Major updates/Life in Aix

So my life is so completely different now. Before, I was worried about my financial aid coming through successfully, finding an apartment, getting a French cell phone, finding a roommate, and somehow making calls home. I can now scratch all of those things off of my list. This is my second full day in Aix, and I've already got all of that done. "How?" you ask. Well, let's just say I've been busy.

Yesterday, to say the least, was hectic. I woke up at about 8 and sat on our balcony, which has a really nice view (see right), and then we all (everyone in my program) went on a tour of Aix starting at 10. We saw a lot, and I apparently was supposed to remember it all. I remember where the main stuff in Aix is, like the Hotel de Ville (the city hall) and the Place de la Rotonde (the huge fountain in the city's center), but that's only because I had found those with my parents. We got done with the tour just after noon, which was a bit of a problem for me because I told my parents I would meet them at my hotel at noon for lunch. So I skeedaddled back to the hotel by myself after a short interlude when I was semi-lost. Ahem.

We ate lunch (pizza), and then we found the church I'm going to be going to this year. It's the Church of the Holy Spirit. They have Adoration and confession every day for an hour just before Mass. Awesome, right? The only problem is that Mass is at 7 in the evening, so I'm hoping my schedule will fit around that.

So then I came back to our hotel for a program meeting where they pretty much scared half of us to death. They listed off every single expense we might possibly have, and I know I was more than a little worried. Our meeting ended up going over by an hour, so we got out at 5pm instead of 4, like I thought we would. After the meeting, it was pretty chaotic for a while because they told us to go look at the apartments they had listed for us but that they were also taking a group of us to the cell phone store to walk us through the process of getting a French phone.

In all of this, I still didn't know what I was going to do about getting a roommate. There was no way I could afford a studio apartment by myself (500€/month), so I absolutely had to have a roommate, but I was scared to ask someone and get rejected. Fortunately for me, the girl next to me in the meeting turned to me and--well, the exchange went like this:

Andrea: "I don't have a roommate ye--"
Me: "I'llbeyourroommate!"
Andrea: "Well, okay!"

So that was that. We went out and looked at a cheap apartment and we ended up agreeing to sign the lease this morning. It's small, and there's not a lot of room in the bedroom, but it's got everything we need. We have a living room, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a little dinky kitchen (around 10 square feet, if even) that somehow manages to have a stove, a fridge, a microwave, and counterspace. It's also really nice because it's only a block away from the church I looked at with Mom and Dad!

So we agreed to go back this morning to sign the lease and to bring our passports so the landlord could make a copy of them. Then we left and hotfooted it over to the cell phone store and we each got a cheap cell phone. French cell phone plans are a little different because every plan includes unlimited texting, and the contracts are extremely short; the plans range from 15 days to 4 months.

As far as making calls home goes, Gmail has a new awesome feature that lets you call any phone in the US or Canada for free. It's pretty neat. I made my first call yesterday!

And I checked the status of my financial aid payment at IU this morning, and it finally came through! So I don't have to worry about that either!

Life is good.