Today was the day that everyone from my program would finally be coming to join me in Paris. At 11:00am I checked out of my studio hotel room, put my luggage in storage, then waited at a cafe for everyone to arrive.
Ted came with me.At 3 o'clock I returned to the hotel to meet everyone and to get my new room assignment. The first person to greet me as I walked in the door was my Residence Director, Melissa Ladd. (You will see pictures of her in later posts).
She gave me my new room key and introduced me to the two girls who would be my roommates during orientation. One of them, a Tennessee-gal named Cheryl, had messaged me on facebook a few days prior so I was already familiar with her. The other girl, a New Orleans native, was named Melisse (pronounced Mel-iece).
After getting situated in our new rooms, we all headed down to the lobby so that we could be escorted to our program center a few blocks away. There, we had our first orientation meeting. Nothing too exciting except I met my third roommate, Ahmie, who had just finished up a mini-Eurotrip and would be joining us in our hotel the following day. I already knew her from my French class last semester but never really talked to her until now. She ended up becoming my closest friend in the group.
The meeting was uber boring - Everyone was exhausted from jet lag. I was exhausted from staying up until 2:00 am.
(I had dishwasher trouble lol)
It made being stuck in a cramped room for 2 hours quite a drag.
Around 7:30 Melissa took us out to eat at a nearby restaurant called L'Amazonial. There we waited to meet our Program Director, Anne-Marie Grimaud. After a delicious entree of onion soup Anne-Marie came shuffling through the door. A corpulent French woman, she offered her services in answering any questions about the french culture that we might have throughout our stay. As she explained it, she is our best resource when it comes to understanding the French customs being that she was born and raised in France. Melissa on the other hand, was a UMasser just like us and is better apt at answering questions involving school, although, living in France for the past three years makes her very helpful with some cultural questions too.
When dinner was over we all headed back to the hotel sans directors. With this new freedom everyone got a second wind and after 30 minutes of getting ready we all headed out towards the Eiffel Tower.
We never got there. We were about 2 blocks away when everyone decided that they were tired of walking. So we took the metro back and went to bed.
Here are pictures from our walk:
From left to right: Melisse (in pink), Wilnerys (taking a picture), Marisol (up front in black), John
Cheryl
Andrew and Cheryl
From left to right: Cheryl, Marisol, Wilnerys, Pat, Melisse
The Eiffel Tower at night - It's blue right now because France is hosting the European Union Convention or something and it's supposed to look like the European Union Flag. It has a circle of yellow stars on it too (you just can't see it in this pic). After I took this pic we turned back and went to the hotel.
2 comments:
Could you explain a little about your program? Is it all UMass students or a combination of students from several places? "Corpulent" -- that's a good word I haven't heard in a while.
I will do a post about my program within the next few days :] A lot of people are asking me questions about it.
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