Getting There...

Hi everyone!

Yesterday started out very early: 2:45am wake up, 3:15am departure from the house, 4am meet-up at the airport! Much of the group traveled together from Philadelphia to Miami, but some students flew from other parts of the US such as Los Angeles and Cincinnati. Miraculously, all students arrived in Miami on time and everyone boarded our flight to Fort-de-France with no troubles. Our flights all went well and everyone arrived safe and sound in Martinique. Not a single piece of luggage was missing and all the host families were waiting at the airport! Our travels could not have gone better! We introduced everyone to their host families and off we went for our first evening en famille!

Exhausted but all present and accounted for: even the luggage!

My host “family” is actually a retired single woman whose grown kids live in metropolitan France. Because Martinique is technically France, when speaking about mainland France, they say “ en métropole” to make the distinction. Her beautiful little house is up on a hill right behind a well-known 4-star hotel, La Batalière. It took me not even 10 minutes this morning to get to the beach in front of the hotel!

Oh, you know, just my morning walk...

The beach is not a long one, but more a little alcove, so I might switch to swimming in the sea for my morning exercise! Mme Hayot, my host mom, told me when I got back from my morning jaunt that there’s a sports complex on the other side of the neighborhood, so I’ll check that out tomorrow.

My address for the month

I have a little room to myself, and a bathroom too, so I’m all set! The university is about 3 bus stops away from where I live, so will be easy for me to get up there. I’m pretty sure that bus stop also has a bus that would take me directly into Fort-de-France, which is the capital. Most of the students, myself included, live in the next town over from Fort-de-France, Schɶlcher, where the university is also located. A few students, and Anna, live in a neighborhood of Fort-de-France, so they’re a little farther from the university, but closer to town.

Today Mme Hayot dropped me off at the university at 8:30 since I didn’t have my bus pass yet. Students trickled in, many of them accompanied by their host families. Everyone seems to be happy with their families, getting settled in a used to speaking French! So far it seems all of our careful matching is working out and we’re hoping we don’t need to move anyone or have any issues like that. Anna went to the office early and dropped off the applications for all of our bus passes, then met us at the university to start our first day on campus. We had a guided tour of the university so students know where classes are held, where the library is and, of course, where to find lunch every day! Then they all had their first day of class before figuring out the lunch system at the cafeteria.

Our next step was to all go into Fort-de-France for a guided tour of the city. This is where we had a few snags. The first was that the bus company wasn’t able to get our passes done in time, so we didn’t have any. Not too big of a deal, they just gave us a receipt that we could show the driver. Then the guide we were supposed to have was sick, so we ended up going to the museum that was scheduled for tomorrow. We’ll do the tour tomorrow and we’ve learned all about the prehistory of the island… a good start to learning about Martinique; from the beginning! Our guide was funny and explained about the original inhabitants of the island, of which none remain, and their history. I’ll go more into that in a later post.

A successful first full day in Martinique!

Everyone was exhausted after that, so we took the bus back to the university. Because we didn’t have the bus passes, we had to call each host family ask them to come pick up their students, so Anna and I waited to make sure everyone got picked up before we headed home ourselves, tired but happy with our successful first day in Martinique!