Two Days In

Hello Readers,

We are in our homes in France, safe and comfortable. The journey was an adventure to say the least. The first plane ride was long and we arrived in Paris in about 6 hours and 45 minutes. Upon landing neither of us could get our French phones to work. Jeff later got his to work with calling and messaging but is still unable to use data and Carly's phone does not work at all. We sat for a few minutes trying to discover the phone problem but could not seem to figure it out. So, we continued on to our next gate in the airport to fly to Marseille. We had to go through customs and security again to get to our gate, then, when we finally got close to our gate, there was a giant group of people standing in the way lining up to board their plane. Carly and I trudge through this massive crowd only to find that Carly's neck pillow had been lost in the crowd. Carly walked back to where the crowd once was and luckily found the pillow without any fuss. We boarded our next plane and headed to Marseille. Upon landing Carly and I again tried to fix our phones with no luck. We headed out of our gate and were quickly ambushed by the host families. My host family met me at the airport and met Carly. I left with my host family and we headed out of the airport. 

Jeff’s Host Family

My host family consists of a Mother(Torya) and a son(Nassim). They both seem very kind and accommodating. Torya does not speak much English at all but makes do with gestures and showing what she is trying to say. Nassim's English is much better and we can almost always understand each other. My host home is located about a 15-minute’s walk from the center of Aix-en-Provence and is a small flat. I have my own bedroom and share a bathroom with the Nassim and Torya. So far everything is going fine in the living situations. I have had some typical jet-lag problems but other than that everything is great.

Carly’s Host Family

My host family consists of a mother, named Amira, and a son who is 29 years old and a daughter who is 22. I am also living with another student from Massachusetts! Her name is Danielle and she is from Springfield, MA. She attends Western New England College in Springfield. She is very nice and we get along very well. The daughter no longer lives at home but the son recently moved back in. Amira speaks English very well and also speaks Arabic! She is originally from Iraq and moved to France about twenty years ago. So I will be able to practice both my French and Arabic with her. My host family’s house is located about a 45-minute’s walk from the center of Aix-en-Provence so I will be taking the bus. I have to walk about 5 minutes to the bus stop. From there it is only a 5-minute bus ride and then another ten-minute walk to school. I share a bathroom with her and my host brother. Besides my phone not working, this has been a wonderful experience so far. My host family is very nice and the town of Aix is just lovely.

Sunday: We woke up had breakfast with our host families. Jeff had two bananas and Carly’s host mother made her toast with peach jam. After breakfast with our families we met up near the school. We spent the early afternoon walking the town, seeing the sights, and catching up on what each other’s nights had been like. We shared with each other all the exciting new things we had seen the night before and what each other’s host homes and families were like. Carly had a crepe with Nutella and bananas for lunch and I shared a few bites with her. We are both finding that we are much more thirsty than we normally would be at home because of the difference in elevation. At 4 pm we had our first meet and greet at the school. There are only 250 students at our school! Carly and I probably met and talked to only about 20 so far. One group we talked to discussed traveling on weekends and long weekends together and decided that we would look at possibly doing that together sometime soon. After the meet and greet Carly and I wandered Aix for a little bit longer then sat down and had some tea at a small café. We sat there and just chatted and unwound after a hectic and stressful couple of days. We drank our tea and headed out. Jeff walked Carly to the bus station where her host mother had said she would pick her up at 7. From there Jeff walked home. It was a chilly ten-minute walk and the lights that lined his street were not on, however, he made it home safely and he ate dinner. Jeff’s dinner consisted of sliced potatoes, pan fried with mushrooms and eggs, topped with pesto sauce. Then for dessert Jeff had Apple tarts. Both meals were delicious. Carly had a delicious salad with mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, and tomatoes with sliced turkey and a baguette with cream cheese to go with it. For dessert she had ice cream with a small piece of chocolate and vanilla cake.

To see Pictures of this week follow the link bellow.

http://imgur.com/a/Q0UgE

That’s for this week. We hope you all are having a great time wherever you are and we hope you will continue to check up on our most recent blog post every Saturday!

Until next time,

Jeff Popek and Carly Ward