Well, Rebecca's settling in...

I am going to try to update this journal every day until I get the hang of this keyboard.

I walked around the town a little today, and I found a small supermarket where I was able to buy most of the things I need. Not only do they not bag your groceries for you in France, but they don't even give you any bags. Fortunately I had forseen this and worn my backpack, which was able to fit most of my groceries, and it wasn't a long walk from the store to the school. One familiar thing was the smell; it smelt just like all supermarkets, and if I had closed my eyes, I could have been in the Market Basket in Lake Charles or the Winn-Dixie in Baton Rouge.

I hope to get out and see more of the town tomorrow. I need to open a bank account and find a place that sells tape, because I brought a lot of family photos with me and my bedroom walls are terribly bare. The town is really very lovely. There are so many growing things – an apple and pear orchard across the street from the school, big bushes of red things that look like a cross between a radish and a tomato, blooming flowers in almost every windowbox, and Chinese Sarah and I found trees with some kind of nuts on them (walnuts, she thinks). It's very cold in the mornings, but in the afternoon the weather is warmer and very nice.

Today I had my first three meals in France, and I have to say that thus far, I am not terribly impressed. The food was edible and filling and none of it made me sick, but after everything I've heard about French food, I was expecting to be blown away, and I just wasn't. Maybe it's because I'm eating in a school cafeteria, or maybe it's because everything here is still so foreign to me.

People keep telling me that the school is small, but I saw more of it today and it seems big to me – certainly bigger than St. Louis. I wonder what the French people would say if they could see that. I still don't know my mailing address here, but I will try to find out before noon in Louisiana on Friday.