The Journey Begins

I didn't really know when I should tell people I was "leaving". Was I "leaving" the last time I saw them? Or was I "leaving" when I got to France? Eventually, I decided on telling people that my departure date was Wednesday August 31st, because that was when I left my family and my independent journey into the world began.

However, I told some people I was leaving that Tuesday, and I did leave the 30th...I left my home. So, for anyone acutely interested in my exact travel, here are the details.

My mom and I left home with all of my luggage and drove to San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon. When we got there, we met up with my brother, his awesome girlfriend, and my aunt(who lives in SF). And for my last all-American night, we went to watch the giants play the cubs. I had one last Ghiradelli sundae at the game, and then I knew I was ready. That one remaining task was completed, and then I could fully focus on the future.

We got back to my Aunt's place about 1130 pm (I think) and tried to go to bed. I couldn't sleep. At all. I tossed and turned and alternated between being worried out of my wits and being so excited that my heart would start racing. When the alarm went off at 400 am, I bounced out of bed because I just couldn't wait to get going. Also, I really didn't want to miss my airplane to New York. Another AFS student on my flight told me that if I had tried to book the flight a couple of days before departure(instead of a couple of months before) it would have been about 2000 dollars because so many people need to get to New York after the cancelled hurricane flights. We all got up and I said "goodbye"to my aunt, and then John and Andrea and my mom and I piled into the car to head for the airport. I hugged John and Andrea goodbye and then went inside with my mom to check my bag and go through security. for anyone wondering how much luggage I brought...I checked bag weighing 40 pounds and one carry on duffel bag. That's it. Afs limits how much you can bring.

And while I'm on the subject, here's a funny story about my packing. I initially packed everything into a huge suitcase on Monday, and I thought I was ready to go, but I still needed to weigh it to make sure it was light enough. We don't have an accurate scale at my house, so we drove to Petsmart Tuesday morning to use the doggie scale. I'm sure we looked pretty funny heaving the suitcase on, groaning when it was 53.7 pounds, taking it off, frantically taking stuff out and then weighing it again. Oh well, I'm sure we entertained the petsmart vets who were watching. Eventually, we took it home and decided to completely repack and try to eliminate a few more things, and we ended up moving everything into a smaller, lighter suitcase.

Ok, back to my trip. I hugged my mom goodbye at the entrance to security and waited in line by myself. When I got to my gate, I didn't see either of the exchange students I knew were traveling on the same flight, so i wandered around a bit and bought a sandwich to eat on the plane. Right before the plane was going to board, Maya found me, and then we found Emily, so we knew that all three of us had made the flight. At that point, I wasn't nervous at all anymore.

We got into JFK a little bit early, which was nice because we had to find our way to terminal 5 and meet AFS representatives before 400pm. By the time we got off the plane, we had about an hour in which to successfully navigate John F Kennedy airport. Everything went really smoothly, and we were in the right place with fifteen minutes to spare. We met some other exchange students there, most of whom were going to Spain, and all of whom were girls, and then we got on a bus to go to the hotel where our orientation would be held.

When we walked into the lobby, there was a big sign that said "Welcome AFS!" with a big arrow. And behind the arrow was a room full (and I mean full to the point that there weren't enough chairs and some people were sort of standing halfway in the room and halfway out of it) of AFS exchange students. Overall, I think there were about one hundred of us at this orientation, about 43 of us heading off to France. 

Wednesday we just hung out at the orientation site, got our rooms, had dinner, and went to bed. The actual orientation did not start until thursday.

All day thursday we had our orientation in New York. Overall, wasn’t great. We did a lot of things that I did at my PDO(pre departure orientation) and it was just pretty boring. However, it might not have been as boring if we hadn’t all been eagerly anticipating getting on a plane, and counting down the hours until we were in France. 

We left our hotel around 200pm Thursday to drive to jFK. our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 55opm. When we got to the airport, a group of 46 students all in our dorky matching blue AFS tshirts, checkin for Swiss air wasn’t even open yet. So we had to stand around until it opened, about 30 minutes later. We filled up the entire maze during checkin and baggage check, so i felt really bad for all of the people that had the misfortune of being in line behind us. When we got through security, which took very little time considering the size of our group, we found our gate and sat down. Then people took off in all directions to go buy coffee or food or do this or do that. People were asking each other to watch carry-on luggage, people were sprawled out across chairs sleeping, and others were just talking. we basically took over the entire waiting area for our gate. I was asked to watch some people’s luggage so i dutifully stayed until they got back. Then i asked them to watch mine, just for the 2 minutes it would take me to go to the bathroom. When i got back, there was my luggage, and no one watching it. Although nothing happened, lesson learned.

