The long road to Lannion

I woke up this morning to my letter from France. Funny thing is, in my half-dead morning state, I almost missed it. I grabbed the pile of post from the floor and started flicking through the little envelopes. That was my mistake. I presumed, for some unknown reason, that the letter would come in a 'normal' regular sized envelope. There was an A4 envelope in the pile, but it didn't occur to me to check that one too, that is until I caught a glimpse of the word 'Rennes'.

The first port of call after learning that I've been appointed to a college in Lannion, was to see where it was - and obviously - Google Maps has the solution. Lannion is really quite North and is actually about a 2 hours drive to the city of Rennes itself. It doesn't look too isolated though, so hopefully it won't be too bad. It seems like a very floral, welcoming town and isn't too far from the Pink Granite Coast... 

It seems however, that it will be a long journey to get there. I'll be travelling for about the same time as my friend who is going to La Reunion... What? Briefly, here are the travel options I've considered so far:

• Fly from Birmingham to Paris Orly, from Paris Orly to Lannion.
• Fly from Birmingham to Paris CDG followed by a 6-hour TGV to Lannion
• Get the Eurostar to Paris du Nord, the metro to Paris Gare de Montparnasse, then TGV to Lannion

The second option is my favourite at the minute but it would mean leaving for Birmingham no later than 3am to get the 06h30 flight, land at just gone 9am and sit around in Charles De Gaulle for 4 hours (there is a TGV before that, but chances are I wouldn't make it through customs in time) then get a 6-hour TGV to Lannion. Hum. There's also the possibility of flying to Brest and then getting the TGV. too many options and my head feels like it's going to implode. I was initially thinking that I'd travel by land, so that way I could take as much as I could carry without getting charged a ridiculous amount, but having seen the amount of changes I'd have to go through and fight with my luggage on the various trains... I don't know.

On a slightly brighter point, I have seen two advertisements for accommodation near the college which I'll be working in. Initially, I was going to 'hop' over to France to check the places out before I signed any contract, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that it's quite a ridiculous idea. Other people won't be doing that (most won't have the means to do so, either because of money, distance or both). Having said that, the nightmare I had with the accommodation in Nottingham before going University of Leeds has really made me anxious about contracts and housing etc.

I would say that the next steps for me are; to sent back my acceptance of my posts, get the medical certificate signed, work out who my responsable(s) is/are and whether I need to contact them and then possibly consider contacting these landlord about the accommodation. I think I definitely underestimated the amount of planning, stress and organisation this Year Abroad is going to take.