Bienvenue à la France!!

Hey Everyone!

So exciting to say that I have landed safe in Lyon, France after a long flight over! It's crazy to believe that after so many years of dreaming of traveling Europe, months of planification and weeks of stress that I am finally here! One thing that I've learned from planning for this trip is the amazing family and friends I have in my life who have supported me at the beginning of this journey and who I have felt so much love from!

Monday, January 1, 2018

It was a very emotional day as I said goodbye to my close friends and family. It was so nice to spend the morning having my last, big Canadian meal and spend time together and in these moments I tried to appreciate every moment I had with these amazing people. Then as it was time for us to head out to the airport, all I can say is there were quite a few tears as I said "see you later!", which is always the hardest part about going away for a long time!

(Left: me and my beautiful best friend Alli)

(Right: Me and my whopping 70 L backpack)

The boring part, which was travelling so many hours in the plane. First, I traveled from Toronto Pearson Airport (YYZ) to Aéroport international Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau de Montréal (YUL), for a quick hour long ride. Once I arrived in Montreal, my Air Canada app listed that my flight would have it's baggage at carousel 20, which I thought meant that I had to pick up my baggage and then bring it to my next flight. With only an hour and a half between my two flights, I'd thought I'd have enough time, but once no more new baggage was circulating and there was half an hour to my next flight, that's when I started to stress! Thankfully, after calling my parents and getting advice from friends I finally asked someone and found out that I didn't need to worry about my luggage, which at this point I had 20 minutes to get to my flight. So picture the scene in Home Alone 2, where the family is running through the airport desperately trying to make their flight. Well picturing that, that was me yesterday running through the Montreal airport. With 10 minutes until the flight time, I had to rush through security, where both of my bins of stuff were flagged and had to be checked by hand. But thankfully, after explaining to security that my plane was leaving soon, I finally got my bags back and made it on time to my flight to France!

I have never felt so relieved than I had when I sat down in my seat for my flight heading towards Lyon, France. Flying out an at 10 pm, which was an hour later than originally on my ticket, we were finally up in air! The bad part about the flight was that being seated for a seven hour flight, it gets very uncomfortable, so I had a hard time falling asleep. But on the more positive side, the guy who was sitting beside me was someone who came from France, and by talking to him I got to learn some really cool things about France and the city I'll be living in.

Some of the things he told me was:

1. American movies that play in France is all spoken in French. Now my dad and I had a little debate about this, but French people do not watch Hollywood movies in English with french subtitles. Instead they hire french actors to continuously provide the voice for a specific American actor. For example, it is the job of a French actor to provide the voice for Leonardo Dicaprio in all his movies, so that the french voice stays consistent. Which I thought was neat!

2. French people love Burger King! The guy explained that Burger King has only come to France in the last 2 years, but people love it over here, and there's always long lines in the restaurants, cause people can't get enough of it! Which is so funny, with you think how empty our Burger Kings usually are!

3. McDonald's is called "MacDo" (Like saying Mac-dough in English) as a nickname. Here he was saying, McDonald's makes burgers with the local cheeses that are popular in France, for a more gourmet burger than we're used to at home. Hopefully sometime this week, I can check it out!

4. French people listen to a lot of the music we do here! Although they have their own French artists like Stromae or Niska, the French people listen to quite a bit of our rap music like Post Malone, Future, or Chance the Rapper. However, the genre country is not as popular here.

Once landing in France I got my first meal of a chicken/baguette sandwich and a café latte, and then made my way to the tram called the Rhonexpress, which would take me to the heart of Lyon. It was so cool to look out the window of the tram as we made our way through the city, and one thing that I noticed was that surrounding the city there are A LOT of farmer's fields. If you know by Courtice Rd. back home how there are still some farmer's fields, it's the same kind of look here except much greener! I had to actually take my coat off as it was too warm, at a beautiful 8 degrees Celsius!

(Left: My first french meal of a baguette sandwich and fancy coffee)

(Right: Inside the Lyon airport train station)

(Above: Inside the Lyon airport train station, there was a little piano that said "play me", as well as a foosball table! Now to all my family out there, no I did not play the piano, as I was tired and needed to check into my hotel, haha!)

(Above: this is what the inside of the Rhonexpress tram looks like that is a connecting train from the airport to downtown Lyon)

Once downtown, it was only a 3 minute walk to my hotel, the Ibis Styles Lyon-Part Dieu which had the friendliest staff, and the room was very comfortable and clean! With a tv full of french channels, I've had so much fun watching American movies or shows, like Beverly Hills Cop, Simpsons or Big Bang Theory, which are all spoken in french! So weird!

Well, that's all I have for my first day in France, but I will be sure to post soon more of my pictures and experiences!

Au revoir!

-Tori

#Lyon #Exchange