The Start of the Adventure

Damn. How long has it been since I had a blog-type thing? Greatest journal, back in the very beginnings of high school?

Well. I decided that I'm having a big, exciting adventure, and I might as well tell the world about it. Plus, blogging makes me feel important and somewhat self-centered, thinking that someone might actually want to read something that just talks about my daily life. Which is going to be slightly less adventurous as time goes on, I'm sure, but for now it's all incredibly exciting.

So! The flight from Los Angeles, California to Bordeaux, France. On the 23rd of August, I got up about eight, went to breakfast with the parents, went grocery shopping (we continually ran into people, it was rather amusing), and then went back home. By this point I was completely packed - I was nervous before and I had nothing better to do. Saw Katie before leaving at noon. The drive there was rather uneventful; the whole family came along, which was rather nice. After being dropped off, finding where I was supposed to get my bags tagged was a bit of an adventure; I found the lines rather quickly, but it took me a little bit of guessing to get which one I needed (the one for people who like saving time and print out their boarding passes beforehand). Went through there, gave away my bags, went through security, waited at the gate. I had a couple of hours to kill, so I grabbed a bagel and a large bottle of water.

The flight itself was rather uninteresting. I had a window seat, and there was no one sitting next to me, with a lovely, very kind Greek woman in the aisle seat. We chatted during take-off, which was helpful for me with my silly fear of commercial flying, and then we mostly did our own thing. Dinner was served around six; I ate this so-so chicken, rice, and gravy thing, a salad, and a bread roll with some fairly bad white wine and tea to drink. Watched Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and (despite my better judgment) Dragon Ball Evolution - which was absolutely TERRIBLE. It was like Eragon meets Matrix meets something else I can't remember while trying to be epic like Lord of the Rings. Just absolutely terrible, but rather hilarious. After dinner they had turned off all the lights and I tried to sleep, but couldn't get comfortable enough. Breakfast was served once the sun rose, which consisted of orange juice, a rather terrible turkey roll, and some equally terrible strawberry yoghurt. We flew over Ireland, we had to stall for ten minutes by essentially flying in circles over this town (the first time we did, I joked to the flight attendant guy (who had a very awesome British accent) that we were heading back to America. I think he paled.).

We landed, the airport was neat, I went through customs quickly, waited an age and a half for my luggage, then bought a ticket to switch from Heathrow airport to Gatwick. There, I met a friend of Rosa's who also's on the same program, and we got tickets on the same bus. Getting on the bus was... a bit of an adventure. They're every fifteen minutes or so, and the one we bought tickets for was absolutely full, so the guy loading up yelled at everyone a lot, was very angry, and stormed off. We were a bit frightened, but we waited another bus or two and finally got on. It was exciting! They were driving on the wrong side of the road! The drive was about an hour, then at the airport it took me a bit of looking to find the check-in. I checked in no problems, got food, chilled, then went to my gate - which they only announced about forty minutes before the flight.

The second flight was even less interesting than the first. Again, I had a window seat, and again the seat next to me was empty. Sitting in the aisle was an extremely kind, chatty French woman, who ended up being a professor at Bordeaux 4, which is political science and that sort of thing, I believed. We chatted (in French, I'm very proud to say) the whole 1 1/2 hour flight, and we thankfully never had any communications issues, she said my French was very good! She told me about different things the city has during the year, and stuff about the U of Bordeaux... I was very happy, despite that take-off and landing were a bit terrifying.

Landed in Bordeaux, the customs person was very nice, I got my luggage immediately this time (so I guess the two times even out), and then got a taxi with a very good-looking French guy. [For anyone who would know, for taxis in France or even Europe, is it protocol to sit in front or back?] Twenty-five Euros to get to my hotel, where I checked in and then collapsed in my room. First things first; I made sure my adapter works (it very happily does) and let everyone know I was alive. After exploring the room a little bit (an average hotel room, a very big window with some neat blinds, a huge bathtub), I was looking for somewhere to eat online when I just conked out. It was 6pm French time, but 9am Californian and I had been up for over 24 hours.

I woke up at 6am... a full 12 hours of sleep, highly needed. I got up and was aghast that the sun wasn't going to be up for another hour and a half. I did an hour of yoga to wake myself up, checked things online, and then took a very relaxing bath. And that's where I am right now... I think I'm going to go blow-dry my hair, eat breakfast, and then head off to school. Not sure when I'll have internet next, but hopefully it won't be too long!