You will all be unhappy to hear that I am currently sitting in un MacDo. BUT, this is apparently the only place in town that has WiFi, so please forgive me.
Before I left home, I imagined that Tergnier would be like the Grinnell of France- a small town in an agricultural region. That was a pretty accurate estimate, except Tergnier has no college. The area is really flat, and if you walk 10 minutes out of town on the one highway that runs through it (=146 in Grinnell,) you're surrounded by fields (crops to be identified later.) Not corn though, so that's different. There's even the French equivalent of Walmart, an "hypermarché" called Auchan, a little ways out of town- just a little bit farther than you'd like to walk (=Walmart shopping center, Grinnell!) The MacDo I'm in right now is right next to Auchan.
Backtrack to yesterday. I got into Charles de Gaulle at around 10:30am and had just the right amount of time to take the métro into Paris to Gare du Nord, where I hopped on a train that went north and dropped me in Tergnier a little less than two hours later (a train runs through this town too! Spot on Grinnell.) The woman I've been emailing this summer who works at the school where I'll be met me on the platform. Her name is Marie-Ange Brutus, and she is very small, round, and funny. She drove me to the office of the collège where I'll be working and showed me my apartment, which is only a block away. The apartment building is modern, and reminds me a little bit of the house from 'Mon Oncle':
(I'll post my own pictures soon!)
Mme Brutus very kindly invited me out to dinner with her and her two children, who are both studying law in Amiens, and are 18 and 20 years old. They were very patient while I asked what almost every single ingredient on the menu was, though Mme Brutus finally decided she would order for me (spaghetti with meat sauce. lol.) (We were at a pizzeria, and a lot of the pizzas had eggs on them! intéressant.) They also accompanied me on a mini shopping trip in Auchan, where I plan to go for a longer visit in a few minutes. The weirdest thing I saw there was milk jelly, which Mme Brutus' daughter Cécile described only as "strange". Got to try that too.
Today I've puttered around the apartment, napped, and walked around town a bit- one thing I've noticed so far is that French people loooove florists- there are at least 4 of them in town! and a nursery! and this is a small town! Also, French people eat a ton of baguettes, that's a fact, not a stereotype. Also, my French is pretty rusty. But I will have plenty of opportunities to practice.
For now, I will say AU REVOIR and head into Auchan. Tabea should be arriving at any time, she is driving here with her boyfriend from Germany today! I miss you all, and send many bisous.
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