FIN

So the semester is really over. Sad times. Luckily, I don't have to say goodbye quite yet, because I'll be back in Nantes with my host family in august for a few days.

This week has been the most ridiculous thing, and awesome. My friends are the thing I'm going to miss the most (luckily I still have time to appreciate France, so I don't have to start missing this lovely country quite yet), so it's been lots and lots of hanging out.

Sunday I watched the Rescuers Down Under with Katie and Stewart, in French. This is a rather significant event because Katie and I decided that I am basically Joanna, the endearingly stupid goanna who eats raw eggs. Katie, Sam and I cooked veggie lasagna and garlic bread for my host family on sunday night, which turned out really great and ended up being a really fun dinner. I think my host parents really liked meeting my friends.

Monday and Tuesday my host mummy was gone, so I had two super secret sleepovers, which involved fun music-playing and ghetto movie watching. Katie and I also went on a really epic hiking adventure on tuesday. Seeing as it was finals week, I did have a bit of homework, including a Spanish paper about Aztec sacrifice (easiest the worst paper I have ever written) and a Spanish oral exam about the environment. Easiest finals week EVER.

The last two days have been lots and lots of goodbyes, which sucks. Alot. But I'm fairly positive I'll be seeing all my good friends here again at some point, since most of them conveniently live in either the midwest or the northwest. Even though I'll be seeing them again, my host parents decided to say goodbye officially last night by giving me presents and being over complementary (I had lots of nice things I wanted to say to them as well, but had a rather hard time getting them out. That's what cards are for.) I'm going to miss them alot. My last night in Nantes was spent in a park (where else?!) snuggling/huddling for warmth with Katie, Stewart and Jessalyn. Parfait.

So. Summer plans.

May 14th-26th wwoofing at a farm near Mouzeil, a baby village 40 km NE of Nantes. Sam will be with me until Tuesday, then he's off to Germany.

May 28th- June 18th wwoofing near Boussens, in the Pyrenees, with Stewart. We're staying with a middle aged couple who have oodles of animals on their farm.

June 18th-July 3rd (ish) wwoofing near Bagnères-de-Bigorre all by my lonesome, which is real high up in the Pyrenees, right at the base of the highest mountain the Pyrenees.

July 4th- August 6th wwoofing in Tarragona, Spain. I'll be at a farm/campsite/eco resort 4 km from the beach. So excited to practice Spanish! And it'll be real exciting to be in a new country!

August 7th-August 10th A few days in Nantes with my host family to say goodbye, see Nantes again and buy touristy junk.

So there's my next three months. Should be grand.

the end's not near...

Well. It's my last sunday in Nantes. It's been an oddly normal weekend, since it's been maybe a month or so since I've had a weekend with no plans or commitments. I'm having quite the hard time believing that in 7 days I will no longer live in Nantes and will no longer be seeing my friends and host pappies on the daily.

So I never got around to writing about my spring break trip with mummy, so I will not go into super lengthy detail. I met mummy in Paris and we saw the Musee d'Orsay, the catacombs, an art exposition at le grand palais and walked around alot. Then we went off to Giverny/Vernon and stayed in a big and bitchin' house in the country with Sarah, Glenn and Morgaine. Monet's gardens at Giverny were soooooo pretty, especially the house, which was all sorts of pastel colored, like an easter egg. I want a yellow dining room one day. Then we came back to dear old Nantes, where we visited the chateau and spent a day at La Baule, St. Nazaire and Guerande with my host parents. The last four days were in Bretagne, spent at a campground near the Point du Raz. Bretagne is soooo pretty and precious. I love me some rocky coast! I also had a plethora of good crepes during the trip. Actually the whole time mummy was here was chock full of delicious food, although I am glad to be back to my normal eating habits this week. I'm so glad mummy came and I got to see more of France! There is way too much to see here. I realized this week that I have SO much left to see of France (basically the whole Eastern/Southern part of the country).

It was a bit surreal coming back to IES on monday morning (especially since mummy was still around!), but just grand to see everyone again. Break was very fun, but ten days is a long time without friends/people my own age around. Since it's the last two weeks here, there's been alot of hanging out with friends and not alot of class time, because university classes are already over, as is my teaching internship and IES theatre class. Things I did this week: watched the Barcelona-Madrid soccer game at La Bodega, a Spanish bar, hung out at the fac/watched people slackline, pique-nique at the chateau, IES end of the year reception (hot and mildly claustrophobic times).

