





My flight from Tangier to Paris went well, no running late, no misunderstandings. The flight was a bit more bumpy, but it is to be expected with easyjet (compared to airtransat, transatlantic flights). When we landed it was snowing! I was so happy!
When I got off the train in Marseille it was freezing! I’ve officially been through a complete year in a week a far as weather goes! On my way to my host I got a bit lost and some very kind old man helped me back on my way.
When I arrived in Nice I took a bus to my hosts and I was sweating with my coat on because it was rather warm and I had to hike up a steep hill. I dropped my bags and surfed a bit while he went grocery shopping by bike (remember the hill I talked about …?) and then we ate some salad with tuna and some shrimp risotto. He was so kind to cook I didn’t have the heart to tell him I don’t like sea food of any kind but now no one can say I never tried it!
When we got to the train station in Lyon it was crowded. The snow had delayed a lot of trains and it took us about 10 minutes to walk from one end of the train station to the other because you had to push through a very thick crowd. We were early so we went to buy out tickets for the next destination. Nice for me, Paris for my sister. Then we made our way to our host’s and Audrey met up with us at the tram station. While waiting we noticed how similar to belugas their trams looked.
We got to Strasbourg this Saturday afternoon, my head still buzzing from the night out in Paris. We were bummed when we saw it was raining, and it felt like we were gonna spend a slow, lazy day of rest, and only get going on the visiting on Sunday. BUT THEN we met Florian, our host for the weekend. Florian is a very nice, always smiling guy, around my age. He has only been living in Strasbourg for 2 or 3 weeks, because he is an Erasmus student, coming to study from Germany (he speaks excellent French though!) And Florian had big (and great!!!) plans for us. So we didn’t get the rest we thought we’d get in Strasbourg, but instead we got the best experience of the city we could have had.
Our arrival in Paris was a series of wonders. First we were setting foot for the first time in a month in a country where people spoke French around us, although not quite the same one we’re used to. It felt very strange but we were slightly relieved at the same time. Although we’re doing pretty good with our English it’s still an additional effort to address small everyday matters in another language than your own. Second, we realized, while riding the French underground that we had been sitting in the London Tube mere hours ago and it felt a bit surreal.