Good news everyone! I made it to La Rochelle without incident. I took the train from Paris and arrived at the train station about an hour and a half before it departed (in retrospect I might have been a bit overly concerned with making it on time.) Since then I've done very little, but wander around the city trying to get my bearings.
After getting lost a number of times, I feel like I'm getting the hang of this city. It's not terribly large, but it is centered around an old port which makes it a bit difficult to navigate at times. La Rochelle is a very old city, so there are lots of old buildings and structures. Fortunately for me it's a very walkable city. I've taken long walks on the beach and through one of the several parks near my house practically everyday since I've been here. It's also very cold, preventing me from leaving the house without several layers on. I don't think it has been above freezing a single day since I've been here (as evidenced by the layer of ice over every stream and pond.) I even helped the lady with whom I am staying to break up some of the ice over her fish pond. Apparently fish need oxygen to breathe, who knew?
Speaking of my accommodations, the lady I am staying with is very sweet. She's considerably older than myself, but a generally kind woman who picked me up from the train station. In spite of my impoverished French skills, she has very patiently answered all of my questions, speaking slowly enough that even I can understand. The French speak very quickly compared to English, so I frequently ask people to repeat themselves or slow down when they talk to me. I think that in time I'll probably develop an ear for it, but right now I feel like I'm listening to a tape in fast forward whenever anyone asks me a question.
As far as my actual quarters, I have a modest sized room, bigger than the bedroom in my old apartment. Attached to it is a bathroom/kitchen (I'm referring to it as a bitchen, since it's sooooo awesome.) Basically it's a bathroom that has some cabinets with cooking utensils and dishes in it, along with a hot plate for cooking. Fortunately the University mandates that its student housing must have an internet connection, including the families who house international students. This has helped tremendously, especially when it comes to keeping up with e-mail and, of course, this blog. Another advantage is that my house is extremely close to the center of town, where the central bus stop is.
Mostly I've just been biding my time, waiting for school to start. I contacted the lady in charge of international student affairs, picked out my courses, and I'm set to take a French placement test tomorrow to see what level of French classes I should take. In the meantime, I've been studying French on my own. I'm excellent when it comes to vocabulary, but studying all the French verb tenses makes my brain hurt. The French have fourteen verb tenses, seven simple and seven compound, whereas in English (as I'm sure all you competent English speakers know) we only have six verb tenses, three simple and three compound (for those of you who are really nit-picky, I'm not counting the imperatival forms of verbs as a tense.) Hopefully staying here will help me to improve my fluency, but I really haven't been talking to that many people as of late. Once school starts it should provide me with more opportunities to speak.
Anyway, I hope all of you are doing well (whoever the hell you are) and that you'll feel free to drop me a line. I haven't really been missing Oklahoma so much as some of the people in it. I'm going to try to update this blog at least once a week while I'm here, but please don't get spoiled to these longer posts. I offer no guarantees that I'll have the time.
