room at this point-heard me struggling and asked to see my key. He said that the key wasn't fitting because I was in the wrong building, and he laughed and said in broken English that it’s around the corner. He offered to take me and in my frustrated, exhausted state, I couldn’t say no because I had legitimately no idea where the hell this building was.

As we walked outside and down the street, I had a quick moment of panic-was this guy going to kill me? Where are we going?-and asked him cautiously if he knew where we were going. Looking a little confused, as if wondering why I would ask such a thing when he had specifically offered to take me there, he said yes and probably 30 seconds later I saw the sign for my building and felt relieved.

This relief continued the second I walked in as the two older women at the front office of my building enthusiastically greeted my guide. In rapid, excited French they said something along the lines of “who’s this pretty girl with you? Are you helping her? How sweet!” And I realized I must have been helped by one of the most popular residents. The woman told me how to get to my room on the third floor and Knight in Shining Armor and I said our goodbyes. He’s a second-year law student at one of the other universities in town and the sweetest person I’ve met here so far, so I think it’s fair to say I would be okay with running into him again.

{Sorry this post is getting long but I’ll try my best to write this ending quickly.}

My room in tiny. As in, the tiniest living space possible. If I were overweight, I would not fit in my bathroom. I have no shower curtain and my leg is three inches from touching my toilet when I shower. My sink takes a few minutes to drain and is about half the size of my head so I get water everywhere when I wash my face (not to mention, all four feet of my floor is covered in water when I shower). It’s different and will take a great deal of getting used to, but it’s comfy, has plenty of wall space for pictures and I fit in my bed (I was afraid I was too tall), so I’m counting my blessings.  One fun fact: it took me ten minutes to figure out that I have to put my key card into a slot to turn on my lights, so I started to unpack in the dark/took another ten minutes to try to figure out how to open my weird blinds so I could at use what little sunlight that was peeking through the gray clouds to help me unpack.

Yes, I could shower while sitting on the toilet.

Kenzie and I had planned to meet downstairs of her building at 4pm to go get bedding, so I headed over and we tried and failed to ask someone at the front desk how to get to the store they had originally recommended (and wrote down the name of, thank God), but the office closes at 4 and when we saw the lady in the hallway and I told her-in French so come on, I was trying- I had a question for her when she got off the phone, she never came back out of her office.

We decided to “use our resources” and asked a nice Slovakian girl at the bus stop right outside the building if we could take a bus to the store, and she told us exactly how to get there and back. Bless her soul.

We followed an 8-year-old city boy off the bus and saw it, our first of two beacons of hope in the darkness: the bright “Carreflour” sign down the street. The only thing in our way was some muddy grass, a gas station and a huge parking lot. We trekked through all three-looking like the dumb, clueless Americans that we are-and came upon the most beautiful site we had seen all day: the equivalent of a French Wal-Mart. It had everything you could ever want, but we had to lug our purchases home on the bus so we just got the necessities: bedding, toilet paper and hand soap.

The bus ride on the way home wasn’t nearly as simple as our experience on the way there. We were on for a long time-all the people that were originally on it with us had gotten off and many more had gotten on-and felt like we might have missed our stop. I panicked, realizing that we would legitimately be lost if we had to pick a random stop to get off at. Sure, I knew the name of the stop for the store and the stop before that, but I had no idea how to walk from the store to our residences, and I knew it would be long since the bus ride itself had been probably ten minutes. As my heart started racing I asked the driver in broken English if he was going to stop at “Crayeres.” He immediately made me lose hope in my opinion that French people are unfairly labeled as mean.

He was extremely rude and basically, if I understood him right, was telling me that my French wasn’t good enough for him to understand. He kept shrugging and saying he didn’t get what I was saying (and I know for a fact that the only mistake I was making was pronouncing the name of the stop incorrectly by maybe one vowel sound) and eventually, after I attempting to spell the name of the street in Franglish, he said oh yea, we would be stopping there.

I sat back down, fuming, yet happy when we got off and saw our residence two stops later.

A green beacon of hope on a gray day: Carrefour.

Exhausted beyond belief after a difficult day and over 24 hours without sleep, Kenzie and I decided we would walk until we found any place that sold food, walk back and immediately go to bed. We walked for a while-probably 12 blocks or so-and found “Royal Fast Food,” which looked open because there were people inside eating, but the door appeared locked (we later learned that it was open because more people were there when we passed it again on the way home, we probably just didn’t know how to open the door, which has happened to us on more than one occasion thus far).

Hangry beyond belief, I got uncharacteristically angry and tried the door again before Kenzie yelled “Pizza!” Next door we found the second and final beacon of hope that day: a flashing green, red and white sign that said “Pizzeria.” Suddenly, all my faith in this experience was restored.

We walked into what might be the most adorable restaurant I’ve ever seen and were seated by a kind Italian man. We ordered the “Quatre Fromages” pizza and a bottle of water to share, and we got to watch the man make the brick-oven pizza just a foot from our table. He asked in French/Italian if we were “Americana” and when he found out that we were from Chicago and southern Missouri-or as he called it, “Misery,”-got into a long conversation with me about how he knows people in “Midland.” I have absolutely no idea if he meant the Midwest, Michigan or somewhere else entirely, but I said something like “Oh Michigan?” and he just kind went with it and said he also has a lot of friends on the East Coast. I smiled and said they have good pizza there, especially in New York, but I should have told him that his pizza was better because it was definitely one of the best I’ve ever had.

Near the point of falling asleep at the table, we waited a good 20 minutes for our check-we’re quickly learning that people move at about half the pace they do in America-and eventually, my new favorite pizza man told us he would “see us soon” as we walked out and thanked him profusely.

Then we walked home and I slept for 10 and a half hours. It was glorious.

I don’t know if I have the time or energy to elaborate, but I think I’ve done far too much writing at this point, so I’ll write something more interesting soon.