Continuing my journey in France...

It's currently 1 am...as I'm sure some of you may have already noticed. Or maybe just the one person that reads this :P

I am currently SO bored I am making myself stay up so I can serve my food in CafeWorld (a very addicting game on Facebook). However, I have decided to devise a list of things...nothing in particular, just things:
1. Successfully opened up a French bank account.
2. Had a blister the size of a nickel on the bottom of my foot yesterday...don't know where it is today.
3. Travis is visiting in 6 days!!!!!!
4. Still have not really gone downtown and taken photos of the city..just a fountain, really.
5. Have lots to read of Madame Bovary.
6. Methodologie is killing my buzz.
7. My Tahitian housemate makes living with my other housemate bearable.
8. My Tahitian housemate kicks a** actually...
9. Convinced the President of the program that brought me here to join me, my Tahitian housemate and my other friend for a rugby match on Sunday. Awesome?
10. Has had serious insomnia the past few days in anticipation for Travis's arrival.
11. Feels weird that everyone has been traveling but I have yet to leave the city.
12. Is almost broke in a foreign country.
13. Has frequented a particular bar so much that all the bartenders and managers know me by name, and have given me and my Tahitian housemate free drinks on multiple occasions ;)
14. Is confusing herself with the constant changing of persons in these fragmented sentences and will stop now.

That's my list. I can't wait for Travis to be here. I'm sleepy. The end.

Finally out of the dorms!!

If you're just now tuning in and have not yet heard, the dorms were beyond nightmarish. There were cafards, or cockroaches roaming about on every inch of every floor. Not to mention the gypsies that thought our staircase was their personal toilet (and our showers as well). Aussi, the only place to access the Wifi was in a forest which wouldn't have been all bad if there hadn't been pine trees everywhere (which I now realize the extent to which I am allergic to them). All-in-all, it really wasn't that terrible but I am thrilled to be out. I am living in the upstairs of a very nice French home in the center of the city. There are two French girls living upstairs with me as well going to Medical school...or something of pre-Med. I didn't quite understand. One of the girls is from Tahiti! When I told her I lived in Hawaii she wasn't too impressed -- it was the closest thing I knew to Tahiti! In any case they're both super friendly, especially Mathilde (not the Tahitian girl). She asks me lots of questions and is very patient with my horrible French. We got to showing each other pictures of each others family which was nice to reminisce a little bit :).

To wrap things up, I am extremely happy with the results of my apartment search and hope that I can make friends with the girls I live with :)

Après le match!

Let's start out by making clear that tonight was by far my best night in France to date. Becky and I ditched wine touring to go watch the Bordeaux rugby team (UBB) play today against Auch (they play like assholes) and ended up getting kissed on the cheeks by some of the players (it's the polite thing to do Trav! sorry babe!), getting my flag autographed, and making a friend with a fellow rugby fan who happens to be from Montana. He was almost as girly as we were when waiting with the girlfriends and family members of the players and gave us a ride back to the dorms. It turns out he moved to France about 5 years ago for his girlfriend and went to Bordeaux 3 (our university) and gave us a lot of local advice which was wonderful. He's moving to Switzerland on the 16th and at one point during the conversation we all decided to meet up for a movie and Indian food in town tomorrow which should be fun. :) All in all it was a wonderful day.

More updates later..

J'ai un apartement maintenant!!

I am homeless still. The French people in MacDo are super (said with French accent) loud. I have one meeting in a few hours but it would just be for me. There are 2 others from the program who already signed their lease for it, so I would be the third living there. However, Becky and I have a meeting on Thursday with a guy who is hardly at his house and is renting it out to 2 students. It's entirely renovated in a "nouveau" style (as advertised) and it has DSL and a pool.  In addition, each bedroom has its own bathroom. It sounds like a really great offer for just 400 Euro a person, but we still have to see the place and make sure everything checks out..and we're not the last people in line (as it turns out we have been). This whole apartment thing is almost too stressful for my liking.

We also have these meetings regarding our Cartes de Séjours qui sont TRÈS stressés. It's literally like getting your visa all over again. All the same documents, you have to go find the police station and get it done there. It's not my bag, baby.

It thundered so hard today...and rained a little bit. That was nice :) I enjoyed it.

8:47 pm: J’ai un apartement!! I am peeing right now. It’s 330 Euro a month, I get to live with 2 other French students about my age (or so I’m told), 2 twin kids about 12 years old and their mother who wants me to help them improve their English. I am absolutely delighted. I will have WeeFee, my own room, my own bathroom, a kitchen upstairs (très cool), it’s close to Becky and it’s downtown (super cool). It’s very close to the bus, which takes me directly to the tram where I will get on it for school. I am peeing.

so the search begins!

August 29, 2009
9:15 am: (Listening to: You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oates) Becky and I have 3 apartment meetings today, I can’t wait to go to them and have my own place :) We’ll move out of the slum-like dorms on September 11th once our Intensive Language Program is over. Yesterday morning we had to take these comprehension tests to evaluate our individual levels of understanding French which will affect which classes we can take at the Uni and also how much & the level of difficulty of hw we have for the ILP classes. I definitely bombed it for a number of reasons not necessarily indicative of my ability to understand the language. It’s a good thing it’s not graded and we have a second test at the end of the program to improve on.
Also, I bought The Hobbit in French, it’s called Bilbo Le Hobbit. It has HUGE handwriting.

8:59 pm: 3 apartments down. 2 more to go. I need a place to leave FO reals. The one apartment we absolutely fell in love with single-handedly ruined my night. Ok, maybe not so serious, but it really was perfect in every way. I guess “c’est la vie” would be the appropriate expression for the current situation but that’s just too fitting. We have two more meeting Monday evening and hopefully we’ll be able to land a place. I’m crossing my fingers.

the Final Countdown

I have 10 days until I arrive in the land of snails and frogs.