Internal clock? How do you reset that?

Nantes is super cool! I feel like its a training city for a larger french metropolis. It has beautiful old architecture in the city center, 2 rivers running through it (the Loire and the l'Erdre), and a tramway that rocks my socks. It is super easy to get around because everything one needs is basically on one tram line, which stops right next to my dorm. Since last we spoke I received my luggage, and spent the most crazy, frustrating two days wading through the bureaucracy of France and the University. You have pay about 8,000,000 Euro for two types of mandatory insurance, paying into French Social Security, housing deposits, etc. and they are all at different locations around town with literally NO ONE to tell you what to do. Really bizarre and scary because if I didn't have my friend Mathilde, who studied at Pitzer last year and is a student at Univ. de Nantes, I would be lost. BUT that is all taken care of, I have a new French phone number and a dinky French phone (which is really cute actually) and that number is
06.47.66.66.10 but its about 8 billion Euro if you try to call me from the US so either text or e-mail me. It is a pay as you go phone and its better than in the US because incoming calls are free!

I had a fantastic time with Ewa, Dominic and baby Camille. Ewa showed me all around town and made Raclette for dinner (SUPER excellent alpine meal with melted cheese, potatoes, sliced meats, and baby pickles). We also got Crepes, chatted about Politics, and discussed French Recycling and the efficiency of round-abouts.

The dorm is really great. Super small room with a little foam bed but TONS of amazing cube storage. I have a cube for everything (I even have a flip-flop cube and a belt cube)! Luba and Emma, my two companions from Pitzer, are here and we've been trying to get everything in order. We went to Ikea yesterday and a Target-esque store called Leclerc and it was marvelous. It was in this gigantic mall and it made me shamefully overjoyed! We have to cook for ourselves so we had to buy some cooking supplies, bedding, Emma bought a cactus, and I got a coffee maker for my room.








Classes start on monday and apparently I'm a history major. I'm not sure where they got that but i'm signed up for a bunch of history classes, but I'm super down with that so its all good. We met some really fun mexican exchange students last night in the dorm kitchen and they gave us the scoop on studying for classes, not studying for classes, fun day trips, cooking, partying, and where you can buy bottles of wine for under a Euro. Needless to say I'm spending more time with them. My french has gotten exponentially better in the past 4 days.

I have wireless internet in my room. Getting used to the 24 hour clock is really confusing. I sleep at really odd hours and it's not really conducive to early mornings so that sucks. I haven't exercised in a week and surprisingly I haven't died, melted, or gained 85 pounds... who knew! I'm going to try and go for a run today. Where I'll be running? Don't really know. Supposedly there's a trail that goes by the river which could be beautiful.