I also went out to dinner with my host parents on Thursday night. They insisted we had to go out to dinner before I left, which I was very much okay with. We went to a Reunionnais restaurant, meaning cuisine from La Reunion, a French island in the Indian ocean. I got curry tuna, and it was delicious and mildly spicy. And then we went to a bar to watch jazz afterwards. I have the coolest host parents ever basically and adore hanging out with them. Friday was also an eventful day, because it was the last day of Madame de Pous's grammar class, as well as our grammar final. I'm going to miss de Pous, because she is an amazingly awesome and sassy lady. Luckily the final was not too difficult, despite the fact that I probably studied for it for a total of an hour. The fabulous Katie Lei organized a photo scavenger hunt for friday afternoon. There were 4 teams of 5-6 people and a list of probably 30 things to find/do and take pictures of. Epically fun (especially when Katie when swimming in a fountain), but my team got 3rd place.

It's been a lovely but not horribly eventful weekend. Friday night was supposed to be a Symposium at Erin's house (meaning wine drinking and discussing philosophical junk), but it turned into a dance party/general shenanigans and resulted in me only getting 4 hours of sleep. Yesterday I went to the mediatheque market for the last time with Sam and Stewart and bought some amazing strawberries, and then we proceeded to spend far too much time in IES for lack of anything better to do. Last night: Indian food, a movie and pool. Stewart decided that we should play music in the Place Royale (he plays guitar and Jessalyn plays cello) but of course it decided to rain. Harumph. I think I have decided to bring my violin wwoofing with me this summer.

So evidently there's not a whole lot of French being spoken/French stuff being experienced my host bit of time here. I think the general consensus among my friends here is that one of the things we will miss most (if not THE thing) is each other, so social things are taking precedent over profiter-ing from our last weeks of being in France. And I'm okay with that since I still have 2 months in France. Tonight Sam and I are going to cook dinner for my host pappies (lasagna and broccoli and garlic bread!). And I forgot to get ricotta, so off to le supermarche!

Lezarder-ing

Tomorrow starts the big spring break trip, so I thought I should write a little something before it all begins.

It's been a fairly action packed week. Friday was both the last day of my teaching internship (sort of) and my orchestra concert. Basically, I just ate lunch with the teacher who organized my internship as a sort of goodbye. It was actually really fun, just talking about teaching in general and the differences between the American and French school system (all in French! It was also great to have the opportunity to talk one on one with somebody besides my host parents in French for a whole hour). She's a super nice lady and was a bit of a friend to me here, but it was so frustrating working with her because she is so poorly organized. Admittedly, she had a lot of family issues this semester, but my internship ended up being much more hassle than it was worth at the end. The beginning, where I actually observed quite a few classes and got to teach a bit, was quite interesting though.

My orchestra concert was also quite a success. Sadly, none of my friends here could come because there was also an IES excursion to watch a soccer game the same night. And my host mummy had to work. But my host pappy came, which was right nice of him. It was in an AMAZING old church with a dome and crazy pretty paintings on the ceiling. Basically the coolest location for an orchestra concert I could imagine. However, sitting in a church for four hours is damn cold. It was a good concert though. We played with a choir for most of, and played La Messe de Couronnement de Mozart, a few Mozart sonatas, a piece by Schubert and a few other random things.

Afterwards I met up with some friends and went to the carnival that's been in Nantes for the last week or so. Just as awful and tacky as carnivals in the US, except that this one had a cotton candy stand with craaazy flavors. My friendsies got coca cola, peach and kiwi, which were all just sort of weird.

Saturday was our last official IES trip. It was just a baby day trip to Clisson, a very picturesque little town near Nantes that looks very Italian and has a lovely castle, and a vignoble to drink some wine. It was not a particularly action-packed trip, mostly a lot of lying around eating lunch, gamboling around the castle ruins (i love crumbly castles!) and trying different types of muscadet. But it was a lovely day and ever so much fun. Saturday night we had a little dinner party at Wendy's house, which involved lots of pasta, ridiculously messy chocolate frosted flake bars, and a 1.92 euro bottle of wine with lobsters on it.

