Arriving in France

So I was originally going to make a post for the night before I left, but due to the fact it took forever to pack and then I was stressed about leaving.. etc, etc... I didn't! I am currently sitting on the floor of a hotel in France with about 20 or 30 other Rotary students waiting for the rest of our district students to arrive so that we can board a bus to Rennes. From Rennes, my Rotary counselor is picking me up and she or he will take me to Lannion.

Leaving the airport was interesting.. For the past couple of days I'd really been on an emotional roller coaster. One hour I would be so excited to leave and the next hour I'd be sad about going. But when I woke up to go to the airport I couldn't have felt stranger. I couldn't and still can't picture not seeing my house and my home for the next year. Surprisingly, there weren't too many tears. Just lots of emotional hugs and promises to Skype soon. Then I went through security and me being me got randomly selected for security bomb testing- twice. NBD. Once I found my gate, I met up with the other kid, Jonathan, from my district going to France and we got breakfast.

Flights, were good...I think I got 1 hour of sleep which is really good for me :) but things started to get weird in Montreal. You have to realize... going from Vancouver to Montreal is like going to different countries. Suddenly everyone spoke French and everyone expected you to speak French too. In Montreal, another kid ran up to us breathing a sigh of relief while saying... "Yes! More red jackets!" Her name was Hannah, from PEI. While waiting to board, a woman rushed up to us speaking to us in French. Jonathon and I just stared at her stunned by how we really couldn't understand her and couldn't tell her we understood her. Luckily, thanks to French Immersion, Hannah knew enough French to answer the woman's question and point her in the right direction. The whole thing happened in less than 15 seconds and was very confusing. The 3 of us managed to trade a couple of seats and we ended up sitting next to each other on the flight! The highlight on the flight was when I mustered up the courage to say "Merci" to the steward and he smiled at me in encouragement. I had a sudden burst of courage in my French ability but clearly that wouldn't, and didn't last long...

Arriving in France was stressful. At my orientation in May, we did an airport drill where we pretended to arrive in our airport (for me in France) and be greeted by someone who knew the language of our destination (just another French exchange student). That was stressful, being greeted by someone speaking a hundred miles an hour to you in a language you don't understand. But the actual airport wasn't as bad as that. Customs was a breeze.. I didn't even have to say anything nor did they even look at my visa (insert angry, frustrated face for all the hours and stress that went into getting it). The man just took my passport and without even looking at me stamped a stamp on a blank page and that was that.

Claiming the baggage was also a breeze as all of my bags, and all of my two travel-mates bags were some of the first to come through. The stress came after baggage claim. What do you do when you walk out into the greeting area of the airport and no one is there to greet you? Both Jonathan and Hannah were instantly swarmed by their family and there were French people chattering total gibberish everywhere and Hannah was chattering back to them... Jonathan just kind of disappeared but came back to say good bye before he really left. After looking around for about 5 minutes, we quickly realized whoever was supposed to pick me up was absent. Hannah's family stayed with me until I was collected about half and hour later but it was extremely awkward as I really couldn't understand them at all and their English wasn't very good. God bless them though because if they left me, I honestly don't know what I would have done. It was stressful enough I thought about crying but I didn't.

I was collected by a French Rotary member and a short girl -about my height- with blonde hair and blue eyes. Becky - or Vicky? - was from New Zealand explained to me the situation and what was going on. Everyone from my district was waiting at a hotel along with students from another district for the bus to come. Then we chatted about arriving and the language in France and what the next few months of my life would be like --confusing.

Now we are in the hotel with all of the other students as I said earlier and I love these people. Everyone speaks English which is really nice, and I am already having so much fun! Everyone is going crazy exchanging pins and Rotary cards! I love the atmosphere! Then again I am massively sleep deprived- going on 24 hours with only 1 hour of kind of sleep. (So sorry for any grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes or things in general that don't make sense). But I don't feel the jetlag yet which is good! The whole leaving home for 1 year thing hasn't really hit me yet... but maybe that will come when I finally get to my host family. The nice thing is, apart from Hannah, every single one of these people are in my same boat. I'm excited to get my year started! Keep following me for another update within the next couple of days and for pictures when I finally unpack my bags and find all of my camera equipment.