Sup My Peeps in GB, MPLS, and Elsewhere

Well, I'm here! Yes, it is official. I am settled in Thèbe, besides the few odds and ends I have to take care of in my stall. (That's what we call it, a stall. Nice, huh?) So far, everyone seems really fantastic; we all get along pretty well.

I have yet to describe my weekend and the interesting stories I have. First of all, we left Tour de Buis at 7pm on Friday night and took a taxi into Vienne where we caught the train to Lyon. ("We" consisted of Jess, Rae, Belle, Kahuna, and I - also, the taxi was only made for 4 people, so we were quite crammed for the 30 minutes it took us to get into town.) After arriving in Lyon, Jess and I dropped our luggage off at the others' hotel right by the train station and walked around a bit, getting some food for the overnight train we were taking in an hour's time. We also strolled along the Rhône River which runs from Geneva into Lyon; that was really beautiful. I took some pics, of course. Then, with Kahuna, we went to the other train station in Lyon (Part Dieu versus Parrache for those of you who actually care about their names) to catch our train to Toulouse. The plan was to meet up with two other counselors (one of which is Kahuna's friend) - Wally and Spidey - when they came into Lyon at 10:30pm, but we got to the station late after catching the wrong tram through town, so they were already gone by the time we got there. Kahuna left to go back to the hotel while Jess and I sat around waiting for our 11:52pm train which ended up being 20 minutes late anyways.

Ahh, the overnight train. What a pleasure...

We boarded the train around 12:20am and got on at completely the wrong place, so we walked through 3 cars just to get to our room (this was a hassle because of my load, which did not work well with the small aisles), but we found that there was no room for my luggage. As most of you know, I have two 40 pound suitcases, but I didn't want to leave them in the luggage room for fear of theft, so Jess and I found an empty room down the hall in which to sleep.

Quick sidenote: These "rooms" on the train are not really rooms at all, they are little compartments that house 6 beds, 3 on top of each other on both sides. There is a ladder in the middle and about 2 feet of space between the beds. When you actually manuever your way into the "bed" (really just a flat slab of wood with a little fake leather on top), there is about one foot of space to move around in before you clunk your head on the bed above you. Needless to say, this can get really claustrophobic. Mom, you would most likely hate this.

Just as we got settled in this new room, the conductor came by asking for tickets. He saw that we were in the wrong room and scolded us. Jess speaks fluent French, so she tried to argue with him a bit, but his accent was very strong (in the southwest of France, the people have a thicker accent with different sounding vowels, like in the south of the states) and he was being very rude to us. (He walked away muttering, "Oh, those young people!" I wanted to pop him one and show him what young people can do!) So, we moved back to the old room, where the other 4 people were sleeping and I was forced to store my luggage in a separate room. I was pretty terrified that I was destined to be a victim of theft, so I spent the first 20 minutes of my time in bed planning what I would do if all my bags were stolen. Eventually, I fell asleep.

No sooner than an hour later, I was woken up by the light of the door being open and hushed arguing in French. I finally realized that I was in someone else's bed! (Jess's bad luck travelling and my good luck travelling obviously didn't even each other out!) This young girl had entered our room and was talking with Jess about my spot; we finally resorted to looking at tickets (we thought she was wrong), but (of course) I was supposed to be in a completely different car than Jess! (This was getting to be an absurd night!) The mean conductor came in, harshly scolded us again (!), and swept off with the girl, saying that we could stay where we were. The woman across from Jess in the top bunk said she was digusted by his behavior; she told us it was his job to help us figure out luggage and room situations instead of scolding us. This was, unfortunately, our first experience with the people in Toulouse.

I slept for a good 2 hours before someone came in and yelled that the Toulouse stop was ony 10 minutes away. Jess and I got up, grabbed our important bags and emerged from the room to discover the area for luggage consumed by about 10 bikes! Luckily, someone was smart and moved our bags up to the front for easy access, but it was still a bitch to get those babies out from underneath the bikes and then off the train. Once we deboarded, we got out of the train station and tried to find our hotel. We decided against the directions given to us by one of the other counselors and regretted it later, because we walked about 30 minutes out of our way. (It wasn't actually that far in distance, but it took a long time because of my beautiful luggage.) By the time we reached our hotel, it was 6am and we were exhausted.

I will finish later...it is time to eat and I am super hungry!!

Love, love, love,

Kel