September 25, 2005
This is the first time that I have gotten to sit down and write anything. I'm happy to say that I'm in Valence. I moved in today. My room is pretty small but my stuff still doesn't fill up the room at all. I'm watching Finding Nemo to relax. It's been very draining on my body these past couple of days. I can visibly see a difference in my biceps from lugging my 100 lbs of bags with me. I flew into Heathrow on Wednesday morning 6 am. For that flight, I sat next to a couple from Sparta who were flying in to see the husband's parents. It was comforting to meet someone from close to home. I was able to check my e-mail at the airport but I couldn't do much else.
I was in Lyon at 11:30, from there I had to take two buses in order to get to my convention in Autrans. Autrans is absolutely beautiful. The roads are so much fun to ride on; there are S-turns every where. We road through gorges and next to rivers and forests in order to get to a valley at the top of the mountain. When looking around, everything is so peaceful. There was hardly any noise at all during the night. The town had about 50 houses in it, that's all. We covered a lot of teaching information at the conference.
I arrived in Valence today around 6:30 pm. I hailed a taxi in order to get to my room; he thought I had brought a dead body or my boyfriend in my suitcases because they were really heavy. I'm glad to say that I have a bed, a desk, a cabinet and a shelving unit. I also have three lights (all flourescent) and only two plugs that I can get electricity from. I'm going to my school tomorrow to fill out paperwork. I have to find a bank that will give me a bank account tomorrow too - I can only get paid through direct deposit. Also on the list for tomorrow - finding a food store, my prioriety being buying toilet paper and a pillow.
I have a fridge in my room that I pay 4.45 Euros a month. I'm happy to have it. I'm going to hang my pictures of everyone on the fridge because I'm limited to where I can hang things in my room. The people are really friendly here and willing to help me out. I'm still trying to get my cold to go away. My french has been pretty good, but I can get to about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and then I kind of run out of translating steam. After that, I kind of lose track of sentence structure and I make up half english/ half french words that I don't have any clue to how I got them in the first place. When people realize what I'm doing and that it's English, they try to help, but their english is worst the my french. The waiter at dinner today asked if I wanted a note. A note? Yes, a note. I responded by not answering and he then asked me in french and I finally understood.
I miss everyone so much right now. It's lonely living by myself. There are a ton of great people here, but it's difficult to try to make friends when people have problems understanding you. I'm glad that I'm doing this, but I know that I will never want to come to France for a long amount of time again. I'm really happy to keep in contact with everyone. I hope everything at home is going good.I think I like Finding Nemo so much because I relate to it. I'm just going to put a quote from a scene I just saw to end this entry.
Dory lets go of the whale's tongue because the whale said to, while Marty clinges to the tongue afraid to try something new and holds onto Dory.
Marty: Dory!
Dory: He says it's time to let go, everything's going to be alright.
Marty: How do you know? How do you know something bad isn't going to happen?
Dory: I don't.
Marty lets go of the tongue and the two are blown out of the blow hole. In the end Marty is happy to have taken the chance.
I'm hoping that's what's going to happen to me, minus the whole whale tongue and the ocean.