Sunday= park and theatre. FUN.

Monday was also a big day, because it was our spectacle de theatre. I took a theatre production class, and monday was our big play. There are many a thing I could say about theatre, because it's been taking up alot of my life this semester, but I'll just say the play went really well. I shockingly didn't forget any of my lines, although I did have a good number of them written on my arms just in case. It was actually a surprising amount of fun, after the initial nervousness wore off. More about theatre later, possibly.

The rest of the week has been a lot of basking in the sun in the 75 degree weather. I am by far the tannest I have ever been in April (what an accomplishment, eh?). With no grammar classes this week, and spring break imminent, it's been lots of quality friend time.

Mummy and Paris tomorrow! Huzzah!

Avril?!

Oh my. I just realized while walking home on Tuesday that I have just about a month left here in Nantes, which includes all the time that I'll be gone for vacation in two weeks. Scary.

Due to the fact that I never update my blog anymore, I think I will talk about some basics of life here in Nantes that I don't often get around to writing about.

First off, ever since I got back from Italy/Paris in March, I haven't had a tram pass. It certainly doesn't stop me from taking the tram, since it's kind of a necessity at night and when in a hurry. I have been checked by the ticket controllers a total of once in the past three months, so it's ridiculously easy to take it without a pass or ticket. But when not riding the tram illegally, which is most of the time, I bike or walk to IES and the university. Not only has this helped me discover many new nooks of Nantes, but it's become my sole means of exercise. It takes a little over an hour to walk to IES, and about 20 minutes to bike. I love having to commute actually, although it means that I leave my house around 8- 9 and don't come back until right before dinner, since I live so far away. But it's good fun biking around Nantes, although a little scary at times. Two of my friends have been hit by cars, so I finally got around to buying a helmet last week. Helmets are definitely not a la mode here.

FOOOOD. I'm going to miss French food most of all. Well, almost most of all. There are days here when I eat an entire baguette in a day, because 1. they are sooooo good and 2. they get stale after a day. I had no idea before coming here that there are so many different kinds of baguette (baguette de campagne, baguette tradition, flute gana, baguette complet, flute gana, etc). I also eat at least 1 log of chevre a week, a habit which I very much intend to continue in the US. For dinner with my host pappies, we eat a ridiculous amount of seafood. For example, for dinner tonight, we had huuuge shrimp which you have to peel yourself, salad, broccoli and potatoes. My host mummy is convinced that I am still a vegetarian, even though I do eat meat from time to time here. I think she got confused when I told her that I am a vegetarian at home, and it became too late to correct her really. And I certainly don't mind all the salmon and shrimp we eat here. Dinner goes something like this: appetizer-ish thing (fake crab salad, soup, etc), main course (usually seafood and a veggie), salad plus bread and cheese plate (we usually have at least 3 different cheeses, and always chevre since my host mom knows its my favorite) and then dessert. I got myself into trouble a bit by telling my host mom about my love of sugar early on, because now she tries to feed me dessert every night. Usually just a pudding or something to that effect, but it's often so hard to resist.

This week my host mom's daughter Barbara has been at our house, because she's in between jobs. She's 26 and lives in Paris, and it's been lovely having a host sister for a week. Last night she had four friends over for a little dinner party because my host mom was working, and while I was a little nervous about spending all evening socializing with older French people, it was actually quite fun. They drink and smoke like firemen, as the French say, and they must have each smoked half a pack of cigarettes throughout the evening, and we finished probably 5 bottles of wine. But it was one of the few times I've been in a social situation with all French people here, and it's always an excellent experience. Even if I don't say a whole lot, I enjoy listening to the conversation and asking questions when I'm confused about a word or expression or something. And it's always interesting hearing younger people talk about life and hearing my host sister say things about my host mom, because my perspective here is a little limited at times.

I've also been playing Scrabble with my host mom once a week for the last month or so, which pleases me greatly. I even beat her once! Scrabble in French can be just awful if it's a bad game where there's nothing to play, but overall I don't find it much harder than Scrabble in English. It's actually mildly easier, because I always go with the first word I see, since I'm not guaranteed to have very many word options. Also, there are so many more verb conjugation options and random places to add E's and S's!

