I MADE IT!!!

After a long flight, I finally made it to Paris! The flight was smooth; I didn't sleep well but it passed fairly quickly for being seven hours long. Customs and passport control were very easy-- they barely even looked at my passport. We were met by an AFS volunteer right at the exit of the bag claim, met up with some Chilean students and went to lunch at, guess it--

McDonald's.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

I didn't eat anything, so along with jetlagged I'm extremely hungry from not having eaten anything since yoghurt on the plane about ten hours ago. I'm in a pretty good mood overall, though: I've been making friends with a lot of the other students, from all over the world: Brazil, New Zealand, Switzerland, Iceland... And I've been practicing my French a bit with my Brazillian roommate: she doesn't speak English, so to communicate we both have to speak French. So it works out. The orientation thus far has been in English since a lot of the international students have come with almost no French, but most of them speak pretty good English with a few exceptions. We're staying at a hostel of some kind that appears to be mostly for disabled people, four to a room. We took a brief walk around Paris in the 30 degree weather and played soccer and other random games. I've got pictures, but not the time/method to upload them: I'm using the lobby's computer and only have fifteen minutes to write.

If that came out disjointed and strange, it's probably a combination of the lack of sleep and the rush from the limited time. But I'm alive and well and dinner's in an hour and sleep in another two, so I look set to survive another day. I meet my host family on Sunday, so there's a full day of orientation in Paris during which I have no idea what's happening.

I'll tell you if I have the time!