Home Sweet Home

I have been in Beuvry now for 3 days living with the Sevette family - Eric, Martine, David -21, William-19, Robin-17 and Lea-14. Beuvry is a VERY small quiet town with many charms. It is situated about 7 km from Bethune and one hour from Lille. It is located in the Nord pas da Calais region.

My french is prooving way rustier than I ever imagined and communicating with the family has been quit rough, but we are managing. Martine, David and William have a pretty good concept of the english language, but Robin, Eric and Lea have very little so often William and David have to do some translating.

In the three days that I have been here I have already gotten to see a lot. Yesterday William took me into Lille where we walked around and toured some of the great sites - The Museum de Beaux Arts, a couple large churches, and this really cool old building with a courtyard that had really old french books for sale. (I apologize i dont know the names to these places - William didnt know what many were either). Cobblestone streets and streetside cafes were a plenty. I had a gasfrey - a waffle coated in sugar and dipped in chocolate - it was fantastic!

I have ridden the train many times throughout France already and one thing for sure - the french love graffiti. It is everywhere and on everything. And as beautiful as France is, it is also very dirty. For granted I am residing in one of the more poor areas, but there is much trash along the railways and many smells not to be recognized.

I have had many french food experiences already as well. Apparently the french love chocolate for breakfast - which at first i thought was fantastic but i have already had my fill of chocolate to last me a year. And yes, I have already had snails, or escargot, and it was actually quite good. On the other hand, the plate of beets I ate for lunch the other day was not so good. I think I will pass on that one next time. I rode into town with Martine to go to the frozen foods store - yes it is a market of only frozen foods - and what did they have, but of course, Ben and Jerrys Ice Cream!

Today is gross and rainy - pretty normal for the north - so we have spent most of the day indoors. David just left for a week in Paris to visit his girlfriend and William leaves on the 9th for Spain, so my two translators are going to be gone! That makes me a little nervous. :) Martine, Robin and Lea are going to be on Holiday for the next two weeks (similar to spring break) so they will be home during the day. I hope to get out more this next week. I hope to make it up to Brussels one day and possibly spend a day on the coastal beaches. I also hope to meet up with Eva in Paris for a cooking class at some point and we plan on taking a weekend to go to Provence. So much to do!

Tomorrow is Robin's birthday party so I will get to meet some of the extended family. I am looking forward to that.

I guess that is it for now. I miss everyone back home. Oh, and by the way, keyboards in France are not the same as in America. The letters are all in different places and they don't have some puncuations, so typing these blogs is very diffacult!

So there are two girls, that are with me, Eva and Melanie, while I am training in Paris, as well as Margeaux, who is from the organization and is kind of our tour guide. Eva is from Sanata Barbara, CA and is a recent graduate from Berkeley and Melanie is from Melbourne, Austraila and I'm not really sure what she does... Margeaux is 22, recentally finished university and this is her first job, and if you didn't know she was born in France you would never guess it. She speaks great English, and does it with an Austrailan accent (she spent a year in Austraila). She absolutely hates France and the French people, so she has an amazing perspective and I find it wildly amusing that she is our "tour guide."

A messy, gross day. Rained - more like spitted - for most of the day. Saw the eiffel tower and went up. I think it's more impressive actually from the bottom.

Melanie managed to fall asleep while stopping for chocolat chaud (hot chocolate), while on the metro and again while at dinner. It's quite amazing. At dinner she actually hit her head on the table.

My first major accomplishment - I went to the pharmacie on my OWN and purchased allergy meds speaking French. (My family apparently has two cats, so I figured I better stock up)

My train is at 12:20 tomorrow to head to Beuvry.

Happy belated birthday Colleen!!! Hope it was the best!

And a shot out to Yadi and Pujols for their homers in the first two games of the season - even though Pujols's will never count in the record books. GO CARDS! Let's win this one!

Arrive

I have arrived and I am EXHAUSTED. It's offically been 32 hours since I have done any sleeping. The plane didn't seem to lend itself to sleeping. So I am keeping this short. But know that I am well and safe.

Today's sight seeing consisted of:

A riverboat ride on the Seine.
Walking around the outside of the Louvre.
Walking up Champs de Lyse (and yes I am butchering the spelling of all these things - get over it, it's late!)
Making a quick stop inside Virgin Records.
And the Arc de Triomphe.

First major obersavation: The French love their dogs! Everyone has them and they are everywhere - even in the metro, riverboat rides and all the cafes. Being a dog lover myself I found this fantastic! I think I'm going to go watch the amazing video of Bel that is on my camera right now. :)

Bonsoir.