And let the Orientation Begin!

Today was the first day of orientation. I rode the metro for the first time today and managed not to get lost too badly. The streets in Paris are marked with street signs on buildings and they tend to split up and zigzag and cross in weird ways, so even if you are a few blocks away from something, you may actually end up going every which direction...twice. I was only about 3 or so minutes late to orientation, but there were about a dozen students who showed up after me. The people in my program seem really nice. There are only about 5 guys and the rest are girls. There are 77 of us in total and the staff seem really nice. Today we talked a lot about the necessary paper work we need to fill out to ensure that we are registered correctly with the immigration offices here (and here I thought all that paper work was over lol!).

After about 7 different presentations and a nice lunch in a beautiful courtyard/garden, we had a talk about safety here in the city. You know how there is that one day everytime you are at an orientation (whether it is for school, for a job, or for whatever...) where they scare you about all the ways you can get hurt, become sick, and end up dying? Well, that was this day. Talking about all of that kind of freaked me out, but I just remembered that they just want us to be extra prepared and aware of the extreme cases and make sure we know how to protect ourselves in case certain things do end up happening. 

After that fun talk, we walked over to the IES Center. We toured the building as well as the neighborhood around it. My host dad showed it to me yesterday since they only live about a 15 minute walk from it. We even got a tour of a bakery on a whim since the owner knows IES really well and asked us if we wanted to come in when we walked by. It was really cool! We got to watch them make galette des rois! I will be returning there very soon...this time to eat and not just watch lol!

Next, we bought cell phones and Navigo passes. It feels like I'm finally set to be mobile in this city that is constantly on the go!

Tomorrow I'm off to the Loire Valley for more orientation and to see DaVinci's Castle!!!

Love from Paris!

-Sarah