Bonjour, Arras!

After an uncomfortable, delayed 5-hour plane ride from D.C. to Iceland, and then another delayed, uncomfortable 3-hour plane ride from Iceland to Paris, and then a 5-hour wait on a 35 minute train to Arras, I have made it to the town! With all 119 pounds in tow!

I am living in a three-story townhouse with two girls from Spain, a girl from Peru, and another girl from China. It's actually quite interesting, because our conversations go from Spanish to French to English (I obviously only take part in the last leg of that conversation journey) and sometimes it's a little difficult to keep up with. But, the girls are all really nice and they've helped me immensely the past day and the Spanish is kind of fun to try to figure out, so these are all definitely good things to my stay so far.

My room is actually huge, it's bigger than the one I was living in at Washington College with my roommate. I have a double bed, a lounge chair, two tables, a kitchen chair, a wardrobe and a nightstand, which is all very nice. Two windows look out onto the noisy street, and there's a little garden out back. We also have two bathrooms which is an added bonus since there are five of us, they're just situated on the third and first floors so the late-night pitch-black trips are sometimes a little dangerous.

It's funny that I'm talking like I've been here for more than just a little over 24 hours, because it feels like I've been here forever. For some reason time is kind of ticking by slowly, and it's probably because I do miss home and so it's just playing a little game with me until my classes get underway and I find my France-sea legs.

Classes did actually start today, our first real day in Arras, but I didn't go to mine because I didn't find out my classes until around 11:00 am, and my Monday class was already over. However, I do have two classes tomorrow, one from 9:30 am to 10:30 am, and then another from 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm (UGH). They're only once a week though so the three and a half hour class maybe won't be that hard. At WAC the longest class I've had has been 2 hours and thirty minutes, so this is definitely a change.

Arras is a beautiful town from what I've seen so far, and it is actually rather large. I've only really explored the eastern part where my apartment and the school and the grocery store (it's actually a really cool grocery store) are located, but I think the town center is really pretty. Wednesday we don't have classes, so we plan to explore, and I'm excited to see what the rest of the town looks like.