De Gaulle Airport :: L'Aéroport de Gaulle

My first day!  I was both scared and excited to finally see France when we landed.  I didn't want to leave the safe haven that was the American airplane.  I stuck to the English mindset and so the first thing I saw when I left the gate was a sign in English...and then I saw the French sign above it.

The famous airport (there's even a Chinese pronunciation for the name; my dad told me).  I heard horrible stories: "it's dirty" "hobos live in it" but I unfortunately can't really confirm anything as of yet.  When I arrived with the other YFU students, we were too busy panicking about Customs.  

Which, by the way, was never a problem.  There was a (very intimidating) line for passport check (which we thought was Customs) that we had to go through. However, it was the simplest process ever.  Hand security guy passport, wait for security guy to stamp passport, take back passport.

Baggage claim was as equally exciting.

You know how there's always that love story in a movie where some guy/girl is waiting for their girl/guy at an airport and they're he/she is  holding a sign with his girl's/her guy's name on it?

Too confusing?  I applaud you if you understood it.

Anyways, we got that sign.  Greeted by YFU France people and filmed by an "animatrice" (I'm guessing a YFU volunteer, but in France ooh la la).

THEN (and this is the fun part) we got to wait at the airport for 5(? in general, MANY) hours!!! So exciting! AND WITHOUT INTERNET

oh wait, no.  We got internet, but only for 15 minutes.  Everyone literally jumped out of their seats for their iPhones, iTouchs, Macs when we found out about the smidgen of wi-fi.

One animatrice had us read a script, in FRENCH, while recording it.  Now, that doesn't sound too bad.  However, you must note that 1) most of us were tired 2) and just heard ACTUAL French people speaking ACTUAL French.  Our French was like a crumb compared to their croquembouche of language control.

For those that don't know: croquembouches are too pretty, too magnificent to even eat.

Anyways, we waited in that airport for all the other YFU students from other countries; off the top of my head: Thailand, China, Mexico, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Austria, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, South Africa, Finland...

There's not much you can do in an airport.  Talking to all the other students is probably going to be one of my favorite memories this year.  Holy crap though... I saw one of my friends from like 5 years ago from a different state whom I hadn't talked to in years since she was doing (essentially) the same program as me! How freaky is that?  Same country, same time and everything??

We took a side trip to a little airport store (where I tried Orangina and get this! COCA COLA WITH ACTUAL SUGAR) and we all got excited over the French food.

By the way, McDonalds in France: §§§§ (for the life of me I can't find a way to make a dollar sign on this - duh French computers)  Ridiculously overpriced.  Though that was probably because it was also in an airport.