Orientation over!

10 days after arriving in France and orientation is finally over! Now I have a little time to share the experiences that have taken place so far with all of you.

On January 5, Kyle and I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport. At this point we had already been traveling for over 12 hours. Little did we know, that was the easy part. After getting our bags, we headed outside to find the AirFrance bus that we could take to Gare de Lyon ("gare" means train station for those of you non-francophones). One problem though, the teller machine only took credit cards with smart chips. Luckily, we were able to purchase our tickets on the bus. Next stop, la gare. At the station, we jumped through a few hoops and were able to get 2 tickets to Dijon. Interestingly enough, that was the easy part. Getting a phone card to call our landlord was much harder. We got it done though, and an hour latter, we were on the way to Dijon. (Yay!) Upon arriving, we got a taxi to Residence Imagine and got apartment stuff set up with the landlord. We finished around 6 rounding out the total travel time at right about 24 hours. No wonder we were dead asleep by 9!

The next few days consisted of exploring the town and the markets that went with it. I have fallen in love with the baguettes from around the corner, and when I say around the corner, I mean literally half a block and on the other side of the corner. :) The food here is actually cheap, given that you purchase whole foods. Processed food is quite a bit more expensive.

The Wednesday after we arrived, orientation started. Pretty basic orientation type stuff: learning about how classes will work, setting up a french bank account (YAY for cards with smart chips!), and almost falling asleep during a presentation. The only part of it that was unexpected were the events planned for us by the Melting Potes ( the school's international organization). Wednesday night was pretty normal, just went out to eat, but Thursday, wow! First, there was a small party at the school where we met our Buddies (french student mentor). My buddy's name is Adrien Romeo Teissedre, and he is the only French guy that I have ever seen that has red hair! Anyways, he seems pretty cool. After that we went to a club to hangout. We were all getting drinks so Kyle, Chelsea (one of the other Americans. She is from Wisconsin), and I got Apple juice with vodka. In reality, it was more like Vodka with a little apple juice. Wow, it was strong. Not quite what I expected to be served at a business school club outing.

The last point of interest of orientation was the tour of the Wine Route yesterday. We all went into it expecting it to be a wine-tasting trip. In fact, it was just a tour of the area. Oh well. It was a beautiful trip. Unfortunately, my camera was left in my dresser drawer. Kyle borrowed some pictures from our friend Matt and posted them on his Facebook though, so if you want a taste of Burgundy wine country, you can check it out there, complete with castles, moats, and medieval to 19th century medicine (don't look for opium and morphine bottles in the picture though, they were stolen be tourists hoping for a few drops left).

Hope you all feel caught up now. I'll try to keep this going at a stead pace now that it is started. Sundays should lend good time to work on it because, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is closed on Sundays here in France. Anyways, au revoir!