Bed times! Tomorrow is my orchestra concert, and the last day of my teaching internship. Hoo boy.

le temps passe vite!

ohhh my. how sad and neglected my blog has been feeling. i'd like to say it's because i'm so ridiculously busy reading french novels and baking croissants and whatnot, but i think i have become excellent at wasting time recently.

as the semester progresses, my social life has continued to get busier and busier. while i have made some fantastic american friends here, i also can't help but feel that it's distracting a bit from the fact that i am supposed to be in france learning french. because i am having so much fun all the time, i don't really worry about it too much, but it is interesting how being in france is such a non-issue anymore. living in france is just so easy.

so events of the past few weeks:

-biking in le croisic with sam, elise and katie

-unfortunately, this led to a flat tire, which lead to a lengthy repair process (but it's all good now!)

-pirates vs. ninjas frisbee game (my team, pirates, won, naturally. PIRATES RUUULE!)

- an amazing week of sunshine and lounging in parks

-IES trip to Normandy. I spent much of the weekend being incredibly sleepy, but i had a very fun time seeing all the cows and ww2 sites nonetheless

also, i now have 5 whole normal weeks of my program left, which is not including the time mummy will be here. 1.5 months/4 months total is still a pretty good chunk, but apparently it's all going to pass rather quickly. bother. i hope i get time to blog about all the other details of life here i've been wanting to talk about!

il faut etre toujours ivre

Although I'm pretty sure I've enjoyed just about every weekend so far here in France, this one was really a winner. I spent lots of quality time with both my host family and my IES friends, all people I am going to miss dreadfully when I leave. Seeing as this weekend marks the official halfway point of my study abroad program, the end is already in sight unfortunately.

My weekend started early this week! After grammar class and working at the library, my host mummy picked me up at IES and we drove to my host pappy's house in the country, in a little town called St. Pazanne. He turned the stable in his grandfather's farm into a house, and his sister lives next door in the original house. The farm used to be quite large, but houses have been built up around it so now it's in the town. It was a lovely sunny day so we feasted on shrimp and baby lobsters and grilled scallops and goat cheese made in St. Pazanne. Although it was good chevre, it was the first one I've had that tasted EXACTLY LIKE GOATS. Maybe a little too goaty for me?

We then drove to the coast, which was quite close by, and walked on a trail on the coast to the town of Pornic. The trail is an old customs officials route and apparently there's a law in France that there has to be a trail along the coast everywhere. It was a lovely walk, filled with ponies and sea shells and lovely old beach houses. Beach houses are always named in France (I guess they usually are in the US too?) but they all have silly names like La Tempete (the storm) or Ma Petite Refuge and things like that. Upon arriving in Pornic we had some quality ice cream which Pornic is known for apparently.

It just so happened that it was the Festival de la chanson de cafe (festival of cafe music) that night. So we went to five or so different bar/cafes and heard five different singer/songwriters. Some were quite good, and there were two that were godawful. I also had one of the most delicious crepes ever for dinner (potato and chevre, with soooo much chevre in it!). It was really a good time hanging out with my host parents and speaking/reading/hearing nothing but French for 24 hours. They're right fun people, my host pappies.

Saturday, I walked to my friend Katie's house to watch a movie, and afterwards went downtown, where I ate an apricot croissant at a cafe and read Roald Dahl short stories in French. I was supposed to go to a vegetarian restaurant (the only one in Nantes!) with my friends Sam and Stewart for dinner, but it ended up being closed on saturday nights so we got pizza instead. The rest of the night was very college-y, meaning it involved some 3 euro bottles of wine, bar hopping and talking to lots of semi-creepy French guys (but never for too long!). Overall a very quality night, but it made for a sleepy sunday and made me realize why sundays at college are usually such a struggle.

I did, however, go to a regional products market sort of thing today. There were samples of wine and cheese and sausage (i tried duck and kangaroo sausage, sold by a man wearing a silk paisley scarf. what a winner.) and things of that nature. I love markets here, because everything is so pretty and delicious. Plans are in the works to visit an escargot (snail) farm possibly this weekend, or at some point in the next few weeks!

l'Italie: le gelato et les drageurs

I've now been back from my adventures in Milan and Paris for a few days, but honestly I got a little sick of talking about my trip right when I got back (so many people asking about my break when I got back!).

