These past couple of days have been quite a whirl wind! Hotels, restaurants, trams, and schools. Getting settled in here has been quite an adjustment. As soon as I arrived in the airport I was greeted by a woman from the program named Corinne. She brought me back to the hotel where I would spend my first night in Montpellier. Unfortunately, that day was uneventful because I was dreadfully jetlagged. I did manage to walk around the Place de la Com�die which is the main square in Montpelier. It is filled with restaurants, clothing stores, shops, and a huge four-story mall.
Everything was overpriced but I decided I could splurge a little for dinner because I didn’t know where else to go. I ended up going to bed at 7:30 PM (19:30 in France) and slept straight through the night until 8:00 AM. We were given a complimentary breakfast at the hotel. This is when I started to realize how different everything is in France. First of all, all of the portions are a lot smaller than in the US (which is probably a good thing). Second, it is almost impossible to get water anywhere. It sounds so strange but its true. In America, it is normal to get water with your meal, even if you order something else to drink. In France, they don’t give you water unless you ask for it, and even then they give you a tiny cup of it. It’s very bizarre and needless to say I’ve been a little dehydrated. The service at restaurants is also very strange. The waiters and waitresses don’t work off of tips so I guess they don’t really care how good their service is. No one comes around to check on you or ask if you need anything else. One time the waiter brought our check and stood there waiting for us to pay him right away. I guess this is normal in France, but it seems very odd to me. After our breakfast at the hotel we had orientation all day. We were brought to the program office where we will have a majority of our classes and then we also took the tram to l’Universit� Paul Val�ry to check out the campus. It was very different then Penn State; I’ll just leave it at that. After all of the orientation meetings we were taken to our apartment. I was so excited to see where I would be living for the next couple of months. I had Google mapped the address and knew that it was very close to the center of town but didn’t know anything else about it. The first challenge though was hauling my heavy luggage up three flights of steps. The building was so old that it didn’t have an elevator.
Once inside the apartment I was a little disappointed. There wasn’t much furniture and the layout was a little odd. There were four different bathrooms; two with just a toilet and two with just a shower. Strange. I chose the bathroom with a little Juliet balcony, an amazing view, and a huge wardrobe closet. Once I unpacked my things it started to feel like home (kind of). Getting groceries for our apartment was the next challenge. We managed to find our way to a discount grocery store called Lidl. We were told that you have to either bring your own shopping bags or buy them at the store, but we were still a little unprepared. I wanted to get as many things as I could, keeping in mind that I would have to walk all the way back to my apartment and up three flights of steps with them. Fortunately I didn’t have to spend a lot to get myself started. I’m not sure if I will go back there again but it’s a nice option to have if I’m running low on money. Today is the fourth day here in Montpellier, and as weird as it sounds, this place is really starting to feel like home. Because almost everything is closed on Sundays, we walked around and discovered new parts of the city. Montpellier is really a beautiful old city with so much to offer. We saw a rather odd art exhibit, ate the best cr�pe I’ve ever had in my life, saw a movie, and went ice skating.
Tomorrow I have my first class at the University. I’m a little nervous to be with real French students but I’m excited to dive right in and see how I do.
� bient�t!
Location: Montpellier, FR