First week in Dijon!

Alright folks, I have been in France for one FULL week already! Wow! Time really does fly. I am going to do a rundown what we did everyday:

Sunday Oct 2:

We arrived in Paris at about 7 am and we had QUITE the trip to get to Dijon from there. First we had to take a airport shuttle-train-thing from our terminal to the last one. From there we had to figure out how to get train tickets to Dijon. We got those and we got on the Paris subway system, which let me tell you was not fun with about 90 lbs of luggage… We had to do one subway line switch when we arrived in Gare de Lyon (the train station). Then we had to figure out how to get from the subway area to the actual station, which was way harder than it sounds. Then we got on our train to Dijon, after more confusion because it said it was going to Belfast… That day, chaos reigned. After we were on the train we had a relaxing quick trip to Dijon and when we got off (after thinking we had lost our friend Gretchen) we were greeted by man holding a sign that said our program name on it. I have never been more happy to see another human being (that’s probably not true, but we were really happy). He took us to lunch in the city and then we got on a bus to our dorms.

Our dorms are pretty nice (aside from it’s GHASTLY internet connection). We each have a single room with a bed, a desk, a shelf, closet, mini refrigerator, and a bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower. Let me tell you about our bathroom. Stand one way and you an touch both walls with your hands, stand the other way and you can touch both walls with your ELBOWS. Oh my gosh. The bathroom on the plane was bigger. However, I am just extremely thankful that we have our own bathrooms.

Monday Oct 3:

We had a placement test the next day at 9 am. Guess no recovering from the flight for us. It wasn’t too difficult, or so I thought at the time… more later. After our test we went to lunch down the street where I had a croque monsieur, because I am stereotypical.

After our 2 HOUR lunch (they like their relaxation here) we had a presentation about the city of Dijon, which was interesting, but a bit long.

Later we went back to our dorm for dinner and some rest.

Tuesday Oct 4:

This was a fun day! We had a group excursion to Beaune, France. This city is fampus for its wine and we got to see a lot of vineyards and some beautiful castles and architecture. We toured an old hospital from the 1400s called Hotel Dieu. It was very interesting and very beautiful. After our tour we had lunch and some wine! It was a very good day. I have pictures on facebook if you want to see some!

Wednesday Oct 5:

This was our day to tour Dijon. We went out with our instructor and he basically stopped at every single building in the city center and told us something about it. We also got to see Notre Dame de Dijon. It was very, very beautiful and has a ton of history! During the French Revolution, people smashed off all the religious carvings on the outside of the façade, so those are lost to history. However, there is a little carving (about 6 inches) of an owl (la chouette) on the side. It is tradition here to rub this owl with your left hand and to make a wish or prayer and it will be answered. Because of this tradition, there are owls EVERYWHERE here, which is fun because I like owls.

We also traveled to Carrefour this day. Carrefour is a GIANT supermarket similar to Walmart or Target in America. This place is crazy. Some of the workers get around on rollerblades. Insane. After we explored awhile and finally found were we were going and it is a great place to shop (we did get lost on the way there and ended up walking about a mile in the wrong direction, more to this story if you want to hear it).

Honestly, some of my days are starting to blur together, so I am sorry if I tell you something on the wrong day, but I think we went to the center for some wine this night, so that was fun. We also got to meet some of the other international students. There are people here from places like Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Japan, China, Korea, and the list just goes on and on. It is very interesting to meet all these new people!

Thursday Oct 6:

This day we didn’t have anything to do early in the morning, so we kind of just got some things done that we needed to. You know, just errands and the like.

That night we also went out with some international friends and got to really get to know them, so that was fun.

Friday Oct 7:

We found out our placements that day… I got put in level 2 out of 5, too low for my liking. I am going to try to see if I can get into 3 at least… I am very frustrated by this, so I am would not like to talk about it more.

We went to Carrefour again Friday because we don’t get fed on the weekend, so we needed to get some groceries to eat in our dorm over the weekend.

This night was the most fun of all. A local club was having a party for the new international students in town, so went out to a local favorite bar of the students first for some kir (a white wine with crème de cassis ((a berry flavoring)) in it, Dijon’s specialty) and then we headed over the club. It was very fun dancing with our new friends.

Saturday Oct 8:

We slept in and afterwards we went to Toison d’Or, which is a huge shopping mall here. It was crazy busy and we don’t know if that is normal for Saturdays or what, but it was nuts.

We all got some article of clothing that we seemed to have forgotten when we were packing and even got to see a fashion show that was going on. We pretty much shopped til we dropped. We are all very tired from all the walking we have been doing.

We stayed in Saturday night and just hung out a bit. We all needed a little rest and repose.

Today is Sunday and so far all we have done is continued our quest for good internet to a second McDonald’s only to discover that their wifi doesn’t work for half of us. This internet thing is getting very frustrating. Skype is blocked at out dorm along with a few other video chat services and we can’t seem to find a good place on campus to do it, so we don’t know if we will be able to see our friends and families for awhile. It is very annoying. We start our classes tomorrow, which we are all kind of worried about. I think it will be okay though. We got this.

Please keep praying for me as I continue my trip. I know God will get me through everything well and that He is watching over me. So there is always tha