I’ve been here for almost a week now! (When I started this post, now I’ve been here for two and a half) I know how to take both of the options for busses to and from the centre-ville, which is where IES is, and I bought my phone today, and my lost suitcase finally arrived, so I’m basically settled.

I love my host family! I feel like I already know the mom really well and the mom and dad and both pretty easy to understand, and the girls are a little harder. They have an 18-year-old daughter Adelaide, who is in her last year of lycée (high school) and also a niece Angelique who lives here who is in her first year of lycée, and there are three years of high school here. They talk faster than the parents, or maybe just don’t enunciate as well, but in general when anyone in the family talks specifically to me I can understand most of it, but when they talk to each other and at dinner, it’s harder for me to understand. The dad is a pharmacist but I feel like he works from home maybe because he has always been home every time I am home.

I’m not sure but I don’t think the mom has a job. She’s super nice and worries about me like I was actually her daughter and I tell her what I did every day when I get home. Today she showed me a book with pictures of Nantes from World War 2 and also from a big flood a long time ago and it was super cool to see stuff that I pass on my bus only it had to be rebuilt, because I forgot how much older all the buildings and stuff are in Europe.

Also my host family has a really old dog that is super sweet, and a little cat named “Petit Chat,” and a garden with so many different plants and fruits in it. There are raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, 2 kinds of chestnuts, 3 kinds of roses, peaches, apricots, pears, apples, grapes, tomatos, kiwis, and probably a bunch of things I’m forgetting. Also they have a structure full of bees that make honey.

I got here on Wednesday night, late, after missing my first train to Nantes and then taking a second one with a layover at DISNEYLAND! That’s right I have now been to Disneyland, or Disney Village, I’m not sure if they’re the same thing. I didn’t go in cause I only had like an hour and I had been travelling for like thirty hours or something and I had a giant suitcase and it was like 5:30 pm. But I sat outside of Disneyland with my suitcase and talked to Alan, who is another Whittie on my program, and we ran into each other in the train station.

After I got here I was with my host family for Wednesday and Thursday night and then the program took us all on a trip to Bretagne for the weekend, which was really fun. I made friends with other kids on the program and of course it was our first weekend in France so we hit up the bars in Vannes. And we did a lot of other touristy stuff but I am going to skip over that part cause I am already super behind on updating my blog, and move onto more interesting things, like, I SPEAK FRENCH SO MUCH BETTER ALREADY It’s amazing how much progress I’ve made.

Even after returning from the Vannes trip where I (mostly) spoke French to other people on the program I could speak to my host mom much faster than before and understand her better. Okay, so since I am SUPER behind on my blog posting, I am going to just post this now so I can start updating you on more recent parts of my life.