Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Hey everyone! So I Decided to write some parts of my year on here so everyone can see it, and I don’t have to send individual emails!

So first, Elisa and I said goodbye to our parents in Toronto at 4:40 on thursday and got very lucky when the stewardess sat us together in the upper deck of the plane! It ended up being more spacious and we even had our own tv’s to watch so it made the long flight more bearable.

We arrived in Paris at midnight our time, found all of our luggage (thank god) and made our way to the TGV (the high speed train) to get to Lyon. This was when our adventure really begins… Being the tourists we are, we were so preoccupied with our massive amounts of luggage and worrying how on earth we were going to lift it onto the train that we didn’t realize we had assigned seats…whoops! It wasn’t until after we struggled with our luggage, and were laughed at by the snooty French women that we found out the TGV isn’t extremely fancy, we were just sitting in first class!! Fortunately no one else came to sit in our seats, and when they came to punch our tickets they didn’t say anything…needless to say, we were riding in style on our way to Lyon.

Finally after arriving in Lyon at 4:30 am Canada time, knowing that we had a full day ahead of us (it was 10:30 am in Lyon) we decided we were too tired, lost and confused to try and figure out the bus routes. We decided to go with a taxi who ripped us off claiming we had too much baggage! (those men just don’t understand haha) …anyway it was a short ride to campus, and miraculously as we were getting out of the taxi an American exchange student – mark - noticed Elisa’s Canadian flag and heard us speaking English …he saw how many suitcases we had and since he was heading to the international office anyway, he asked if we wanted a hand, and led us straight to the office! We sorted everything out, and a few hours later we finally we able to drop our bags off in our rooms…

Elisa and I ended up getting really lucky because our rooms are on the top floor (3.5 floors in the building) and we face the courtyard so we look out on rooftops and trees! …our rooms ended up being nicer than we were expecting, so we were really happy about that….we also made a few interesting discoveries though…the French don’t believe in the same things Canadians do…like toilet paper…we ended up making a very fast trip to a nearby store and bought some PINK toilet paper with butterflies on it… haha oh the French. Other than the fact that our building is a little old, we felt we got pretty lucky and its only about 10 minutes to walk to school.

So after a little sorting, lots of picture placing on the wall and making our bed, we crashed leaving the exploring for the next day… :)