After a lots of delays and difficulties arriving in France I finally am here! I am spending four months in the city of Nantes doing a language immersion program through IES Abroad. These past three weeks everything has been absolutely amazing! First off, while I knew what my host family looked like before I arrived here I was still very nervous to meet them all. I am staying with a family of seven people! There are the two parents, a 16 year old son, a 15 year old daughter, a 12 year old son, and a seven and a five year old daughter. Needless to say the house is full and loud but it honestly feels like a second home! They were very welcoming the first day which I truly needed because I had spent many hours traveling and was completely exhausted. On my first full day in the city my host mother showed me how to use the tram and it was a bit of a culture shock experience just because of the way that people would react to my poor French accent while talking to my host mother. After two weeks in Nantes our program actually took us to three castles in the Loire region of France. We got to tour them with a variety of different ways to take in the information and we actually got to eat in one of the castles as well. So far this is shaping up to be an amazing experience!

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: IES Abroad: French Language Immersion and Area Studies in Nantes