Well, I've been here since Friday and Mme Rigaud continues to be very nice and welcoming, though you can definitely tell she's a mother of six and very french. She's just very matter-of-fact, but tells me that my french is good. Dinner with her son and her son's friend Friday night was pretty hilarious. The topics ranged from The Simpsons, Desperate Houswives (which Mme says is very à la mode in France right now), and the drinking age in the US. Good times.

There's another student living with us this semester too, Rachel from Eastern Mennonite University. She seems nice, but fairly quiet. There's also another girl from Cornell on the Syracuse program, Rebecca, who will stay with us until Monday, when her host family returns from their vacation. It's been good to get to know her and hopefully we'll see each other after she leaves the house. Mme. hosted a dinner party last night with some of her friends, who all have students with them, so there were around six American students there. Everyone is either from BCE or Syracuse, other American programs here in Strasbourg, which is kind of cool because the L&C program is really small.

Speaking of the L&C program, yesterday I met the rest of the students in the group. Most are from Kalamazoo, but there is one girl from Bryn Mawr, Ciel. It seems like I might not actually see the Kalamazoo kids a lot, except for our trips. We’ll see.

We walked around the city and it's so amazingly wonderful. Everything is overwhelming and the buildings are amazing. French people are so elitist, I love it. You're not supposed to smile at anyone in the street or people think you're either flirting or dumb. I need to get used to the "I'm-too-cool-to-look-at-you" walk, but I think it'll grow on me with time. The cathedral here looks magnificent and ancient and I sort of can't wait to explore all the little shops.

As for the next few weeks, we're going to have a two-week stage, which literally means internship. What it really is, however, is intensive french. We have a language placement exam Monday, which will place us in language groups in which we have french all day, every day for two weeks. Beth says it will be rather miserable for the first week, but it is intended to immerse us. On the positive side, we have a group trip to Paris at the end of it with the Nancy students to look forward to. I'm also hoping to meet students in my language groups.

So, everything's going great so far. My french is actually better than I thought it would be and I am starting to enjoy speaking it. We've been walking a lot and I'm just going to have to suck it up and accept that my feet will hurt for the next four months straight. Still, I might attempt the tram soon, which would reduce my travel time to and from school each day. Thank god for public transportation that actually works. Seattle could learn a thing or two from Europe.

Okay, that's it for now.