Arrived Safe and Sound, and Part 1 of My Trip

I'm sitting in my warm little dorm room as I type this. I've taken lots of photos and even videos. But come with me for a minute, and let's take a walk through the last, exhausting 30+ hours in words (and a few pictures).

France

Dad and Mom drove me to the airport after a slapdash last few hours at home which involved frantic re-packing with Mom so that I only had one suitcase, last minute printing off of documents, reserving a TGV (train) ticket, making sure I had everything together, bathing, eating, prayers, and goodbyes.

Once inside the airport, instant calm fell over me. I know it was the peace of God, and it has yet to leave me, even during some very frightening, very worrisome events.

The O'Hare airport is set up so that everything happens as quickly as possible and runs smoothly. Before I knew it, I was on my flight after munching on an apple and watching CNN at my gate. I noticed Julianne in line when our group was boarding and waved happily to her. She's also from Beloit College.

O'Hare airport

The flight was actually only about 7 hours. I took American Airlines, and I want to fly back home with them because I liked it a lot. Between all the stuff they were showing on the TVs (from announcements to some movie about how all we sistas curr 'bout is scorin' us a NBA balla' husban' to "The Office" to "The Devil Wears Prada" and a few in-betweens) and all the random complimentary food that I had no idea was included, the length of the flight was completely bearable. We flew over Toronto, Iceland, Greenland, the Atlantic Ocean, and the English Channel.

Let me talk about the food for a second, because I was really surprised and was shocked that it was included for free. First, within maybe an hour or so of the plane taking off, they served us a small bag of a "gourmet snack mix" and our drink of choice (I got OJ, of course, my dear family).

This is the same brand, but the packaging on mine looks different.

Only two hours later they served us a surprisingly tasty dinner, which was a choice between lasagna and chicken (I got chicken, which came with mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans) served with a dinner roll, butter, salad of tomato and good cheese on lettuce, a container of salad dressing, a bottle of water AND a choice of another drink, crackers, a triangle of "gourmet" Gruyere cheese, a choclate chip Blondie, and salt and pepper to season it all with (maybe not the Blondie).

My dinner looked something like this, only I had more food and the salad was bigger.

Toward the end of the flight, they served us a small breakfast of a warm croissant with butter and jam, a container of yogurt, orange juice, and our choice of tea or coffee. I didn't really sleep and was still digesting my dinner, so I couldn't quite eat breakfast. They gave us so much food my stomach started bothering me. Turns out I needed all that fuel, though. And then some.

Once we landed in Paris, Julianne and I got off the plane, hopped on a shuttle to the baggage claim, grabbed our luggage, and then high-tailed it completely to the other side of the Charles de Gaulle airport. You had to know that the TGV terminal would be on a totally different end than the one we landed on.

The Charles de Gaulle airport.

Charles de Gaulle. :)

After some confusion, we got in a very long line for our train tickets. An outgoing, chatty woman who spoke fluent English started talking to us (then proceeded to speak fluent French to the people at the counter, and also hauled off and spoke loud, fluent Danish into her cellphone) and informed us that the lines aren't usually so insane, but there was going to be a strike the next day and all public transportation would be out of service. For the record, she's also fluent in Italian.

This is exactly what my ticket looked like.

We got our tickets (My reservation worked out, Mom! Thank you so much.) and after Julianne found out from a very helpful woman where we located our train, we watched a screen for the location announcement and headed to our "voie" to wait for the TGV. There we met another American girl who was meeting some friends to live with for a few months (she'd studied abroad and made friends with them then) and we helped her figure out where she needed to be, which turned out to be on the same train as us. We hopped on the TGV when it arrived and sporadically dozed off for the two hours it took for us to get to our connecting train in Valence.

There's some weird, unspoken etiquette on TGVs; no one talks. Or checks tickets. Or sits in one's designated seat.

We attempted to get snacks upstairs at the next "gare" (train station), but nothing looked good, so we went down to the voie. While we were waiting for the train that would take us to Montpellier, it occurred to us that we had no clue what to do once we actually arrived in Montpellier. We didn't know where the university was or how to get there, and we desperately wanted to call there but couldn't (I must have used my international phone card wrong because my phone has no service). Then a man decided to speak rapid French to us. He was understanding when I explained that we were American, and simply asked if he could leave his stuff with us while he ran upstairs into the station. I guess we looked trustworthy. Also, a family showed up with a dog and kitty-cat. The cat was so cute!

The train station at Valence. There was a see-though lift/elevator.

We got on the TGV again and it took us an hour to get to Montpellier. I knew we were getting close when I started seeing palm trees. Once we got into the city, I was overwhelmed. It's huge, with tons of people (mostly students, I think) everywhere and a huge amount of traffic packed into cramped little brown streets. The buildings are wide and old-fashioned in architecture. There's a weird juxtaposition of beautiful old-buildings, cruddy, badly-maintained sidewalks, palm trees, and graffiti.

There are tram tracks in the road.

We took a taxi to the university. The taxi driver was very, very nice and I was able to hold a completely French conversation with her about everything from if international students usually take taxis (nope) to the music on the radio. I tried to tip her, but she wouldn't let me. Once we got to the university, Julianne made a mad dash inside to grab someone's attention about our arrival while I stayed out with our luggage. Office hours were well over, and there was a good chance we'd have to figure out how to stay somewhere else that night. We were exhausted, having spent the last 9 hours racing through France with about 200 pounds of luggage, speaking careful French and engaging in constant problem-solving and figuring everything out. We were missing our families, and our last meal had been the small breakfast on the plane. And it was starting to rain.