12:30pm on Sunday September 8th PST
This section will be very short and boring. It's about the plan ride. I arrived at Sea-Tac at 12:30pm for my flight at 3:30pm. After passing through security and customs, I headed to the gate where I was informed that I needed to check in at the little desk in front of the gate to verify my passport.. This basically means that, although I checked in online the night before, printed out my boarding pass and should, theoretically, have been allowed to head straight onto the plane, they wanted to verify my passport and print out a new boarding pass for me (with the same information on it). Ah American bureaucracy. The nine hour and forty five minute flight headed northeast on a parabolic trajectory over Greenland, where the sun rose (see photo below), and then southeast on a parabolic trajectory over England and finally landed in Paris.
Then at......
10:00am on Monday September 9th CEST (Central European Summer Time)
This section discusses the train ride and will also be very short. Now I personally love train ride. Sure plane rides are way way way way way faster. But the trains in France happen to also be way way way way faster than American trains. Therefore a French plane ride is only
3:54pm on Monday September 9th CEST
Because my arrival in Nantes was too close to after the welcome desk at the dorms closed, I had made arrangements for a hotel room on the banks of the Loire River itself (see photos below; the address is 3 Allée Jacques Berque, Nantes 44300 if you are interested). Unfortunately, this meant I had to lug my 50 pound hockey bag (carrying most of my gear), my trumpet and my messenger bag (bulging with carry-on items) all the way to the hotel. The views from the hotel room were gorgeous and the room was quite spacious. This was to be my base off operations for the evening of the 9th and the morning of the 10th. One of the first things I did upon arrival was hunt down the nearest bank and the nearest boulangerie (a bakery). Dinner was very light as the area surrounding the hotel was very residential and did not have many restaurants within walking distance for a tired student who had been up for almost 24 hours.
The rest of the night was uneventful until ..........
4:00am on Tuesday September 10th CEST
This is the entry in which the fun begins! Because of the time difference between the United States and Nantes (a nine hour time difference), I woke at 4:00pm thinking it was time for appetizers (yes, my family normally has an appetizer course as a family before having dinner. What can I say? I know where my love of European customs comes from?). Unfortunately, in France, it is not appetizer time at 4:00am. It's not even first breakfast much less second breakfast. It was therefore necessary to tell my stomach to shut up and go back to sleep... Needless to say, it didn't work for long in the slightest. I had a maximum of another hour of sleep between 4:00am and 8:30am when I left for the Guichet Unique (welcome desk) for the Maison des Echanges Internationaux et de la Francophonie (House of International Exchange and of the French-speaking nations). This is basically the welcome desk for international students studying at the University of Nantes and is the place where they processed my OFII papers (various papers you are required to show to the French government within the first three months of arrival). Then at.......
11:30am on Tuesday September 10th CEST
I checked out of the hotel at 11:30am and headed for a taxi at the Gare de SNCF (the TGV train station). Be it known that I was not prepared to take multiple transit lines from the hotel to my future residence with a 50 pound hockey bag, a trumpet and a bulging messenger bag. I decided it was way easier to pay the 10 euro taxi fare. So finally, a few minutes before noon (phew was I lucky) I arrived at 81 Rue de la Gaudinière, the address that will be my home for the next nine months! For those of you who have never travelled in or studied the daily life of France (and possibly Europe) before, I will explain the significance of the noon deadline. There is some unwritten (or possibly written secretly somewhere) that no respectable French citizen will be found operating a desk job (be it in the public sector, the private sector or a government office) between the hours of noon and 1:30pm. Life seems to stop during the hour and a half long lunch break. It is therefore deathly important to arrive before noon or after 1:30 if you plan on getting anything accomplished. After an issue with the key to my door (mainly the fact that none of the three keys which were stated to be for the lock on my door actually worked) I was let in by the fantastic lady at the welcome desk! And voila... I now had a place to stay for the next nine months! Suffice to say, it has now been transformed into my own personal lair of residence! There was one slight inconvenience with the room: there were no bed sheets (an issue I was not prepared for). Therefore, the night was spent sleeping on a bare mattress with a towel as a blanket (believe me when I say it was slightly unpleasant but actually not too bad). The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. That brings us to.......
4:00am on Wednesday September 11th CEST
My stomach once again decided it was dinner time (thanks stomach). Luckily, I discovered that after a few pistachios (my dad had given me a bag for the plane ride which I did not open... thanks Dad!!) my stomach was tricked into believing I had had dinner. Thus tricked, my stomach allowed me to sleep until 8am when I head off to the University to register for my student id and the ethernet password (finally! Internet after so long without it!.... ok, I might be slightly exaggerating the situation. Sue me, I wanted to tell my parents I was still alive. My mother worries about her youngest child!). I scheduled my placement exam (there is a written and an oral part) for tomorrow morning at 9am. And that brings me to.....
2:45pm on Wednesday September 11th CEST
... When I went shopping for bed sheets, a pillow, a pillow case and other various odds and ends like toothpaste. Thanks to a tip from another UW student on the trip, I was able to find the "Walmart of Nantes" (which is actually called Auchan). Thankfully they take American visa cards and I was able to charge the 57 euro tab (something tells me I may come back here often considering that it is like two metro stops away and carries literally everything). I found out after this shopping trip that I believe myself to possess magical abilities as I was able to buy a 65x65cm pillow and fit it easily into a 64x64 cm pillow case. Success.. This is also the first time in 19 years that I have had a matching pillow case and bed sheets! Yay for color coordination! It was also during this trip that I might a man at the tramway station that was ecstatic to meet the first American he had ever seen outside of tv! He was full of questions about what we do in our free time, what types of food we eat, etc. It was amazing to feel so appreciated from a random stranger! Thank you for making my day by making your day! Which brings me to....
5:30pm on Wednesday September 11th CEST
.... When I finished this very very very very long blog post. Goodbye for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment