Wednesday, 9/21-Thursday, 9/22
Today was the big day! I said my tearful goodbyes to friends and family and headed off on my journey to France. The cliché “how lucky I am to have people I am sad to leave behind” is so true for me today. It seems like just last week that I found out I was accepted to TAPIF, and here I am sitting in London with just one flight to go until I’m officially in France. CRAZINESS.
Also craziness, I’m traveling with a Longchamp bag (which holds my real purse plus 10,000 other things but counts as my “purse”), a carry on suitcase, and one checked bag—oh, how plentiful that sounded before I started packing! I bought the biggest suitcase I could find this summer and was so ready to beast mode and bring everything I needed. HA. I feel like it held not even ¼ of what I wanted to bring. It also weighed 82 lbs this morning, and 70 lbs is the absolute max for the airline and includes a fee of $100. Somehow, we got it down to 66 lbs, which may have involved me crying over having to leave behind many of my beloved sweaters and extra unnecessary-but-what-I-thought-were-necessary items like more than one perfume, extra toiletries, and extra books. (I didn’t actually cry, but was crying on the inside like nooooooo not my cardigans!!!) Oh, and my Longchamp and carry on are bursting at the seams and extremely heavy, so wish me luck when I have to retrieve my actual suitcase and lug three heavy bags around in a foreign country trying to get to my lodging.
I had a short flight from Nebraska to Dallas, then a very brief layover til boarding with British Airways for London. This is my first time traveling internationally/having any kind of lengthy flight, but so far, so good. I thought I was going to be really nervous to be in a plane for that many hours and to be flying over the ocean, but it really wasn’t bad at all. The plane was huge and pretty nice. Somehow I wasn’t expecting the crew to have British accents, and I was so surprised when I got on the plane and was directed to my seat with, “You’ll take the first left, love”. I may have drooled over the first class seating on my way back to my tiny sardine can seat. Someday…. The seat was tiny, but I was stoked to find a complimentary pillow and blanket, a USB plugin so I could charge my phone, and free movies. They served an actually tasty dinner of tortellini with red sauce, salad, a roll, and strawberry cheesecake. And there was a teacup! For tea! How very British. I took some melatonin, put on a movie, and snuggled in as best I could with the space I had and tried to get some decent sleep. Did I wake up with drool all over my pillow and jacket? Maybe… Breakfast was a slightly odd cream cheese pretzel thing that reminded me of a bagel crossed with a pretzel bun, and the generic version of those crunchy granola bars that spray crumbs everywhere the second you so much as look at them. Overall, a much more pleasant experience than I had expected.
Once I arrived at Heathrow, I had to make my way to security for those connecting to another international flight. It was just like any other airport security as in same rules and layout, but I got yelled at by a security agent who popped up out of nowhere and was hassling me about my laptop and liquids and shoes, which I had taken care of appropriately, yet he kept insisting I was wrong until I pointed out for the *fourth* time that yes, my liquids are in this plastic baggie outside of my purse right here and my laptop is in its own bin right here. He said I didn’t have to take my shoes off, so I shoved them back on and was promptly told literally ten seconds later that I had to remove them for the body scanner by a different agent at the scanner…. If that’s the most difficult thing I encounter during these 20 hours of air travel, then I’m probably lucky!
Currently waiting til my flight to Basel, it’s such a long layover that my flight isn’t even on the information boards yet. I’ll try to add more to this when I arrive at my destination, cross your fingers that my suitcase makes it to France!
Friday, 9/23
I have been in France for an entire day now! I’ll catch you up to speed with how the rest of my travels went.
My layover in London seemed terribly long but also flew by. I was so glad I had time to wander around and find what I needed, I saw multiple people sprinting to their gates throughout the six hours I was calmly relaxing in a somewhat comfy chair. Heathrow was my first experience with being somewhat “foreign”, and the experience was at…Starbucks. So white girl, I know. I didn’t NEED coffee, but I wanted to put some caffeine in my system as an effort to start training it on this different time zone. All I ordered was a tall white mocha and the barista asked if I wanted cream on top, which I somehow misunderstood to be what kind of milk, so I promptly proclaimed, “Oh, soy, please!”, so then she re-explained that she was asking if I wanted whipped cream and thennnn I understood and said no. Then I slid my card the wrong way… I know it was actually that much of a fiasco because while I waited for my drink at the bar, the woman who had been behind me in line asked me if I wished I’d gone to a different coffee shop because of all the problems I’d had. No, just wish my ears were more finely attuned to British accents. Long story short, it was probably the first time in my life that I wasn’t in a place where American English and dollars are the norm.
One odd thing about Heathrow was that they didn’t post the gate for my flight until 30 mins before it was supposed to depart, 20 mins after it was supposed to be posted. I don’t know why this made me anxious, as obviously no one else on that flight knew which gate or would be boarding ahead of me. Finally boarded the plane and was starting to feel jittery and nervous. Until that point, I had been soothing any nerves by telling myself that all I was doing was taking a flight to Dallas or London and that was it, just a simple flight. But this flight was going to end with me in France, responsible for lugging myself and my luggage to an unknown form of transportation to a train station and hopefully buying a train ticket to what I thought was the right stop and then maybe having to walk in the dark to my Airbnb. British Airways assigns your seats for you when you check in, and I found myself in a window seat on the wing (my favorite) and had a really hard time holding back the tears thinking about the fact that I was going to see France outside my window in about an hour and a half. Napped for a bit and then, FRANCE! At last! Long, long last. I saw some tiny buildings, the train speeding through some trees, and little lakes. I was sold right then and there (like I wasn’t already, HA!).
