J'arrive a Rennes!

This morning we left our beloved Paris. We enjoyed our last breakfast of du pain du chocolat, du pain avec la confiture, du jus d'orange et du cafe au lait at 7:30 am! It wasn't even light out, which is never a good sign. As we were leaving Paris on the bus, the sun looked beautiful. Of course it starts shining when we leave... Turns out Rennes is a little bit farther from Paris than I thought. It took about 4 hrs to get here. We stopped at Chartres along the way though. It was so beautiful! Definitely my favourite thing we've done so far. The stained glass windows were gorgeous and we had an awesome British tourguide. (It was nice to hear some English for a while and with an awesome accent too!) He has been touring there for 52 years now and I actually learned a lot from him. Chartres is larger than Notre Dame. It has the oldest stained glass windows in Europe. (if I remember correctly) He said that the cathedral was famous for its sacred relic. They're supposed to house a piece of Mary's clothing from when she gave birth to Jesus. He said whether or not it's real is irrelvant. The important thing is that it brings people together to worship. (though apparently the cloth has been studied and is about 2000 years old so it's from the right time period at least!) The stained glass windows and sculptures everywhere were so detailed that you could spend a lifetime studying them. I'd like to go back and see the crypt sometime as well. Apparently it's huge! One thing that I just can't wrap my mind around lately is how much history there is in France. You're excited to be in Paris because it's the fashion capital of the world, etc and you forget that the city's also exciting because of all that's happened there. There's been the Romans, Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette, WWII! (They were very lucky that the Chartres Cathedral wasn't destroyed because apparently the Nazis bombed the field behind it.) It's amazing how the two are able to coexist.
Once we got back on the road, we were given our home stay assignments. Everyone had been dying to find out/really nervous all day. Apparently there are all kinds of families. Families with kids, young couples, old couples, single women, in houses, in apartments, in the middle of Rennes, just outside Rennes, etc. Everyone's main concern though was whether or not we could get WiFi ;) I was placed with Madame Guillemer. She lives by herself in an apartment in Rennes. She has two daughters, 30 and 27, and the older one has a 3 year old son. L'Universite Haute Bretagne has two campuses. Rennes I and II. (We're studying at Rennes II) Mme Guillemer works in the math research library at Rennes I. I wasn't really picky about my host family but I was kind of hoping for a legit family so that some of the pressure would be taken off me. (plus it'd be fun to be part of a family like mine but in France. My mom said I should have said that they need to have a hot older son... ;) ) If it's just the two of us though, I definitely have to contribute to the conversation all the time. (And the program director, Staci, told me that Mme Guillemer had a problem in the past with students not wanting to communicate :S ) It seems my worries were for nothing though. She's really great and excited to have me. She's put up well with my terrible French so far. We were such a cute pair at dinner, sitting across from the table, each with our French-English dictionaries. A Kodak moment if I've ever seen one ;) After dinner, she spent half an hour going over the bus lines and drawing me a map of how to get there so I know where I'm going tomorrow morning. She offered to take me to the stop tonight too if I wanted so I could see where I should go. Elle est tres sympa! Today I was really upset and nervous about being separated from the other students but now I'm really excited to see where this next part of this experience goes!