Am I French yet?

Bonjour tout le monde!  I've been in France for exactly one week now, and it's about time I updated the people in my life about... my life.  One intense, great, jam-packed week, in one (hopefully short) blog post.

First, the progression of my thoughts on speaking French:
Day 1:  Hey, not bad.  I can totally communicate!  Sometimes I might even pass for French!
Day 2:  If by communicate I mean get my point across eventually, sure!
Day 5:  Oh...  Wow.  That thing called grammar?  My brain can't do that as fast as my mouth can talk.
Now:  As long as everyone is patient and I don't panic, it will be okay and hopefully I'll get better.  No promises on becoming fluent.

Basically, every time I open my mouth, I have to stop and make a conscious decision to try using French, which is much harder for me and much messier for other people.  But I'm trying!

Well.  I left the guesthouse on Monday morning, and after a (frankly) horrible metro ride with two huge suitcases, one of which lost a handle during the trip, I met up with the other Americans in the CIEE Rennes program and started orientation.  We stayed in a hostel in Paris until Thursday, explored all the local sights (I finally have a picture of me with the Eiffel Tower), and tried to speak French to each other and the four French students that are our "moniters".  It was great, to summarize a lot, and then we filed into a bus and drove to Rennes.  As is customary in this program, you are placed in a host family after a personal interview with the program staff, which takes a lot of facilitation, so we found out who our families were... on the bus ride to Rennes.  I had about two hours to process my information: Middle-aged couple, lives in a nice apartment "au centre-ville" (downtown), internet, no smoking or pets, husband is gone during the week for work, adult children visit occasionally.

We got off the bus and poured into a room on campus with all of our luggage.  The host families were on the other side of the room, and we all watched each other surreptitiously until they started pairing us off.  The madame who came to get me is small, brusque, and very very fashionable.  I was so nervous that I told her my sister was "fifteen hours" instead of fifteen years old, and that took about a minute to come out of my mouth.  Huh.  She was pretty intimidating for the first two hours, until I realized how quirky she and her husband are.  Now I love them, and I barely know them.  They both have big black glasses, look very French, and are really funny.  As for the apartment...  WOW.  I have a giant, beautiful room, and the whole apartment is... huge, beautiful, and classy.  Hard to explain, but maybe I can put up some surreptitious pictures later.

Anyway, today we went to the fresh-air market (second-biggest in France=HUGE), where I tasted the world's best cheese and saw loafs of bread with a diameter the length of my calf, every kind of seafood imaginable, and tiny skinned lambs.  That last one was pretty sad.  It's the kind of place where I badly want to take pictures but desperately don't want to look like a tourist.  After that, crepes and cider for lunch (slightly alcoholic- I'm proud I tried it), finally buying a cell phone, and exploring.

In the Disney princess movies, the girls always have some special secret place where they go to sing and hide from stepsisters.  I think, largely because of the movies, that I've always looked for those, and today I found the best secret nook.  My apartment's location in downtown Rennes is both great and a little too much city, so I was thrilled to discover a giant park two blocks away.  By park I mean mossy little stone statues, a merry-go-round, rose gardens, and a 30-minute walk.  I'd been having a little bit of the lonely blues (which amazingly haven't really been a problem so far), but this surprise gift from God completely cured it.  How beautiful.  Bed now, church tomorrow, the world on Monday.