Saturday, August 25, 2012

The day I arrived in Tours


   It is 6:30 pm in Tours. The weather is gloomy but not cold. The flight from LA to Washington DC was 5 hrs. It wasn’t that bad except I was starving the whole time. They offered food but I would have to pay extra. When I got to DC I was so happy to have my friends come in first. I would have been completely lost at the airport. They reminded me that I had to eat, which if you know me, it is vital to ask me if I ate or else I would starve myself without even knowing. We went to the Marriott for a meeting and then got back to the airport right away. We stayed at the airport for 4 hrs. I ate lasagna which was hella expensive but a girl gotta eat. Red met a South African guy while she was getting her food.  He was really nice. He let us charge our phones on his laptop. And of course the South African accent is unbelievably charming.
   We got on the plane at 9:30 pm (DC time) and we were all sitting far from each other. At first I was sitting next to a baby right by the exit door. Notice I have the worst luck when it comes to seating arrangements. However, when the plane took off, the stewardess asked me if I can move to a different seat because the baby wants more space. I was happy to leave the seat. I ended up sitting next to a French guy named Axel. He was really cute. He kept talking about his American girlfriend the whole time. They met in Paris when she was studying abroad and now they go back and forth to visit each other. Makes you wanna believe in love again.
When we landed in Paris, there was no time to buy a phone card to call my parents. We went straight to the bus and left for Tours. I was jetlagged so I slept for the first 3 hrs. We stopped at a rest area and the chaperon gave us 10€ each to buy lunch. I got a ham and butter sandwich. It wasn’t bad for a rest area food. An hour later we were in Tours and our host families were waiting for us at the institution. My host family were Monsieur Bernard and Madame Emilienne. They own a brewery and a farm. But we were staying at their city home.
   The  house is full of foreign students. I have someone else from Sweet Briair. She seems really nice and she actually wants to learn Arabic and go to Egypt. It is good to have someone I can speak English with or else I will forget it completely; that would be a problem when I come back from France.  It is a beautiful house: at least 7 rooms, a kitchen, 7 showers, 1 toilet, 1 salon, 1 living room and 1 office. It is an old style house. It looks like American homes in the 20’s. There is one but vital problem right now. I have yet to contact my parents and letting them know that I am here in France safe and sound. There is no internet in the house. My phone doesn’t work and about to die. I have yet to buy a SIM card for my European phone. So I have no way of contacting anybody for that matter till tomorrow. And I forgot to bring a converter for my phone, my laptop and my hair straightener. Safe to say I am not washing my hair today. Dinner is always at 8pm. We can’t make loud noises after 11pm. She hasn’t told us yet what time is breakfast. It is so hard to understand Emilienne. She doesn’t speak English at all. Even the words that I don’t know in French, I have to find a way to explain them in French. Anyways, dinner is in an hour and I have to go wash up. I don’t usually talk with my family over dinner but I don’t know about Bernard and Emilienne. This will be interesting… 

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