We got on the plane, an I believe every single other AFS student was seated next to an AFSer except me. The perils of being first in line at check-in, I suppose. I was seated next to this funny guy in his 30s who didn’t speak great english. He asked whether we were a school group and i explained that we were a group of exchange students from around the country going to France. After about 5 seconds of thought, he said “I wish my school had taken me on trips to Spain.” I was kinda confused but nodded and smiled. And then randomly during the 8 hour flight, he would say something. Out of the blue, he would ask questions or say weird things about his life. I’d been watching a movie silently for about an hour when he told me that he had lived in Amsterdam for 3 years. And i nodded, and then went back to the movie. And he seemed very convinced that we were going to spain, no matter how many times i told him we were going to France. He asked when our connection from Zurich to Spain was, asked what part of spain we were going to, and asked how long our school group was staying n Spain. But he eventually fell asleep and fell quiet, until he woke up and got upset with the flight attendant for not waking him up for breakfast, and being convinced that the flight attendant didn’t bring him the full breakfast when he did go to the back and get breakfast for him. Anyways, my seat buddy was a character. I had the window seat, so I slept a lot, watched “17 Again” and did sudoku. But pretty much I just spent a lot of time trying(and usually failing) to sleep.

We got off the plane in Zurich at 800 am, which is 200 am New York time, so we were all basically zombies walking through the airport. When we got to the passport check, the man looked at my passport, laughed and said “Butterfield, like butterfly” but he pronounced it like “Booterfield”. But, i have to give him some slack. It’s got to be a pretty boring life just sitting, looking at people’s passports all day and matching names to faces. If I brightened his day, then i guess that’s ok.

We sat in zurich for our four hour layover, and i mostly just sat in a chair and stared at the walls, too tired to even try to sleep. And when we got on the little 1 hour plane, I basically slept from the time i got to my seat to the time we landed. Actually, it was pretty silly that we flew to Zurich to fly back to paris. We literally flew fight over most of France, and just a couple of miles to the side of Paris, when we flew from New York to Zurich. But, the swiss air planes were really nice. And, the food on the long flight was actually pretty good. I was worried, but it was really good.

When we got in to Charles de Gaulle in Paris, we got our bags and met some AFS people. And then we went down through the airport and out a door to the bus that would take us to the hostel. Sounds pretty normal, right? Wait, isn’t something missing? Yep, no customs. It was quite bizarre. There were people standing around with shirts that said “customs” in French on them, but they didn’t even look at us as we walked past them. we didn’t fill out any paperwork. Nothing! And even our AFS USA chaperone had thought that we would go through customs, because she was telling us before our flight not to be worried and just be honest with the customs officers, and she gave us little cards that explained our program in case the officer got confused. And then we just walked right out of the airport.

The buses took us to the hostel in paris, and when we got there, the first thing i heard was “Oh good, the americans are here” in a New Zeland accent. We checked in with the AFS representatives and  had to give them our checked luggage to be locked away, so we only had our carry-on for three days. Then we were sent to this big room and told to hang out. There were so many people inside and so many languages flying through the air. But sadly, there was a lot of English. It made me feel really stupid. Almost everyone speaks English. I was hanging out with girls from Italy, and their english was amazing, and they are here to speak french. So all these other students are about to learn their third language, and already better at french than I am. And basically, the whole orientation has been in English. 

We hung around in the “lounge” until we got our rooms. There were three people in my room. A girl from Italy, and girl from Malaysia, and me. When we walked in the door of our room together, the was a bunkbed. Just one, so a total of two beds. And we were like “ummm, is someone supposed to sleep on the floor or what?” But then we found the trundle bed, so everything was ok. We took showers, cleaned up after the flight, and then went down to dinner. The bathroom was horrible. Everything was together, and it was totally flat. There was no lip on the shower or anything. So the water went everywhere and it didn’t really drain because the floor was flat. We got more water on the floor than we do in the point reyes showers.(For Ilana. :) ) We just hung out that whole night until bed, so I met people from all over. I ate dinner with 5 girls from Norway, talked to 2 girls from argentina, played cards with girls from Thailand, played foosball with my roommate from Malaysia, talked to 4 girls from Italy, and chatted with a girl from Austria and a girl from Denmark. The bad part is, I did all of this while speaking English.

