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I have arrived in Nice after approximately 15 hours of traveling! I'm exhausted, but the first day has been great so far. I first went Nashville to New York, then New York to Barcelona (where I had the pleasant surprise of having a row of 2 seats all to myself), then a quick flight from Barcelona to Nice.

My host mother was waiting at the airport to pick me up, and she is great. My whole host family is really relaxed and they made me feel instantly comfortable at the house. They live in a beautiful old house on a really narrow street close to downtown. They have two sons, Ambroise-Marc and Luc-Simon, who are 20 and 23, respectively. They're really cool and I've already had some really cool conversations with them. Another interesting note: none of them really speak any English at all! I'm feeling fairly confident with my French so far, though; I've received a few compliments already and I think it will only improve from here. Here's a picture of my room and the view out my window:

After I unpacked for a little while we had lunch together, and then I went on a short tour of the city with my host father and one of my host brothers. It was really cool to explore Nice. It's hard to express how beautiful it is here! I feel like I'm walking through a painting. It really doesn't feel real, although I think the surreal apsects of it were amplified by the fact that I am severely sleep-deprived. We took the tram around and walked on the Promenade which goes along the ocean.

Is this for real??? It definitely doesn't feel like it. We then walked around an old part of Nice which apparently is a really cool place where a lot of young people hang out. There were all these cool shops and narrow streets. Everything about this place is so picturesque.

Then I returned to the house and relaxed in my room. I kept telling myself that I needed to stay up until normal bedtime here to adjust to the time difference, but then I made the terrible decision of laying down on my bed just to read for a while. You can probably guess what happened next.

I didn't sleep for too long, though, then I had dinner with the family and met up with a girl from my program named Liz who lives just a few houses down from me! She was really nice and we took a little walk around the area around our houses. It was weird to speak English again even though I had only been in the French mindset for about 8 hours or so! We had a good walk and it was nice to talk to someone who was in as much disbelief as I was about the fact that we will be living here for 5 months.

I'm getting close to crashing again, so I'll wrap this post up. Our first week of orientation starts tomorrow with a tour of the city so we can get to know the area. I can't wait to meet the other people in my program!

Exhausted but excited after a great first day,

Joey