land ho!

so here it is...10:08 Friday morning. sept 19th 2008 AND I AM POOPED! my period started last night. which i should have expected. it was my first night living in France...it, being the vicious holiday attacker it is, couldn’t pass up my first night in France. i hate it....so basically i hurt I'm hungry and i have low supplies. also i am dead sore and exhausted because of jet-lag...i don’t like flying....i think i dislike it more than the train..i mean it wasn’t a terrible experience or anything....take off was awesome! i liked it a lot...and i loved it when the plane would turn or go up and down...:] turbulence was fun...we didn’t have much of it though...basically it was terrible because the only thing that showed how fast we were going was the little t.v. in the back of the headrest of the chair in front of me (that was altogether way to close to my face!) that had a map of the airplanes’ progress toward the destination. it honestly felt like the plane was hovering in the same place the whole time....how are you supposed to be excited about going over 600 miles per hour if it feels like you are sitting still in the same chair for 7 and a half hours....(buckled up the entire time....)

anywho! we landed and Paris was awesome in a terribly ugly modern sort of way...it wasn’t at all like the good ol’ USA....but yeah we found the long line for the train tickets and bought the one that would get us to Vichy (pronounced Vee She) the fastest...we were sick of traveling...:] so we took the metro from the airport to Paris north and then from Paris north to the Gare de Lyon probably the weirdest thing i experienced so far was see all the sign and everything in French...then English....then German or Italian or something.....but not actually reading the English....the first sign i read the English but after that i was too lazy to read the whole sign so i stopped at the French....besides in the airport all the signs keep saying the same thing telling you where to go so it wasn’t anything new...

the metro was cool...i think this was the first time i’ve seen graffiti (IN) a train....like inside it...not on the cement wall outside it...it was kinda cool...and at the same time it made me really glad to have my husband with me...:] so we got to the Gare and caught our train to Vichy. that train was really nice...it had really big windows so you could see all the pretty countryside....none of which i saw though....i slept....oh well....i’ll see it sometime in the next year im sure.

we got to Vichy and it finally hit me that this was the place that i was gonna be living for a year....in that moment i decided that i hated France and that it was ugly. haha...boy can your period make you emotional and delusional....we finally got picked up by the people that we are staying with at about 6:15-6:30ish....i say finally because it felt like forever but it was not that they were late or anything...we came early...we were not expecting to get to Vichy until 7:30 and we got in at 4.. we called them on a pay phone and left a message as to where we would be and to come pick us up when they were able to. were figured they actually wouldn't be able to until 7:30 so i was overjoyed to see Patrick when he arrived..:]

Patrick and Chantal are very interesting people. i like them. he does not speak very good English and i don’t speak very good French so it’s kinda fun...he has better English than my French though that is for sure. :] she is very nice and an English teacher. so she speaks very well. her accent is cute :] they speak French that i mostly know so i can understand what they say if i listen and think really hard about it..i still don’t feel comfortable speaking French though. it makes me wish that i had studied more French. but hey thats life...i will learn the hard way...(though it is probably the easy way...:]) they are very hospitable and kind...it’s hard for me to let them be French and not let me help out as much as i am used to. i’ll have to find some way to show how grateful i am to them. they are great people.

So all in all i love france it is Beautiful and different and i am very excited to explore and learn and to be in this great place!

i am excited to go to church and meet all the members and to feel of their spirits since that is about all i understand :] it will be amazing i am sure!

I LOVE FRANCE!

:]