San Francisco

For those of you who don't know, this blog is going to be about my foreign exchange from 2010-2011. I'm going to be spending a year in France through the Rotary club of Issaquah. I will be spending the year in the east of France in the region called Alsace. I'll be living just outside the city of Strasbourg and going to school in Strasbourg at the Gymnase Jean Sturm. I'm incredibly excited for this!

As most everyone knows, I went to San Francisco two weeks ago to go to the French consulate and get my visa. While it seemed annoying at the time to have to appear in person at the consulate it was a wonderful trip. I got to meet some absolutely amazing people that I hope to see again in the future. I also got the chance to explore San Francisco. I had thought before that it would be a fairly long trip involving sitting in the consulate for a long time, but we ended up spending about an hour and a half in the consulate. From there, we tried to take a cable car to Giradelli Square, but since it couldn't go directly there, we took one cable car and then rode in three different cabs to get to the square. At the square we go ice cream and sundaes and such and they were absolutely delicious. Ed, the head travel agent, got us all these San Francisco souvenir boxes of chocolate squares, which was really sweet.

From Giradelli Square we walked to the waterfront and shopped for a while. There was a really cool street performer there playing a guitar, the harmonica, singing, and playing the drums and a cymbal with his legs. I did very little shopping since I want to shop in France, but it was hard to resist. From there we walked to a hotel and ended up taking a limo to the airport, rather than a car to the transit to take the airport. We decided it would be cheaper to just take a single car to the airport rather than all 11 of us going on the transit. And the limo was the only car big enough to hold all 11 of us.

Most of us split up at the airport. Mele, Emily, Ed, Jericho, Alex, and I took a plane to Seattle. I sat next to Alex on the way there and it was really great :). I slept for part of the time, though, since I was so exhausted. It was a crazy busy day. It felt more like a week than it felt like a day.

It was really fun and everything is set for France now. I'm just finalizing ticket requests and everything now. I should start packing in the next week or so! :)

Thanks for reading!