Bordeaux

It is almost midnight Sunday night and I am in Bordeaux. The past few days have been such a whirl.

Thursday was a 17 hour day since I lost 7 hours flying east. I slept the entire ~10 hour plane ride so waking up friday wasn't bad.

Friday was my first day in France. Brian met me at the airport and we took the RER from the airport to Brian's flat. His flat is essentially an efficiency and I thought it was crazy small until I saw another apartment later that day which was probably the same size of my kitchen. The later was also the location of a party that had at least 20 people in it. That was actually a lot of fun. They call international students "erasmus" students. I got to practice my spanish with a bunch of people from across the spanish speaking world and speak english with the rest. I need to learn more languages... I guess thats the point of the trip though so I am being pro-active about it. Friday night was too late and Saturday morning too early.

The three hours of sleep that I got were nowhere near enough but I could luckily pass off my stupor as jet lag. We went straight to the TGV to train from Paris to Bordeaux. The countryside was beautiful, I noticed it briefly before I fell asleep. We got into Bordeaux, took a brief tour of the town, then got some food from the supermarket and prepared some dinner at Brian and Chloe's friends house who we are staying with (Max and Melissa). It was another late night, one of Max and Melissa's friends came over, he didn't really speak English, we communicated by mean of showing one another electronic dance music and hip hop on my laptop and youtube. That was an experience. The sleeping situation here is a long string of fold out couches. It really isn't bad though.

We woke up today at around 1, shutters that close on the outside of the building are very effective at blocking out light. Living in an apartment with only one window helps to filter out light as well. We met up with a friend that Brian met in New Orleans who is now working for a local vineyard. He drove us around the region and gave us a nice tour of a vineyard. The pictures are on my flickr.

More thoughts later, talking about eating in France will be the subject of my next post. I am having a great time. Too busy doing to blog about it.