So It Begins

Alright, so today was my first day at CIREFE, where I will be taking classes. Marie was gone when I woke up this morning, so I ate breakfast with the dog and cats. Jennifer came to show me how to use the bus and the metro, and off we went. I got on the bus, and there was Scottie with her host mother and itty bitty tiny baby adorable French girl. It turns out that she lives really close to me, only two bus stops away. That will be nice because we will have almost the same route to and from school every day. So we took the bus to the metro stop in the center of town, and then took the metro from there to the university. Rennes is the perfect place to live if you, like me, have never lived anywhere with an effective public transportation system. The main reason being, it is impossible to get lost on the metro because there is only one line. Perfect. It is, however, possible to get lost, as I discovered later in the day. That I will tell you about later.

So upon arriving at CIREFE, we took a placement test (perfect thing to do first thing in the morning when you are totally stressed out from leaving the group and not being able to communicate properly with anyone). Then we had a long lecture about important stuff, during which I was thinking about how much I wished my family was actually here. Admittedly, it was really hard to hear everyone talk about things they did with their families and the plans they have for this weekend. I am honestly really frustrated with the whole situation. I talked to Staci about it, but she didn't really have anything helpful to tell me. She said that this has happened in the past with families, but they have always told her well in advance that they would not be there. It's just really awkward right now. Basically Marie and Jennifer are taking turns babysitting me. It especially sucks that I can't communicate with them very well, so they just think I'm an idiot with no personality. Ughh. Oh well. Tonight wasn't so bad. Jennifer's boyfriend, who is very nice, came over and we made some dinner and talked a bit and watched a movie. I met Pauline, who is one of my host sisters. By "met" I mean she walked in the door and started talking to Jennifer about something, looked at me, and continued her conversation. She is 18, but seems younger to me for some reason.

Oh, I forgot the story about getting lost. Right, so after we were done with stuff at CIREFE today, some of us went downtown with Bryce and Yoanne, two of our monitors, to get some coffee or a drink or something. We took the metro to Place de Ste-Anne, which is super adorable and charming. I don't know if you know, but Rennes is a medieval Celtic town, so everything looks...medieval and Celtic. Right. Anyway, it's very pretty. So when I was done with coffee, I decided to go ahead and go home so that Jennifer wouldn't worry about me (because I still have no cell phone or any way to contact anyone...scary? yes.). So I asked Bryce if la Republique was far from where we were. He was like "No! It's right down there, a short walk." So off we went, Scottie and I and some other people, to find the bus stop at Republique. We were fine until suddenly the other two people we were with totally disappeared. We had a map, but it doesn't have street names on it, only metro routes (dumb!!!). So we couldn't figure out exactly where we were. Turns out, we went in the opposite direction that we should have. Oh well. So basically we walked in totally random directions until we found a bus stop. Then we stared at the map for a long time until I decided that we needed to find a different bus stop. So we did, ended up taking the correct bus, I got off at the correct stop, and correctly found my way back to the house. You really should be proud of me because I have the worst sense of direction in the entire world.

Anyway, tomorrow I am meeting everyone downtown tomorrow morning for a little tour of the centre-ville de Rennes.

à bientôt!