have to start somewhere. i think.

Wishing fervently that I could commence my first entry with some wonderful, verbose welcome, but it isn't quite coming to me. I imagine that most of you know me anyway, and those that don't - well, I can only commend your curiosity. While you should never put yourself down without giving yourself a chance (...that's how it goes, right?), this really isn't the kind of blog that will one day be snapped up and be transformed into an all-singing, all-dancing cinematic treat following One Girl's Epic Journey. Although if it did, I want Meryl Streep to play my mother.

In case anybody was wondering if I'm holed up in my bedroom still, I have arrived in France. I intended to document this yesterday evening when the fact occurred, but was frankly too exhausted after being on the go for twelve hours to write anything remotely cohesive. I did, in fact, compose a proper goodbye while waiting for my flight in Shannon Airport, but it disappeared into cyberspace once my sandwiches arrived and I forgot to finish it. Anyway, it was probably bad luck to go writing about France without actually being there.

So, yes. Took a train from Nantes to Angers yesterday evening, experimenting for the first time with the TER, and actually managed to buy a few tickets without breaking the machine or attracting any disdainful looks whatsoever from the French. And God knows they're good at that. (Also at layering floaty items of clothing, drinking at lunch without it going to their pretty heads at all, and cycling around looking nonchalant.)

Was up with the birds this morning, if only because it's far too warm to sleep, and have spent the day exploring the city on the bus. The crumbling chateau du Roi René is really something else; as the main picture on Angers' Wikipedia page I confess to being just a little sick of the sight of it, but damn, I never expected it to be as gorgeous and imposing as it is. It probably deserves to be the city's main attraction, if only for never falling down or feeling fat surrounded by newer, smaller architecture.

REAL BUILDINGS HAVE CURVES

On the subject of architecture, I would like to express how very much my new home resembles a box. It is a five-story dormitory, bringing a new meaning to the words staid and uninspirational. In fact, the whole of Belle Beille resembles a cheap condo complex in 1980s Miami, but I didn't want to sound ungrateful while I was there, so I didn't say anything. Even the fact that my bedroom is green doesn't cheer me up. It's hard to get excited about a bathroom so minute that the edge of your toilet hovers menacingly over your shower floor. I'm going to have to take my shoes off before I go in there. Wearing shoes in the bathroom was a luxury I never appreciated in Ireland. Similarly, an actual kitchen. The less said about the "cooking facilities" here, the goddamn better. All I will say is that one microwave and four cooking rings to be shared between twenty-five people is sick. Sick and wrong. I'd like to say I won't stand for it, but I'll have to, won't I. Maybe people only say that their Erasmus is the best year ever because they're scared they'll be sent back if they don't.

I refuse to end this on a sour note, though, as Angers itself is a wonderful, winding little city from what I've seen thus far, and I can't wait to properly explore it on foot. The view from my hotel window is as French as French could be, I'm getting a little misty-eyed looking at it. As well as this, the weather is beyond gorgeous, I saw a tiny little red shop today that only sells kimonos, and I bought washing up liquid for my joke of an apartment that smells like Imperial cherry blossom. I'm not entirely that they didn't make that name up, but it was pink, and you wouldn't get that at home.