The awesome adventures of Jack Chi: France Update!

I have begun my France adventure! I arrived in Guebwiller in the Alsace region 2 days ago and it has been quite smooth. I found an apartment within a day and am living with awesome roommates! But first let's start with the start of my journey!

I bought an airplane ticket for the 25 of September together with Aimée the friend I met who is also doing the French program. Once I arrived at the airport I was greeted with Aimée and new friends who are also doing the program. In total we were 7 flying that same day doing the same program! Of course everyone was excited and nervous at the same time. But due to my prior experience with other programs I was quite at ease and calm.

We had a very uneventful flight except the lack of personal entertainment options. We flew with airtransat holidays and because they were a budget airline we had no control over the in flight entertainment. So this made the flight quite long naturally. But because I was sitting with 2 other assistants we passed the time talking and playing cards.

Finally we all arrived in Paris. The first thing I did was buy a "carte jeune" for the train. with this card I now have pretty good discounts for traveling within Europe. My ticket to Colmar was suppose to be 79 euros but it became 53 euros after the discount. As we waited for our trains to arrive we got to know each other better. And now I have the contacts of my new friends in Grenoble, Bordeaux and Lyon! of course I told them they could come visit me anytime they want!

I arrived in Colmar and was picked up by my Airbnb host Christophe. It was really easy to talk to him and we arrived in Guebwiller after a quick 10 minute drive. I got settled in quickly and took his bike to apartment hunt. The town itself is tiny and very walkable. It is only 11 000 population wise. But I decided to take the bike anyways just in case.

Luckily for me I found an apartment as soon as I started looking and moved in within the day. I am now living with 2 awesome roommates in a newly furnished house about 1km away from the center of town. One of my roommates Noe is a 15 year old who is doing an apprenticeship program and works in this town 3 weeks at a time and 1 week studying back at his town. The other Emily is another language assistant who works at the other lycée in town. Anyhow we got along famously and it is shaping up to be a good year.

We also met up with Anna a language assistant from another lycee in town and she's been coming over to hangout with us the past couple of days and it's been lovely. We are having a "cheeky" time together as she would put it.

Anyways now that my apartment has been sorted out I'm just in the process of finding a bicycle and setting up my bank account.