Vichy!

I'm finally in Vichy!  My travel buddy Brendan and I arrived yesterday at about 5 p.m.  The journey was...interesting.  Let's just say I'm glad it's over.  With two luggage malfunctions and the mistake of taking two suitcases instead of one, my arms still hurt from lugging them around all day.  Here's a general rundown of the trip:

First, we had about a nine hour flight.  It wasn't bad except for the fact that I didn't sleep AT ALL.  Also, whoever chooses movies for the flights made a terrible choice in picking Unstoppable.  It was a movie about a runaway train that nearly demolishes a whole town.  Being on a plane, I wasn't really happy with the "transportation malfunction disasters" theme.  Not to mention, the next leg of the trip was a train ride.  Awesome.

After landing, we went through customs.  The guy looked sleepy and barely even glanced at my passport.  I must look French.  We then needed to get onto a metro train to take us to a stop where we would then get on another train that would take us to the actual train station.  Unfortunately, we bought the wrong ticket initially, but we eventually figured it out.  Mastering the turnstiles with my massive suitcases was tricky, but I'm an expert now.  Brendan helped a lot too, so I definitely would have been completely overwhelmed if I had been alone. 

FINALLY, after two train trips, we arrived at the train station where we got on a train that took us to Vichy.  I sat next to a nice-looking old man who smelled very strongly of tangerines.  It was entertaining at least because he was reading a book and every once in a while he would kind of giggle (about something in the book I guess).  Then I would want to laugh, but I didn't because that would have been awkward.  I should've laughed though because the awkwardness wouldn't have made a difference.  Awkward is pretty much the one word that sums up my life.

Anyways, when we got to Vichy, there were friendly faces to meet us.  Several of the students in the program arrived a week earlier, and were there to show us straight to the apartment building.  It's called Claudius Petite, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised with my room.  Here are some terrible lit and mostly blurry (you can go ahead and expect all of my photos to be blurry because I'm awful at photography) photos I took:

I've been told that I got the big room.  It does seem rather roomy.

The view from my window.  Traffic on the street is sometimes really loud!

This is a sink, hot plate, and mini fridge.

That's all for now!  We are going to the store today to get supplies, and then I'll be officially settled in.  Au revoir!