The next day, after breakfast, we started the actual orientation. It was really chaotic at first, but they eventually split us into small groups of ten, and we did some more of the same activities I have now done 3 times. We did have some fun when we went outside and played 20 person human knot with the group of 10 people from New Zeland. As someone in my group rightly said, “This is a great game to get close to people really fast...literally.” For anyone wondering how many countries were represented at this orientation, I’m not exactly sure. We tried to count the first night and got up to 15, but we knew we had missed a couple, too. Plus, some of the countries didn’t get in to the hostel until late at night. 

We had lunch at noon, and I tried to be smart by actually reading the sign about what the main dish choices were for lunch. It said something about fish and something about beef. I don’t like fish, so I asked for the beef. They gave me some weird sort of stew, which was decent, and i got some mashed potatoes. But when i got back to my seat, I asked around, and found out that there was also a chicken option, and i had seen the chicken(which was breaded) and thought it was the fish, and that’s why i asked for the funny looking beef. oh well. Lesson learned...ask questions. And we got to choose one dessert. They had lots of choices, including waffles. Definitely nowhere near as good as my mom’s waffles.

After lunch, we had some free time, and then we went on a bus tour of Paris. It was pretty cool, but it tormented me to drive past a bunch of really cool places and not get to get out and walk around. We drove around the opera, past the galleries Lafayette, around l’arc de triomphe, and past notre dame but the only place we stopped was the eiffel tower. We got out, took some pictures and then continued on our way. 

After dinner, we had another orientation where they finally gave us some information about how we were getting to our host families. We went over the rules, for the hundredth time, and then we were allowed to go to bed. I was out like a light the minute my head touched my pillow and i slept in a little bit since i wasn’t leaving the hostel until 1145 am the next morning. 

When i got up the next morning, the dining room felt really empty, and it confused me until i realized that about half of the 300 people at the orientation had already left. It felt so bizarre sitting in the lounge of the hostel waiting to leave, and speculating about whether anyone had gotten to their host families yet. Finally, it was 1145 and the 8 people in my region plus the 14 people leaving around the same time as us loaded the bus to go to the train station. When we got there, we had to sit around for 2 hours. I don’t know why AFS has us get there so early. It was like round 2 of killing time at the airport.

We got on our train at 14h37(2:37) and some AFS volunteers came with us. My train ride was exactly 2 hours and we pulled into the station at Maubeuge at 16h37. A bunch of people were standing on the platform holding AFS signs and looking excited, while all of us on the train were on the verge of hyperventilation. We got off and everyone started kissing us and saying bonjour. I think I touched cheeks with about 15 people in the span of 5 minutes. And students connected with their host family, and I looked around, and I didn’t see my family. So my mind was racing...”am i a bad exchange student and they are here but I dont recognize them? Or are they not here and if not why not?” And finally one of the AFS volunteers told me my host family was running a little bit late because of a bicycle race. When we walked off the platform and into the station, the volunteer nudged me and said “I think I see your family. 2 boys, wow.” And I laughed and said “3 brothers, actually.” And sure enough, they were all there...Edith, Thierry, Lucas, Alexis, and Matthis. We kissed and said hi and the whole group went outside and took a group photo and then my host father told me we were going to get a snack. We got in the car and I smiled and tried to understand and we drove off. And guess what they had playing on the radio? Brittany Spears!! And Alexis asked me if I understood the words in the song, and I said “yes” and laughed.

Our snack stop was actually a little orientation with just my AFS chapter. There was a local journalist there and he took our photos and asked some questions, and then we went inside. All the host families and volunteers introduced themselves to the group and we had some cake and soda, and we played human knot. My brothers told me it was time to go, so I said goodbye to everyone and we headed home. We pulled into the driveway and sure enough, it was the house i’ve been seeing in google maps and fantasizing about ever since i got my host family’s address. 

And that is the story of my travels from my house in Sacramento, California to my house in Marly, France. More posts coming soon, so keep checking.

i have pictures from the journey but the computer i am using right now cant handle uploads very well so the pictures will come later.