The Basel airport was super easy and calm, signs were all very self-explanatory, got my passport stamped, and my humongous suitcase made it all the way across the Atlantic. Here’s where the biggest struggle of all time began: remember how I was so proud that I had gotten my suitcase down to 66 lbs from 82? Yeah, that’s still 66 solid lbs plus my carry on filled to the brim with my heavy laptop, camera bag, and clothes, AND my Longchamp with all aforementioned items and water. The airport was fairly crowded and I was just a blimp kicking my luggage along to try to gain some kind of momentum so I could escape the crowd and find the mythical bus to the train station. After a circuit of the airport, I found the information desk and was directed to find bus no. 11. I walked up and down the curb, hoping there would be some kind of signage, but alas, I was still a big dumb blimp getting stared at by what felt like every single person in the local vicinity. I saw the bus that said Saint-Louis and “ran” aka used all my might to push my two bags (did I mention that my carry on was disproportional because of my laptop and would gladly slam to the ground if I let go for one moment or had it turned the wrong way?), and tried to ask the driver if this was bus 11. He looked at me strangely and kept saying “Sahnwee? Sahnwee?” which is how Saint-Louis sounds in French, I suppose. Paid for my ticket and wrangled my luggage to the nearest open space and plopped down, sweating profusely and shaking from all of the exertion. I was sitting across from a couple who would turn out to be my saviors in this whole endeavor. Halfway through the ride into town, my suitcases rolled across the bus, and the man grabbed them and wrestled them back to their original position. Once we arrived, he offered to help me get the giant bag off the bus and then rolled it for me all the way to the ticket booth. It turned out he and his wife were from Edinburgh and headed to Strasbourg, and they had never heard of Nebraska. We ended up on the same train, and they kindly helped me put my luggage in the racks. At this point, I felt like the biggest baby and like I had to have been the worst party pooper for their arrival to what I’m sure was a trip to which they had been looking forward. Grody feelings aside, I sat on the train whizzing to Colmar while the sun set behind the Vosges-far more beautiful than I had even imagined. I reached the stop for Colmar and was determined to get my bags off and let my Scottish angels be, but the man appeared at my side and hoisted the giant purple demon suitcase to the platform. Wherever they are, 10,000 thank yous!!!
So, now I was in Colmar. I had messaged my Airbnb host when I was on the train telling him when I expected to arrive. He offered to pick me up from the station so I wouldn’t have to walk (again, thank goodness!). But I had to find him. The sun had set and it was just me, three heavy bags, and no sense of direction. After 10 mins, we found each other, loaded my bags in his car, and arrived home. He was thoughtful enough to show me everything I could need in the house, and noticed I didn’t have any food. He offered me some bread and cheese, and the person staying in the other Airbnb rental room offered me some of his delicious-smelling pasta with sausage. I was gonna make it, guys! I had a comfy bed and food and was about to be able to sleep after over 20 hours of traveling.
This morning, I ate some breakfast on the terrace-bread with jam, grapes, and tea. It is so quiet and peaceful here. My goals for today were to get some groceries and a French SIM card. My host had driven me past two grocery stores the night before, so I set out in what I hoped to be the right direction. Eventually found it, and randomly picked some groceries that I hoped would last me as long as possible-bread, sliced chicken, eggs, and almonds. I picked out a green bell pepper, too, but didn’t realize I had to weigh it myself, so the cashier had to put it back. I scurried back home and made a game plan for achieving French phone number status. I had to go into Colmar itself to find a phone “boutique”, which meant getting on a bus, getting off at the right stop, finding the store, and then reversing the process and getting home. The jet lag was starting to hit me—I was exhausted and the gravity of just how much I had uprooted myself and destroyed any comfort levels was becoming very apparent.
I really, really, really wanted to talk myself out of getting on that bus and potentially getting lost. However, I googled the bus line and found a tool that gave directions on stops and times to get to a chosen destination from whatever address you put in. There was a bus leaving from the stop just down the street and before I knew it, I had thrown on my shoes and run out the door before I had time to doubt myself. I made it to Colmar with a minor hiccup, but was saved by yet more sympathetic locals. Two bus drivers coordinated to get me to the right stop and an hour later, I had a functioning phone with a French phone number, unlimited texts/calls, and some data! The bus ride back was much easier than the one in, thank goodness. By now, I was ready to pass out and recover from my “exhausting” day of buying groceries and setting up a phone plan. I’ve been in bed since, and will tackle the next things on my to-do list tomorrow.
One thing I want to focus on is that I have such an expanded empathy for those who live in countries where they don’t know the local language at all. I have studied French for nine years, and locals barely understand me when I speak. My spoken French is by far my weakest out of speaking, reading, writing, and listening, but I know I’m saying the right things 90% of the time! I hadn’t even considered the fact that my accent would be so horrible that I wouldn’t be understood easily. I’m here to grow and change as a person and to improve my French. After only 24 hours in the country, I’m already feeling those growing pains. This is not going to be easy, but I am trying my best to maintain an open heart and mind to this experience.
There’s a little voice in my head that hasn’t shut up since I sat at my first gate leaving home, “You can’t do this, you’re scared, go home and hide, you’re going to fail, you have no idea what you’re doing, better run away” and it is LOUD and CLEAR now that I’m here and struggling to adapt. The hardest thing I did today may have been getting on a bus, but I’m proud of myself for shoving that stupid negative voice away and embracing the fear, using my brain to figure out how to survive and accomplishing even two things on my massive task list. The biggest challenges are yet to come, but this baptism by fire is going to be so worth it when I can look back at how far I’ve come in regards to confidence and French skills.