soo, I admit that I have been doing pretty bad keeping up with telling everyone what has been going on here in France, but I am still working on getting everything figured out. Just this weekend, I finally found a grocery story (large=cheap) that is easy to get to, got electricity, and then found out that I have a test this Friday! Although, I do admit that it has not only been school that is keeping from making another post—it is also the other members of my class that have been wanting to squeeze as many activities as possibly into the limited amount of time that we have had. Besides learning about the local bar seen, we have also done some shopping, a birthday party, toured the local carnival, and took a trip to the local beach. At the beach, we were able to swim in the Atlantic ocean and blessed with warm and beautiful weather for the entire day. Getting to/on the beach was an adventure all on its own because we had planned to take a bus at around 10 am, but instead were forced to take one at around noon due to the bus breaking down. after getting back from the beach, our group was able to make a stop at the local carnival that has been going on for the last month—I shall tell you know that rides are not my thing. For those of you who are aware of the “sling shot” ride, which does exactly what the name entails, we had a couple excitedly go on that (Dylan and Emne seen below).

Half of our class made it to the beach!

The slingshot. 

The wait for the bus wore a few of us out. 

All in all, the group that I have been introduced to and will be studying with for the next six months is wonderful. They are as diverse as could be, with a group of 20 and 8 countries being represented. For curiosity sake the countries include: Austria, China, Taiwan, Tunisia, France, Latvia, Brazil, and of course the United States.  

As promised I have pictures! These are of my humble abode, which includes a kitchenette and personal bathroom--no sharing here! One of the things that I have had some fun with is the bus system. Ecole Superieure du Bois (ESB) has made the bus easy to use, only needing to take one to get to school and one to get to the center of town. So far, it has been a stressful week with lots of unexcited and unpleasant surprises. When thinking of doing study abroad you never think that you would be bombarded with document after document to the point that you feel as if you are signing away your soul. My colleague and I have in the past two days have opened a bank account, bought housing insurance (like renter's insurance), health insurance (this is not the one the school has provided us), gotten a monthly bus pass, and signed the housing contract. Unfortunately, this list does not include everything that we need to do--we still have to find phones, electricity for our housing (for some reason it is not included), apply for financial help for housing and health insurance, finish paperwork for the school, and set up an appointment with the French government for our long stay visas. The sad part about all of this is that it is all necessary, so the price is irrelevant and all out of the students pocket because we have to wait until the financial aide we will received is processed at the end of the month. Thankfully through all of this, ESB has provided us with a "tutor" who has been taking us around, translating everything for us, and helping us get everything set up.
         Overall I am excited to start the school year and begin the long days of class--which will mainly take place between 8 am 'till 6:30 pm. I look forward to showing you the beautiful school that I have been given the opportunity to study at.

It has been a long time in coming! I have finally arrived in France and am working on getting everything situated, which is a little more complicated than I was expecting. Arriving on the second of September was thought to be a good idea until I learned that the student that was to help me was a second year and had already started classes, so she is unable to help me for the majority of each day...the university also seems to not know what to do with me. I would like to say something about my travels to Nantes, France and how it wasn't as terrible or difficult as some had made it out to be. I met a multitude of people, a good portion of which were retired, and a host of well behaved children, none which cried for the entirety of the long flights. The language barrior doesn't seem to be all the bad, but then again it has only been two days. There are, in fact, a good number of individuals that I have met that do not speak French and whom I will be studying with--this makes me feel better. I have noticed that the French do not typically speak in the nice, slow, and understandable French that programs and classrooms expose you to; also, one of the biggest things that I have noticed is that they do not pronounce oui (yes) as "wee", but more like "way"--this may be an indication of difficulties to come.

I'm sorry that pictures are slow in coming, but as you can imagine life has been a bit crazy! I also apologize for any spelling or grammer mistakes within this post because I am temporarily working on a French computer--making this post a bit difficult. But I digress, I look forward to making new friends and exploring the city of Nantes.