Small Steps

Well my passport came yesterday and now I have to go to the Consulate! But before I can even make an appointment to do that, I have to fill out an application type thing on Campus France which is kind of a pain to deal with. I don't even know what I'm doing.

Still need to buy my plane ticket.

My mom keeps talking about visiting me which is fine but expects me to take a week off of classes to travel with her. I would like to buy I'm not sure how plausible that is.

Hopefully the volcano in Iceland will stop erupting so frequently by the time I go over there. I don't want to have to deal with constant delays. I guess I will be traveling mostly by train and bus.

Splendor

And now splendor. Don't the hills seem alive with the sound of music?

Villefranche

Okay so those pictures didn't work at all.

I'll try again one by one and make them smaller. Starting with Villefranche

The Picture

The picture I used for my background is supposedly (supposably..Friends fans, anyone?) of the French Riviera. Where I'll be isn't considered part of the riviera but there weren't many good pictures of the Montpellier. Rest assured, I will be visiting the riviera while I am there.

The picture in this post is of Villefranche-sur-Mer which is about 4 miles east of Nice. The name is kind of poetic- when it's in French at least. When you literally translate that it means free city on the sea. Why don't we name our towns and cities like that? Like Washington D.C. for example, why isn't it Capital-on-the-potomac? It sounds better. I should have been a city planner.
Anyways, back to Villefrance. It's so picturesque! I love France: everything looks like it was painted from a fairy tale. I mean, there's an actual place called Splendor, France and it looks like the Sound of Music. I'll upload it. I don't know how the layout is going to work so we'll find out!

Okay it's 12:30 and I haven't eaten yet. Must fix that.

Getting Started

Well, today I have finally begun my blogging expedition. I've been telling myself for the past six months that I was going to start a blog and always made excuses but voilà, je le fait (I did it)! I am just sitting at my kitchen table at 11:30 p.m. my first night back from school and, I think in part inspired by just watching Julie & Julia, I decided to blog!

I just needed something to start blogging about. This is where mes aventures à l'étrangère (my adventures abroad) come in handy. Oh, by the way I'll say some things en français but I'll always explain what they mean. So back to mes aventures: I am going abroad in the Fall... SO EXCITED! I will be studying for four months in Montpellier, France at Université de Paul Valéry. I leave sometime mid-August, which reminds me I need to buy my plane ticket and return shortly before Christmas.

I am so excited that I decided that I will check out travel books one-by-one, sometimes two-by-two like today, from the library and start planning weekend trips to take. So far, I want to go to San Sebastián, España and Mont Saint Michel. Those are the only two specific places I know I want to go. But in general, I want to go to Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Czech Republic, pretty much everywhere. And what I don't get to, I will visit with mon amie Emma shortly after my delayed graduation and working for a semester to save mulah.

So to be particularly boring and describe how I started ˆmes aventuresˆ (I tried to do italics there I don't know if it worked), I will tell you about what I did today. First, I went and got my travel books from the library :D (and also The Time Traveler's Wife). I went to the Post Office and got my passport renewed (finally) and now I can put my parents, my study abroad advisor and myself at ease. I didn't realize you now have to have an appointment for everything so I didn't make one to fill out paperwork at the passport office, sorry bout it, but the guy working there was nice and he let me do it without an appointment. After some mishaps, aka filling out some paperwork wrong and not having the correct form of payment, I can check 'renew passport' off my mental to-do list.

Next thing is to register with Campus France, which I have no idea what that is, and then make an appointment (of course) at the console to apply for my visa. Oh and buy plane ticket.

One thing that I'm really looking forward to is doing an intensive language session for a month before classes start. After an absence from the French language beginning yesterday (I think I aced my French Lit exam, knock on wood) until I go abroad, I will definitely need this intensive session to get back into the swing of things and be able to understand mes profs (teachers).

Alright well enough for now, on to my travel books. Frommer's show me what you've got.

*For the suggested labels for this post, I can understand "vacation" and "fall", but why "scooters"?