Alors, I don't really want to go into a whole lot of detail about what I did. So here are some highlights/thoughts about what I did/saw/ate:

-The first night of my trip, I got into the train station in Paris, then had an hour and a half walk to catch a bus in a different part of Paris. Although it was midnight, it was a friday and there

were people everywhere. Paris is absolutely beautiful at night, because all the monuments and buildings are lit up, and compared to a smal

l city like Nantes, there are amazing things to see just about everywhere. I think that walk was one of my favorite parts of my trip.

-In Milan, I stayed with Rachel in her apartment. She lives with 3 other IES students and Italian RA, and it

was super fun staying with her and cooking dinner in her apartment. Very different from my experience here in Nantes.

-Things I saw in Milan: the Duomo (cathedral), which is the 3rd biggest in the world. I went up on the roof, and it's really an impressive building. Puts the cathedral here to shame. Also, the Last Supper (you go in with a group of 2

0 people for 15 minutes, because it's in a small room in a church). I also just did alot of walking around on my own and looking at all the stores and parks and fashion week stuff that was going on.

-FOOOD. I did so much eating in Milan. I ate gelato every day (I had coconut, banana, strawberry lemon, white chocolate, milk chocolate and chocolate orange. White chocolate was the BEST). I also ate a massive calzone, little fried calzone-like things filled with cheese and stuff, and aperitivo. Aperitivo is amazing. You go to a bar/restaurant place and for 8 euros or so you get a fancy cocktail and a buffet

of as much snack-y stuff you want. Excellent deal. Other highlights included lots of coffee and brunch at California Bakery, an American r

estaurant with excellent bagels.

-My favorite part of my time in Italy was the day I spent at Lake Como. Lake Como is in the pre-Alps, and the deepest lake in the world. In the summer it's super touristy, but in the winter it is DEAD. I saw two other families touristing around, but that was it. I took the t

rain to Varenna, which was sort of unsettling deserted, but also beautiful. I walked around for awhile, then took the ferry across the lake to Bellagio, one of the main touristy towns. It's on a peninsula that ju

ts into the lake, and I decided to get a better view of the lake and tromp up to the hills outside of town. My walk included some walking on the highways sketchily (not a real highway, and pretty deserted, so not too bad), walking through picturesque little villages and attempting to avoid angry stray dogs. There are lots of little paths and churches on the peninsula, and I got a pretty good view of the lake and Bellagio when the sun was out (which was about the only 30 minutes of the whole day it was out). It's probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and I had a fantastic time just walking around by my lonesome.

-After five days of Milan, I was a little burned out on big cities. Thus, I feel like I didn't properly enjoy Paris. I was incredibly sick of tourists, people trying to steal from tourists/asking for money from tourists/selling stuff to tourists, and creepers (especially creepers in Paris, who are obnoxiously persistent). I am so incredibly glad to be living in Nantes, where people just leave you alone to go about your business. I don't know if I could ever live in really big city.

-My favorite part of Paris was Pere Lachaise, an enormous cemetery filled with the graves of many a famous French person (although the only one I actually found, since I didn'

t buy a map, was Honore de Balzac.)

-I was in Paris with my friend Katie, who is studying abroad in Nantes with me. Her parents have friends in Paris, who we stayed with for two nights, which was also one of my favorite parts of Paris. Asides from being super nice and feeding us copiously, it was also really interesting to see how people in a different part of France live. We spent alot of time just talking with them, and I love how French people will tell you their opinions on politics and whatever else so freely. Conversations here are so much deeper and thought-provoking than most of the conversations I have in the US.

It was a great trip, and I think being away from France made me appreciate it

so much more (especially the fact that I speak French so well! Italian was a struggle. I just wanted to speak Spanish all the time).

Now I'm officially halfway through study abroad. Hard to believe. But the weather is getting nice here in Nantes and the next two months here should be fantastic!

Le cœur parle sur un vélo...

I don't really get what that means (in a figurative sense) but I sure do like it.

