A jet plane and a big idea

Hi everyone!

It is finally September 18 and I am leaving for France. It's so weird that it's finally here and that I'm actually leaving. For the past 5 months, September has seemed so far off and now I can't believe it's time to go. My parents threw me the sweetest surprise going away dinner on Sunday night and I got to say goodbye to all of my best friends once last time. I loved it. Stephen, Boots, David, Lindsey, and CC all spent the weekend at home so I got to hang out with them one last time.

A little over three years ago, I spent 7 weeks in the Loire Valley in Tours, France. Two years ago, I spent 3 1/2 months in Paris. My trips seem to keep getting longer and longer. I'm contracted from October 1 to April 30 in Lille, where I will be an English teaching assistant in two primary schools - Ecole Victor Hugo and Ecole Desbordes Valmore. I'm currently sitting at RDU waiting on my flight to JFK, where I'll catch a connecting flight to Paris. I should be arriving in Paris at about 1am North Carolina time. From Paris, I'll take a train to Lille. I haven't bought a train ticket yet, but there are trains to Lille at least every half hour, so I'm not worried.

Where am I going to live? I haven't the slightest clue. I do know that I'm going to be living with Emily, another assistant who will be working in the Lille area, but other than that, I really don't know. She and her mom have been in Lille for a couple days now and have been on the apartment search, but haven't found anything yet. We don't start working until October 1, so we have plenty of time to figure things out.

Lille is in the département Nord (North), which you can see in red on the map above. I'm leaving the South to go to the North. Too funny. I'll be about as far north as you can go in France, so about 45 minutes from Paris, an hour and some change from London, and about an hour from Brussels. It's a really great location, so hopefully I can scrounge up enough money on my ETA salary to do some traveling. Regardless, I'll be living in France, so I think that's definitely cool enough for now.

Here's a map so you can see Lille in relation to all the other countries around it. It's realllllly close to the Belgian border. My roommate's school is outside of Lille on the western side and is about a 10 minute walk from the Belgian border. Legit.

For the first few days or so while I'm in Lille, I'll be staying with one of the teachers at my school. She's the English teacher I'll be working with the most. She's super friendly and was so nice to offer to let me stay with her. Now I'm not just arriving in this big city that I've never been to before, by myself, and then walking to a hotel to stay...by myself. This definitely made me and my parents feel a lot better.

I think the weather is going to be a little colder in Lille than we're used to here in North Carolina, but apparently it rains, A LOT. No worries, I packed my rainboots. And don't worry, they're not obnoxious. Don't get me wrong. I love obnoxious rainboots, but I also love not getting immediately judged as "the foreigner." However, the weather looks nice for the next week. Here's a shot from my iphone weather app. Not too shabby. I'm ready for some fall weather sans rain.

Anyways, this is just a brief intro to my life for the next 8-9 months. I'm sure it'll be frustrating at times, but I'm really excited about everything. I'll keep y'all posted, but I hope you'll keep me posted on everything going on in y'all's lives.

"Since life is short and the world is wide, the sooner you start exploring it, the better."

Miss and love you all.

Sarah

P.S. I'll be back to the US for Christmas break on December 22.