My Nouvelle Vie

Bonjour! Wow, this has been a TIRING but good week! It was orientation to life in Nantes and France in general. I am still EXHAUSTED and I come home every night and fall asleep RIGHT AWAY! We have had orientation from 9am-7pm every day, and now it is Friday night and I want to fall in a heap...but I am SO ready for it to all begin. We learned all about Nantes, how to get around, toured the university and the city, had 4 hours of intensive French EVERY DAY, and all I have been doing is speaking French, even with all the other Americans, so I really feel like I am expeditentially improving! And, that is the reason I came here, so it is a success so far!

My family is great! There is a mom, Isabelle (she works part time as a dentist), dad, Theirry (he is a pulmonologist) and a 15 year old boy (super timid) Charles who live at home in their 3 story giant house. There are 3 older kids who don't live at home. We have a huge house with parrots and a cat, 7 bedrooms, and a salon, office, TV room, living room, kitchen, and lots of bathrooms. The mom has been SUPER welcoming to me and very conversational and helpful. They are great and I can't wait to get to know them better and hopefully be invited to their country home! I have posted some pictures of my bedroom in case you are curious about where I am living...

Classes! We finally signed up for classes today and I can't wait for them to start. I am taking a grammar class at the IES center, a art history class at the IES center (both in French), and then three classes at the university: European history, a translation class, and a phoenetics and grammar class. I am about 20 minutes on bus from the center and about 30 minutes on bus to the University. The only problem is that I am going to spend lots of time in transit because unlike Whitman, the scudeule of the day is not 10am class, 11am class, lunch, 1-4pm lab...Here I might have one class at the center at 10-11:45am and then not have class until 5:30-7:30pm at the university. Not ideal for me, but c'est la vie Francaise! I am looking into possibly a dance class, or tennis, attending a church, and trying to find a place to volunteer so we will see how those go...I really want to IMMERSE myself here, meet French people, and learn the language!

I am ready for my first week...but I think I will be doing a lot of relaxing. My head needs it...