I arrived in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris at 9:04am
local time after just about eight hours in the air. After having dinner on the
plane, sleeping around four or five hours, and then having a “snack breakfast”
(which included a warm croissant, of course!), I felt nervous, but excited and
ready to tackle the last leg of my journey by train from Paris to Lille.
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| One of my first sights in France: waiting to get through customs in the airport. It actually went fast! |
After a mishap with forgetting to print out a reference
number so that I could get my train ticket and eventually figuring it out, I
settled in on the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, or high-speed train) with the
help of some very nice strangers to get my luggage on the train and situated. A
polite and conversational British man struck up a conversation a few minutes
into the ride, which helped to ease my nerves. Before I knew it, I was in the
Gare de Lille-Flandres, and Louise, the exchange student coordinator who had
previously been on exchange at my college at home, took me to my residence in
her car. She even helped me to bring my (extremely heavy) bags up the stairs to
my second-floor room, and gave me a tour of the building.
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| A view of my residence from the inner courtyard. It is beautiful here! (Source here) |
Once I got settled in a bit, I met up with Grace, the other
student here from St. Norbert (check out her blog here!), and she introduced me to some friends she had already
made, Rob (from England) and Rebecca (from Taiwan). I hadn’t known most of our
friend group for more than four hours when we then went to climb up the stairs
of the Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville (Lille city belfry).
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| The view from the top of the belfry. Lots of stairs to get up here, but it was cool to see! |
Since no businesses in France are open on Sundays except for
some restaurants, I had to wait until the next day to get the essentials I
would need for my room, so I contacted my family via Viber (a fantastic
Smartphone app on which you can call and text internationally for free on wifi/internet!), and
then made my bed with the sheets my mom had tossed in my suitcase at the last
second, and the t-shirt quilt my grandma made me for Christmas (thank you
Grandma Jurik!).
On Monday I got to go to the shopping center downtown called
EuraLille, where I picked up some food, which was quite an experience. It was
the first time I had ever been grocery shopping for myself, so I made some
haphazard choices and ended up with enough food to sustain me for a few days.
Of course, we ended up going to Carrefour (the grocery store) later the same
day, to get some more stuff that we had forgotten earlier. We went out for
dinner at a kebab place, which I thought would be like shish kebabs with meat
and veggies and fruit on a skewer, but turned out to be basically a thicker
pita pocket filled with meat and vegetables, and then of course we had fries
with our meals. Lille is actually the French Fry Capital of France, and so
there are actually shops where they just sell fries (called Friteries) for
around a euro. After that, we got back to our residence, and I actually did go
to sleep with a pillow that night, so that was exciting (and more comfortable).
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| Kebabs from a place just down the street. For €6, it was pretty good! |
Tuesday wasn’t too eventful, except that I went to take a
test for my pre-semester French intensive that would start the next day. The
results would indicate which students would be in which class; there was one
professor who would teach the strong students, and another professor who would
teach the very strong students. (I’m in the very strong group!) The test didn’t
take me too long (I took one hour in a scheduled three-hour time period), and
there was also an oral interview component that wasn’t too bad either. After
that was done, we all had dinner together, thanks to Rob’s wonderful cooking,
and then we played some card games (for anyone who wants to know – Chinese
Patience, B.S., and Rat Slap were the entertainment of the evening J).
Wednesday started my actual class, which consisted of myself
and nine other international students. The professor in the morning (yeah, it
was 8:00am) was very energetic and engaging. I immediately liked her class
because she was confident and not afraid to make jokes, even on the first day.
We were all laughing together in a matter of minutes. After a two-hour lunch
break, we took a tour of Lille with our conversation professor. It was really
interesting to hear about the different places and buildings in the city, and
some of their historical significance.
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| Me standing in front of the main building of the Université Catholique de Lille (Catholic University of Lille). |
Thursday was more of the same, except in the afternoon; we
actually had our first conversation class. I’ve been learning so much even in
just three days in this class, and it’s really nice to somewhat ease into
French before having to go to French lectures for actual classes. We did
writing and oral exercises in the morning class, and then in the afternoon we
did a few different conversation activities with partners. By the time 5:10pm
rolled around, I was definitely ready to be done with French for the day, as
most of my classmates were.
Friday was a pretty fun day. I still had class all day long,
but once class was over, the feeling of relief took over. It was finally the
weekend! I made noodles and eggs for dinner, and then I actually went out on
the town for my first time, and it was really fun! Friends and a couple drinks
make for a great Friday night. I came back to my room and slept for a while,
because I knew I didn’t have anything to do the next day.
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| Noodles & eggs for dinner Friday night :) |
On Saturday I didn’t do much other than my ALS Ice Bucket
Challenge (see it on Facebook here!),
and I did get to read a book for an essay competition I’m planning on entering
(Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand). It was a low-key day; I knew I didn’t want to
travel anywhere the first weekend, just so I could get used to being in Lille
and not having the stress of making and following through with travel plans.
Today, I’ve actually been pretty productive. I checked over
my classes for registration on Tuesday, I connected with my family on FaceTime,
and I’m writing this blog post right now. I can’t promise I’ll always be this
detailed in my posts, but I will definitely do my best to keep you all abreast
of what’s happening here in Lille. So far, my experience has been absolutely
amazing, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!
