The group was meeting between 930-1030 at like, 2C? Dude. Charles de Gaulle airport is one of the MOST confusing airports I’ve ever navigated though. And I’m proud to say that I’ve successfully navigated a fair few.
So I ended up meeting up with a few other kids from CIEE right when I got off the airplane. It took us about 30 minutes to get our bags, get through immigration, take the tram, etc etc. During these 30 minutes, I really regretted bringing two 50lb suitcases. I was always the last one in the group because I kept having to change my grip on my luggage, pick up my luggage when it fell over, or just simply take breaks. I mean, I know that this is just an issue I’m going to have to deal with my first few days moving around and also my last trip to Paris in May (to fly out), and that I won’t regret packing thoroughly… but still. It was a HUGE pain. I have a big suitcase on wheel and a huge duffel, so I usually put the duffel on top of the suitcase with wheels and wheel it around. Of course, it usually falls off every 2-3 minutes. Anyway, Katy’s poor luggage-handling skillz aside…We finally meet up with the group, including the two coordinators, right by the Air France check-in desks. I tried to use my Verizon phone… it worked from the Dominican Republic, albeit being mad expensive… so I figured it would from France too. Nope. It doesn’t receive any signal, not even the time. So now it’s just this random hunk of plastic that I keep carrying around with me in my purse, because I forget that it will serve me absolutely no purpose in this country. I ended up using a phone card that one of the coordinators had to call my parents (it was like… 330am) and we hung out for a bit before bringing all of our stuff (more luggage issues… I still have blisters) out to the bus.
We drove from CDG about 40 minutes (I fell asleep… Colleen.) to downtown Paris and settled in at our hostel. I’d never stayed in a hostel before and I really didn’t know what to expect. There are like 38 people in our group (and we’re apparently getting 4 more once we get to Rennes), 4 moniteurs (students at our university whose job it is to help us through orientation and on-and-off during the semester…. They’re all really cool), and the 2 coordinators… so we were a large group. They broke the girls in CIEE up into bedrooms from 3 students to 10 students- mine had 7- and we brought our bags up after eating lunch.
The room I was staying in… that’s my bed
The main room in our hostel-room-thing
A couple people went out in the afternoon to explore the city… I went against my normal “I do not nap” rule and crashed for a bit. It was that or passing out somewhere on a sidewalk in Paris.
After my lovely nap, we all went out to dinner at a restaurant called Relais d’Alsace. Which I’m pretttttty sure that we went to the last time I was in Paris, but I’m not positive. Dinner was fish, which I usually don’t like… but it was covered in butter, so no complaints. We had a couple different choices for dessert, and I got the crème brûlée. I’d never had it before (I know. Foodie fail), and I figured that I’d try it. Veryyyyy good. After dinner we headed back to the hostel. Some people went out to explore the city, but I was still dead tired.
Hmmm well that’s it for the summary of Monday, but what else can I say… so yeah, there are going to be 42? of us in the group. Right now there are only 4 guys, I’m not sure if there are going to be any guys in the group of 4 that’re (love awkward contractions) joining us. I didn’t find that too surprising- in my French classes (both in high school and at Pitt) there are never more than 3 or 4 guys. There are people from all over the US, including people from semi-nearby me: Rochester and Westchester. Most people are French majors or minors, as to be expected….
I keep wanting to compare this experience to mine in the DR, which really isn’t fair to do. So I’m going to try not to do it right now, but no promises for later on.
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