First day out of the United States + Airport Chaos=Severe Culture Shock

After flying through Canada, where strangely I had to go through customs, and an eight hour flight to France later, I arrive at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. This airport is pretty much the size of Rushville with twice as many people. Customs in Paris consists of a grumpy, old man in a booth big enough for two poodles. He looks at my passport and says, "Allez." Basically, "go away." After the grueling customs process, I turn to my right to claim my baggage and I look and look and look. No, this cannot be! After twenty minutes of pushing through abuot a hundred people who apparently all came from Australia, I notice that baggage claim is one...small...door. I look around at all two hundred people crammed into a room the size of a classroom and think that I will NEVER get my bag in time for my train. Everyone pushes their way through with carts carrying too many bags and screaming kids. "Pardon. Pardon. PARDON." I feel like cows being gathered for a slaughter. All of this happens at the lovely hour of seven in the morning. My train leaves in three hours. After finally getting my bag and somehow escaping the grips of grumpy travelers, I manage to politely ask the gentelman behind the counter if he speaks English. (I felt getting directions to the train station in this huge airport probably isn't a good time to guess what's being said). He continues to FORCE me to speak French because apparently it sounded so good he didn't feel like obliging me with some helpful English. In gruff English he says, "Ask me in French. I heard you speak. It's good."

It turns out the train station is just as chaotic. Only here, everybody smokes. There are about six lines that the trains arrive on to cart people throughout Europe; however, no one knows which line their train is on until ten minutes before it arrives. Very helpful considering each rail is pretty far apart from the other. There are five different types of kiosks (in French) in order to retrieve tickets bought online. After trying two, I finally got my ticket on the third try. Now, I have forty minutes. What happened to the two and a half hours I had? Lost to the sea of disgruntled passengers and foreigners. I console myself with the fact that maybe everyone else has no idea what's going on either. While here, I hear French, Spanish, Russian, maybe some Italian and so on, but absolutely no English. Quite the shock! Needless to say, I am quite relieved to sit down on the train. But, this train proves to not be so restful as all I can think about are all the horror stories I heard about people stealing things from foreign travelers.

By this point, I'm not too interested in being fascinated with Europe. It doesn't really feel like I'm here. Nothing looks archaic like I expected, or romantic, or blissfully exotic. It pretty much looks like the United States: fields of corn, a few factories here and there, big highways and lots of cars. To be completely honest, I was quite disappointed I didn't see a single castle. I guess I thought they came a dime a dozen over here.

After this initial disappointment, I land at the train station and descend onto a street no wider than a hallway it seems. Other tiny streets run off in random directions while tall buildings threaten to swallow them up. It's like a giant concrete jungle.

I had the great joy of taking a taxi for the first time in my life and then I had the great terror of riding in a taxi for the first time in my life. These people drive like they'll never get anywhere on time. Needless to say, I am quite fatigued and relieved to have arrived in Nantes at the IES center. It was to be the best night of sleep I've ever had.