A Little Overwhelmed

I think I figured out the picture thing, which is good because this place really defies description. On the right is my street (my building is the one in the middle, before the red awnings).

I am definitely having a good time here, but I may have underestimated the culture shock element. It's not stuff like 9:30 dinnertime and the catacomb of a metro and not having a shower curtain or door or anything to protect the rest of the bathroom that gets to me; it's more the fact that I am truly immersed in a language that I do not speak as well as I thought I did. We showed up at orientation today at 2:00 and were immediately bombarded with crucial information--all in French, of course. Then, just as we started to absorb what was going on, they passed out the placement test that determines how we spend the next three weeks and possibly the rest of the semester. After an hour of that, we were allowed to mingle--with the stipulation that we speak only French. Maybe I'm naive, but I had figured that CUPA could be kind of a refuge from the nonstop French, at least for the first few days as we get acclimated. Nope. By the time I left at 5:00, I was actually thinking in French, which certainly limited the thoughts I had. I also got lost four times on the way home and had to get back on the metro at one point because I had wandered so far from my house.

BUT I found the best store ever: Monoprix. It's like the French Target, but with a grocery store in the back. Seriously, I exited through the "boulangerie" (pastry shop). This is a great country.

Oh, and of the 27 people in this program, at least three of us are/were on our colleges' crew teams. How weird is that (and how weird is that I know the word for "rowing" in French so we could figure that out)?

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