Preface: Avant le Voyage

Bonjour!  Today, I leave Maine to spend the semester in Grenoble, France.  Grenoble is located in the French Alps (southeastern France), near Switzerland and Italy.  With a population of about 160.000, it is bigger than I'm used to but I'm sure I'll know my way around in no time.  While in Grenoble I'll be staying with a host family, which I'm sure will be a wonderful and eye-opening experience.  Armed with my gift bag full of maple goodies, blueberry delights and a book of Maine photography, I hope to charm my French hosts with my bubbly personality through copious hand gestures and bumbling french.  My journey starts tonight when my flight leaves Boston.  Tomorrow morning I arrive in Zurich, Switzerland, where I'll board a flight to Lyon, in France.  From there, I'll take about an hour-long train ride to Grenoble.  This is something I'm looking forward to about being in Europe: trains.  I enjoy trains immensely and look forward to riding them on every possible occasion. 

Other things I'm looking forward to:

1. French cuisine.  To my understanding, the people of France have determined a way to survive exclusively on baguettes, cheese, crepes and nutella.  On the occasion that they crave meat, they may have chicken cordon bleu.  This diet sounds wonderful, although I look forward to discovering if the French, in fact, eat other foods.
2. Cobbled streets and Vespa scooters.  Europeans have mastered the art of driving on cobblestone.
3. Beautiful mountains.  Grenoble is in the Alps, thus I hope to be able to reenact my favorite moments of the Sound of Music whenever possible.

Things I am concerned about:

1.  Milk (my beverage of choice) will not be readily available to me as people will expect me to drink wine.  This concerns me because a) I don't want to lose my lactose tolerance and b) I like milk better than wine.
2. I will mistake a bidet for a toilet... embarrassing.  Keep your eyes open for future information about the bidet situation.
3. Perhaps it's only an urban legend that French women don't shave their legs, in which case I shall be extremely disappointed.

Since I haven't actually left the country yet, I'll leave my ramblings for now.  I have a Bill Bryson book to read and I hope to have better luck reading it in transit than Meredith did with her Bill Bryson book. I'll post some updates as soon as possible and try to include some pictures.  Thanks for all the well-wishes and I'll miss you all!  Au revoir!

p.s. I'm in the airport and I just saw the crew for my flight walk by!  Exciting!