Days 1 In France: Getting from A—->B

Friday July 1st, 2022:
We arrived in Paris on July 1st Touching down at 8:10am at Charles De Gaulle Airport. I flew the same flight as Dr. Smith, her family, another instructor from UMW and seven other students, making us a group of 8 in total. Most us didn’t sleep much or particularly well during the flight, I only managed a light sleep myself, though I didn’t feel tired of groggy upon landing, and wasn’t too stiff in the back.

We traversed through customs shockingly fast, despite being warned that things were going slow due to under staffing and malfunctions in the network, managing to get to our bags in an hour and then buy tickets to board the RER from Charles De Gaulle that would take us to the University. We were on the RER around 10:30am headed to Cité Universitaire.

Dr. Smith, her kids, and our other instructor from UMW got off 5 stops before us so they could stay with Dr. Smiths parents in france. She gave me 60€ to spend for the group to wait for 2-3 hours at a café before she got off. Now we completed the last leg of our trip on our own. Check in time would be 1pm at the earliest.

We stopped at Cité Universitaire and got off the RER. Then we ran into our first “learning experience” when myself and another student put in our tickets to be able to leave the station and didn’t move fast enough through it due to our luggage, thus locking ourselves in. We had to have two of us pass their ticket on the elevator and then rush inside as many people as could fit so that we could avoid being stuck again.

Moral of that incident: Paris is a very fast paced city, both the people and machines, so don’t expect it to wait for anyone.

Next we emerged from the station into very nice weather, and the first thing we saw was the Cité Universitaire also called “Cité U”. The main building was grand and more impressive to me than it had appeared in pictures. We would have plenty of time to see and explore it, but right at that moment it was simply confirmation that we had arrived at the right place and that we wouldn’t have to worry about being lost or anything so long as we didn’t go too far.

It was about 11:30 by then and the next thing we did was attempt to find a café to eat at. We wandered for a bit parallel to the school till we found one called “Le Gentily”. Everyone was tired and exhausted from all the walking so it was an absolute delight to be able to sit down at last. Some of us talked to this nice lady who was there who told us that the University American Program would be holding a dinner on the 4th of July and also recommended a bakery for us to try out nearby. Then the waiter came out to take our orders. He was an accommodating & patient man, who came out to take our orders…and then we all realized that none among us in our group of 8 knew a single word of French.

It made for a somewhat comical moment as we tried to order while he only spoke back in french. Most of the group ordered some kind of coffee, I got myself an omelet because I needed food rather than a stimulant. I should probably have at least translated the names of the food items on the menu but there were too few menu’s to go around so I was the last to see what was even on offer and hastily picked something that looked familiar. The quality of the omelet was great, however the issues with language meant that I couldn’t communicate dietary preferences.

This was a issue because I personally don’t eat pork or beef and there was ham inside it so i tried initially to eat around it, then realized it might be seen as rude to leave so much of the food on my plate, and tepidly ate a little under half of it, dodging the ham as best i could, resulting in the middle of the omelet being mostly ham with egg removed from it and the ends chopped off (cause they were only egg).

However, I at least wanted us to be able to communicate some manners at least. So I pulled out my French Trip Notebook from my backpack, which I had been writing in since the end of the Spring Semester, and looked to the French Language notes that I took, finding the word for “thank you” and phrase “How much is it?” along with its phonetic pronunciations. I’m already extremely grateful for having done that as it seems the most useful word thus far as I’ve already used it extensively when shopping. For anyone who wants to learn the essential words & phrases to know to be able to function, I will attempt to keep an updated list of words or phrases I learn that have actually been useful daily as a non-fluent, non-french speaker.

Overall we payed ruffly 35€ for our meals, and we left a 2€ tip to show both our gratitude for the waiters patience and for the good food. Around 1:00pm we arrived at the University to finally check in and hopefully gain access to our rooms. They were still cleaning our rooms apparently but we did meet up with the instructors from MICEFA, who gave us a quick rundown of the plans, rules, do’s & don’ts, gave everyone their RER Cards and student ID cards, and then let everyone loose to explore the University grounds. I personally stayed behind, wanting to ensure the late-arrivals got to the University and informed them about a delayed student, allowing them to use my phone to communicate to that individual, tho that person ended up not being late to arrive so all turned out well.

Around 3:00pm we began getting assigned our rooms. I was assigned a room with fellow UMW Student Eric from our group. He’s very quiet and self contained, but seems agreeable to me, though the fact that we are both introverted people means our room is often deathly quiet. Our accommodations are modest, but good for a college dorm room, tho I miss my single-suit room from back at UMW where I had a more private toilet and shower arrangement. The room has a sink and 4-5 outlets. The outlet under the desk I claimed for myself was supposed to be for the refrigerator, but the refrigerator cord was far too short to plug into it, so we eventually would have to go buy an extension cord. There is a closet, a lamp, and lots of shelves.

I began packing all my stuff away from out of my suitcase, neatly sorting then refolding cloths and putting my items in a drawer hidden underneath my bed. I would later have to buy hangers for my dress cloths and no soap was provided to use at the sink either, so I would later have to go buy that too. My roomate in contrast decided it was easier to just leave the cloths in his bag and put that away under one of the shelves, since he will be staying in France with family after the end of this program. We then both attended to the Wifi situation and read the items in the folder given to us, which were briefly touched on earlier when waiting for our rooms to be cleaned. My Roommate went to bed around 7pm, I went to bed around 10pm.

Overall it was an admittedly stressful, hecktick, and taxing 24 hours from landing to falling asleep in the dorm. My back was killing me so badly that by 3:00pm once I was in my room I took my muscle relaxers without a second thought. I took an additional one around 7:00pm to help me fall asleep since my back wasn’t used to being worked this hard and being so stressed regularly. We learned the following:

1.) Life in Paris is extremely fast paced, similar to cities like NY in America.
2.)The public transportation system is excellent and efficient, though you must beware pickpockets (we were extremly vigielent of our stuff while on the RER)
3.) If you can say nothing else, figure out how to say thank you. In french this golden word is “Merci“ (pronounced like “mercy” in English)
4.) Safety in numbers: AKA. Bare minimum stick with your buddy. A buddy can keep watch of your stuff, make sure your okay, and keep everyone in the loop if your lost. My buddy is my roommate.


On Saturday we could go meet up with Ms. Smith at “Denfret Rochereau” station and go get some ice cream. I will be uploading 2 of these in day covering 2 days often, along with posing some hopefully interesting or relevant pictures.

Au revoir my friends.