Bienvenue!

Thus starts the travels and musings of my semester abroad in France. To kick it off, let's have my astute Observations of France thus far:

-Where are the garbage cans? There are no garbage cans in my room or in the bathroom.
-The TV is on most of the day. Now I'm much better at understanding TV french!
-Top half nudity on TV, like a news report about plastic surgery, is totally normal. I knew that already, but it was surprising to see.
-They actually don’t shower everyday.
-Talking with food in your mouth is a culturally accepted thing, contrary to the US.
-We drink tea/coffee/chocolat in the morning… out of a bowl. A cereal bowl.
-There's a huge lack of lighting. Related to the energy saving bit.
-Where is the shower curtain? I have no shower curtain.
-Bagged tea is so much better here than in the US. Superior.
-They love yogurt. It's eaten after meals quite frequently.
-They also don’t drink a lot of water. I normally drink a few glasses per meal. Here we drink tiny glasses of Coca. Good thing I have my water bottle to keep me from dying.

Today was the open house at IAU and it was huge crowd of students--which I detest. But I had my friends from the J Term and their one housemate and so we went and tackled the crowd together. We found our male friend from the J Term who was hanging out with the guys. So I met this one guy who happens to live in the house behind me! Par hasard, en fait. So that was nice to meet some people, I met two new people essentially. Tomorrow I suppose I'll meet more. Orientation tomorrow is at 9 AM and apparently lasts all day. So I'll walk with my new friend and be oriented all day or whatever. Then classes FINALLY start on Tuesday. Then this weekend we're going to the Côte, hopefully it'll be warmer.

In other news, I've been without my big luggage for another day. I changed host families--and my new host family is wonderful--but my bag is still at my old house. What has she done with it?! She won't answer calls or emails, so fingers crossed it still exists in this universe. Thus, I've been wearing the same clothes without having a laundry machine for four weeks now. Sigh. Hopefully I get it back tomorrow, but I'm not really expecting it at this point.

As for Aix itself, it's very nice here. 45 is cold and the locals are cold and miserable. I laugh at them, try 10 and below and snow and rain. They're sad when it's cloudy. It was finally sunny today and I think this will be very good for my happiness level, since sun is so much happier than clouds. It's a beautiful and historic city and I'm finally learning my way around. There's a macaron store which is DELICIOUS, markets every morning, and little cafés everywhere. Even a gluten free one! But it's cher. And there's a little Bio where I can get GF goods too.

Almost done now. I watched the NRJ Music Awards last night--essentially the MTV Music Awards--and heard the popular French artists which was cool. I'm enjoying these two songs, even though I can't understand most of the words:
http://youtu.be/NiHWwKC8WjU 'Elle Me Dit' : Mika
http://youtu.be/UqQ9NWzIiM4 'À Nos Actes Manqués' : M. Pokora

Finally, Bag-less Days: 4