How to get to France

Step 1: Get sick
Step 2: Pack
Step 3: Don’t fall asleep until 4:00 am because your body hates you
Step 4: Wake up, drink coffee. Realize that you’re too tired and sick for it to actually work. Remain exhausted.
Step 5: Reward yourself for your troubles by indulging in self-pity, but also appreciate the fact that you don’t have the energy needed to be as nervous as you should be right before traveling across the globe for a year. Enjoy this exhausted indifference.
Step 6: Sit in plane for 10 hours. Engage in conversation with people around you. Wasn’t that fun?
Step 7: Land in Germany. Get a nose bleed. Realize that German is scary. Why do they all sound so angry at me?
Step 8: Eat a pretzel
Step 9: Decide never to fly Condor airlines again; they don’t even give you peanuts. And only one movie choice? What is this, 1997?
Step 10: Get on plane number two, land in Lyon, figure out a way to lug 100 pounds of suitcases and a purse and a backpack and a laptop to your shuttle. Stay awake. Get on shuttle. Stay awake. Get off shuttle. Stay awake. Meet landlord/roommate, say hi (how many times does one bisou in Grenoble?), try to remember how to speak this language. Inevitably butcher said language. Stay awake.
Step 11: Sleep

But in all seriousness, I'm finally here! After a year of planning and buying and paperwork and questions, I'm here. The trip went as smoothly as it could have gone. Planes were on time, flights went by quickly, my roommate/landlord came to pick me up no problem, the room is great, the family I live with it great, the other girl renting is great. The area is also really beautiful. I was so exhausted on my bus ride from Lyon to Grenoble (see steps 1 and 3) I thought I was going to die, but I couldn't close my eyes, it was too gorgeous. Anywhere you turn you're surrounded by mountains. It's like living in a huge, beautiful bowl, that's the best way I can think to describe it. None of the pictures did it any justice, but I gave it a shot:

view from my room