Here, at last!

I am now writing from Marchiennes, France! I arrived on Friday, but I left Santa Fe on Tuesday at 7 in the morning (ugh). Oh so much happened during those four days, how I will ever be able to write it all I don't know, but I can try. Well, to start with, I went to the first day of school in Santa Fe before I left, as they started on Monday. That was an interesting experience, because I felt like I belonged there and yet I had to keep reminding myself and everyone else that I was leaving, and that I was not going to be there with them through the hard and easy parts of the school year. But then I had to wake up at four in the morning and all those deep complicated thoughts and feeling left me, and were replaced by foggy confusion and regret for booking said 7:00 flight!

We had a layover in Chicago, and then onto Boston, where we spent the night, and the next morning I said goodbye to my parents, and met the other 7 kids going to France with CIEE. We spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning in Boston doing touristy things. We went on a boat tour of Boston harbor, saw the mapporium, which was very cool, and then walked around Harvard campus and Harvard Square. When we returned from Harvard Square we grabbed our luggage, which was quite an ordeal, as we all had tons of suitcases, and big ones too, and lugged them over to the airport. At the airport we chugged are way through security, then onto the plane. We took a german airline to Frankfurt, which is a 5 or 6 hour flight. Then the same airline to Charles De Gaulle, which is supposed to be an hour long flight. Unfortunately, we were delayed due to some baggage problems, and it was a two hour ordeal. Then our baggage was delayed at Charles De Gaulle, which would have been fine, except that during the hour delay at Frankfurt one girl's suitcase (luckily not all of her luggage, but still...) was sent to Munich instead. In summary, we were two and half hours late getting to the reception area of Charles De Gaulle.

My family came and picked me up at the airport, which was so nice of them, as everyone else had to take trains to their host family with all their luggage. I felt bad being two and a half hours late though, nut at the same time I couldn't leave the group. We were all together on all the flights, except for one girl, who had changed her flight to return to the US, and they changed her flight there was well, so she had to wait an hour by her self at the Frankfurt airport, so that was unfortunate.

Marchiennes is beautiful, and very charming. We biked to the next town over today and it was so much nicer, view wise, than any american bike ride, I think, anyway. My host family has been introducing me to their friends, which is nice, though I still have a very hard time understanding what they say because they speak so quickly and abbreviate everything! However, I think I'm understanding a little more everyday. On Friday, I was so tired from not sleeping for 21 hours straight that I didn't understand anything at all!

We went to the high school where I'll be going this year with Sarah and Thomas to get the text books for my classes. The architecture of the School is very French. I got my books alright, but I think I confused them because I didn't declare a specialty. Here the students in 11th grade, or premier form, pick a specialty to study for the baccalaureate. I have to take economy, so Thomas was trying to explain to me the basics that they learned last year, in French mind, which was very confusing. The confusion was much increased by the fact that the dictionary didn't have most of the phrases because they were specific to economics. I'm taking biology again, but its supposed to be the next level, as they took it last year like us. The reason I say supposed to be is because I was looking at the text book today and the index says we will learn only things that were covered in my class last year. I'm not sure yet whether or not this is a good thing but right now I'm thinking yes!

Well, I think that's all I have to say for now. My host family is great, I think it would be so much harder if my host family and I didn't get on, because that does happen apparently, so I'm really grateful to them. They have a dog who is very cute but crazy, so that's nice because my dog is also crazy.

a bientot,

e