France...

My Fellow Americans,
I have safely arrived in France. I am in Toulouse (we call ourselves the “Tou-Losers”) in the south of France. It’s a beautiful and friendly town, but way too cold after Cameroon. The SIT program here really doesn’t know what to do with us. It is going to be difficult for the other students to do their research here because a lot of their plans were very Cameroon-specific. My plan was to research the conflict between the Bali and the Bawock peoples. Yeah, not too many tribal conflicts in France. So, I decided to take some intensive French classes instead. Right now I’m staying with a very nice French family with 3 kids and a west highland terrier (et j’aime bien les westie).
We left Cameroon saturday night thanks to the awesome people at the US embassy. They let us make free phone calls back to the states and then found us some early flights out of the country to France. It is both annoying and fascinating to have to go through culture shock again. However, this time the culture shock is far more complicated. I am not only an American in France, but one who was just getting used to Camerounian culture. It shouldn’t be too bad, though. The Family here is very chill. They’ve hosted many Americans in the past and they know that we like our privacy.
Anyway, that’s all for right now.