A French Arrival

I think Dan was right in Arizona. I absolutely love talking to people. There's some enigmatic pull that draws me to find the smallest details of every strangers life. Perhaps I genuinely care to discover people. Or perhaps it is to compensate for my feelings of loneliness and isolation while taciturn. Either way, I often find myself in conversation with people from all walks of life.

While waiting to board my plane in JFK, I met Armelle. She had only moved her life to Manhattan Island for the first time not too long ago ago, following her husband's job transfer. She was originally from Marseille, a city with a long standing rivalry with that of my own, Lyon. Having been in New York for only two weeks, she was returning to Marseille to be at her godchild's baptism.

I would hate to perpetuate an ignorant stereotype, but I must say something about French people. Perhaps it is just due to the fact that the majority of the ones I've met have been travelling, but I have not sat next to a single French person who smelled decent. As a matter of fact, they've all smelled pretty bad. Perhaps I am just confusing my own body odor with that of other people, or perhaps the cliche of French smelliness is not so ungrounded after all.

The people in my program are pretty amicable. I think there are about 4 guys and 20 girls. Some of the girls are kind of pretty, others, pretty annoying, but I am trying to not make any normative judgments just yet. First impressions are a pain in the butt, but I am trying my best to not let them get to me.

After many hours of travelling, I finally arrived at my temporary dorm room in Lyon about 19h15 yesterday evening. I had left my house in Garden Grove over 26 hours before. I had fallen asleep on the airport shuttle. The driver had to wake me up at the bus stop. Though as tired as I was, I was surprisingly not sleepy. I had only about 4 hours of sleep in the past 60 hours.

Dinner was at a Flam restaurant downtown, reminiscent of my second night's dinner in Paris with HPOT. Lyon really does seem like a smaller Paris in a sense, yet with a little bit more accessibility and a little less history.

It is currently 07h33 and I don't have to be down until 09h45. I have this knack for waking up early in foreign places. I had hoped to explore outside and maybe catch a few early morning pictures, but the overcast ruined whatever chances I had of a productive dawn.

And now I pack.

A bientot mes amis.