Day 2

It is noon here. and I only woke up a few minutes ago after catching up on precious sleep missed on the flight over. Day 1 went well, though really day 1 and travel day were combined into one super-day. Flights went well, the food was good, Wall-E was shown (cutest robot movie ever), some sleep happened....but I learned that the lean over on your tray method doesn't work when the person in front of you has their seat reclined; even I am not that small. However the train ride was very nice in the first class cabin with spacious seats. We took a double-decker fast train, very cool. And the ride to Lille passed as I slept some more. The first thing I see as we get off the elevator up to street level is a Twilight movie poster and I felt right at home (see here the movie opens tomorrow, Wed the 7th). I saw a Cartridge World on the way to dad's hotel which of course reminded me of Hillsborough Street in Raleigh.
We crashed in the hotel room for an unexpected but well-received 3 hour nap which I guess revived me enough to go handle "checking in" at Lille and signing the contract and paying my first months rent for my room. My room is huge and very spacious. It is a corner room and I learned last night from the RA girl Lucie, that it is the largest room in the dorm: yay me, the first time I don't have the smallest room in the dorm. The room has very high ceilings, I'm tempted to say even higher than in Alexander but I have not made any ridiculously tall friends yet in order to make a comparison. I have two large windows since I am in the corner that run from desk height to the ceiling. I can sketchily watch people walking on the street below and they don't seem to notice me standing in my window. ;) My dorm is directly beside of the main building of my university, which is Catholic so I have some friendly gargoyles watching over me and keeping me safe. But this also means that I should have the ability to roll out of bed minutes before class, in keeping with my habits at NC State. People ask me where I am from but I feel as if there is no way not to know that I am from the US but I answer and then sometimes they ask what state I am from.
There is another girl here from NC State whom I know a little from last year and last night she, my dad, and I went downtown for dinner. Downtown is about a 20 minute walk from where I am located and there is a gigantic ferris wheel in the big square (which Kayla compared to the brickyard :) ). At night the ferris wheel is gorgeous with all the lights and it just springs up out of nowhere. The streets are strung with holiday lights still which are gorgeous at night. It is actually sunny out today, compared to yesterday's gray, yet snowy day. Yes, indeed, there was snow falling lightly from the sky most of the day, ever since I departed the train. However sunny it may be, the temperature is -6 C, which in Fahrenheit is a balmy 21 :)

More to come after Registration and Orientation....
love, hugs, and kisses....Lauren :)