Off to Tours!

Ah what a relief. Today could have been potentially stressful, but travelling from Paris to Tours (location of my program - 2 hours by train from Paris) was rather painless. First, the metro was sparsely crowded, so taking it from Gare du Nord to Gare d'Austerlitz (in the south of Paris) was very easy. I had one hitch in that the electronic ticket station didn't work at the train station, but I stood in line (I was there early with lots of time) to get my e-ticket (ordered in French, of course). The guy at the ticket booth also told me that another train to Tours was leaving sooner and I could use my ticket for that. So I rushed (literally ran) to catch the sooner train and safely travelled to Tours (didn't even have to stop and transfer in St.-Pierre-des-Corps as I thought I would). I then walked down the busy center road (a nice promenade in the middle) across town to the hotel, where I met Hansky, David, and Ali waiting.

The three of us chatted for a bit, then went out to get some food and wine. Of course, we got a bit lost, but it was nice to see the city. Tours is much bigger than I expected - not only is it long from end to end (which we didn't do), but it is also rather well-populated.

After that, we came back to watch a bit of the South Africa-Mexico world cup match and eventually started watching the French version "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Very educational, actually!

So we met the rest of the group (about 12 of us - 4 guys, 8 girls) at 7:30pm for dinner, where we planned travel plans and discussed our first impressions of France and whatnot. The people seem just dandy - and it should be an excellent group! People from all over - Idaho, California, Nicaragua, Philippines. Great! I knew a few of the people coming into the program already as well.

So we went out to a bar (sorta - actually just a big tent) to watch part of the France-Uruguay world cup game (0-0 tie - lame) and had some delicious (and cheap!) kirs. I am a fan of Tours already and can't wait to get started!