Metzin' Around

Well I would love to say that it has been an eventful week and that is why we have not posted anything in awhile, but really we have not done much since our arrival in France. We are enjoying our time here though. Everyone in the program is outgoing and nice. We have spent time (and saved Euro’s) hanging out in the dorms getting to know everyone. It is already a tight-nit group and I look forward to sharing more time and adventures with everyone.

We have successfully set up our room. The dorms are really nice and brightly colored, although they look like something out of an Ikea ad. The mattress is awful; we might as well be sleeping on the floor. I think I like the bathroom the best, because there is no separate shower; rather the entire room is the shower. I could complain of the mess this creates, but I am grateful after having seen the size of the showers in everyone else’s room.


In the past week there have been plenty of trips to Cora, the French version of Super Walmart, and to Simply, the grocery store down the street. Today we successfully navigated the grocery store for the first time and actually made it home with food we will enjoy. This comes after we had an incident with ‘cheese dip’ and ‘Mexican’ chips that tasted like rotten cheese and Indian food… yum!

The flight overseas was a piece of cake. Roark and I were totally amazed at how large the plane was. Our plane hit a little turbulence, but nothing too bad. Thanks to the stress ball Will gave me, Roark’s hands were not crushed by my death grip this flight ether. We watched some movies, read and even fell asleep. It might have been the fact I was not near a window, or that is was so dark outside that I could see nothing anyways, or just because the plane was so damn big it was hard to believe it was a plane high in the air over the deep ocean below, but for my first time flying I did not envision our plane crashing and burning.

Once we landed in Paris it was a challenge getting to Metz. It seemed like everything was not clearly marked, we had a ton of baggage, and very little sleep in the past 4 days. We took turns napping on the train from Paris to Metz, though to be honest I was nodding off when it was my turn to stay awake. Then after being told incorrectly by a cab driver that we could walk to our dorm, walking 30 minutes aimlessly, and an argument, we flagged a cab and finally made it here.

Three nights ago we went out to Irish Pub in downtown Metz with our friends Luisana and Steve. There was a band that night that played only American cover songs. The female singer was something special. I only wish I got a recording of her slaughtering ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ After drinking our meter of beer, we went to a hookah bar with some other people from the program that we ran into. It was a fun night.


Yesterday we walked to downtown Metz and went to see one of the Cathedrals in town. We walked down by the river and ate sandwiches while watching birds beg for food from the locals. There is still a ton more of downtown Metz left to explore, but that is for another day.