<human>: My experience with travel is limited to going to Vegas for work from Detroit. I've had all the French classes I could take in college, but never an environment to use what I've learned. I have two and a half years of film experience, and I know how to edit photos and video.

I plan on using couchsurfing.org to sleep for free. I will have a limited budget to use for travel and food. I don't have a passport yet, but it's in the works and I know what I need to get one. 

**My question to reddit is this**

How exactly do I go about this? I have so many questions about this trip, having never gone outside of the States. 

* What type of food is affordable and good for backpacking? I will have one duffel bag, where should I store the duffel bag while I'm gathering pictures and product?
* What locations are good to maximize the amount of stuff I can take pictures of and send brochures, menus, and junk back to the states? Post offices?
* Travel, it looks like I'll mostly be traveling on train, outside of the obvious hot air balloon or horseback, how would you travel from town to town?
* I use a verizon droid, should I just get a temporary phone with social media/internet browsing/text features? Verizon doesn't have service in France from the looks of it, and I need GPS.
* I'll need to upload blogs and pictures daily to the interwebs, would you use an internet cafe, or just prepay for 10 days overseas?

Summarize the given text in a few sentences.
<bot>: My company is sending me, an inexperienced international traveler overseas to gather local materials for a book, what do? Full IAmA upon return.