72 hours...

For the one or two of you who don't know, I'm leaving for a two-month stay in France on Friday. 

The first two weeks will be spent in Paris, courtesy of my fabulous mother, where I'll have my own apartment in Pigalle, drink café au laits, and indulge in all manner of Parisian diversions, both tourist and unexpected alike. I have absolutely NO itinerary, and wouldn't have it any other way. What's more, I know almost no one in the city, which may or may not be a pleasant scenario. We'll just have to see. Will Eamonn find love and a new life in the City of Light? Will he go for long walks and discover himself in the Tuileries? At the very least, I anticipate an ample amount of awkward social situations and, hopefully, will later exchange bises with some new French friends in the city. 

The bulk of my time abroad will be spent in the old university city of Grenoble. There, I'll study under U of M Prof. Mark Burde and take French courses at the Centre universitaire d'études françaises (CUEF) in the université Stendhal, an excellent school specializing in French as a second language, hosting scads of foreign students from across the globe. I'm staying with a host family, or at the very least a host "mom" named Laurence, who seems wonderfully sweet from just our first email exchange. Weekend trips to Italy, hopefully Germany, etc., will ensue. I'll be America-bound on August 3rd. 

I hope to update this little blog daily, a means of motivating myself to make the most of every day in France, drawing myself out of my comfort zone to provide my few readers with fun or even thought-provoking stories and experiences from this glorious little region of the world. 

Of course, I've still 72 hours before the story-telling begins...