This week has been an exercise in proving to myself that I don't need to buy a bus/tram pass next month. Asides from Monday, when I sat on my ass all day and was rather grumpy, I've been walking/biking everywhere (for the most part) this week. Unfortunately I live really rather far from downtown/IES (about an hour walk, if I walk fast) otherwise I would walk there much more. But biking to IES only takes about 25 minutes, on a fairly indirect trajectory along the Erdre River.

I'm using my host mum's Peugeot Paris (Peugeot is a French car maker that also makes bikes?!), which is white and blue and pretty retro. And also one-speed. This can be a challenge, since Nantes definitely has some rolling hills, but it guarantees a good work out. I've been arriving everywhere rather sweaty and out of breath, and in the morning rather wet, since it's been misting every morning this week.

ALOT of people bike here, because there is are stations throughout the city where you can rent bikes for something like 1 euro a day, and the university also has a bike rental program. So although our program director warned us during orientation that biking is horribly dangerous and we shouldn't do it, I find Nantes to be pretty bike friendly. There are bike lanes on almost every major road and from my experience drivers are pretty nice to bikers, especially in the super confusing roundabouts, which are EVERYWHERE here. I'm planning to make biking my main form of transportation here. Also, except for older commuters, who generally also wear reflective vests, nobody wears helmets here.

Walking has also been nice, because there are so many different ways to get everywhere since no streets are direct here. In my quest for adventure on Wednesday, I decided to try to cut through the center of the city to get home, which seemed like it would be direct. It took me an hour and a half to get home, due to many wrong turns, and I got home sopping wet. But I'm pretty sure I have a new way to walk to and from downtown figured out.

I decided that with the 32 euros I will save by not buying a bus pass, I'm going to try more pastries. Because there is really an infinite number to try.

Anyhoo, I'm supposed to be packing for my impending voyage. I leave at 8 p.m. tonight for Paris. I have until about 5:30 a.m. in Paris (no idea still what I'm going to do with myself in Paris tonight) then my flight to Milan at 8:30 a.m. ish tomorrow morning. I'll be there until Thursday, and then I go back to Paris, where I'll meet up with my friend Katie from IES here. We're going to stay with friends of her parents in Paris until Sunday.

This might sound weird, but I'm a little sad to be leaving for so long. I'm going to miss speaking French and my host family and my friends here! But I'm sure it will be AWESOME.

La Vie est Dur

Today is probably the most stressed out I have been so far in France. I'm going to blame it on the homework. I have spent several hours working on an oral report for my Teaching Internship class. Although the presentation isn't for a few weeks, I have to turn in the report tomorrow. Bother. My subject is "La Formation et Recrutement des Enseignants en France" which is basically teacher education on France. Not a simple subject, especially since the whole system was just completely changed. SoI have worked on that for many an hour today, and still have a huge list of other things to do this week before I leave for ITALY on friday. A thought which is very much keeping me going today.

In addition, it has rained all day here. I came here expecting lots and lots of rain, but this is one of the first times it has rained consistently all day here. It has been unseasonably warm and awesome the last two weeks actually, so I've been forgetting that it's still technically winter. Bother.

So a little weekend recap, since I had yet another fantastic weekend. (Also, I have so much that I want to write about that isn't weekend re

lated! Also bothersome.)

Friday started off quite well, since my friend Katie is awesome and put a baby pain au chocolat in my mailbox in the morning. Best snack EVER. I ate some sauerkraut and

mystery meat at high school while hosting my English conversation hour, part of my teaching internship. The class I was supposed to be teaching at 3 was cancelled due to lack of students (they're all really busy right now), which I was very much okay with because frisbee friday awaited. It was probably about 55-60 degrees out, which also made me happy that I wasn't cooped up inside teaching kids English. After some frisbee-ing/hacky sack-ing/rolling around in the grass, we decided to find a cafe.

I really must spend more time lounging at cafes, as the French do, because it's lovely. Basically every restaurant in the Quartier Bouffay (the semi-touristy old town) turns into a sidewalk cafe in the afternoon, so we sat at a restaurant called "Amour de pomme de terres" (love of potatoes) and I drank a tasty German beer. I taught Katie some Czech, because she's going there for break, and then Stewart taught us some Russian, and then we all started speaking Spanish/Portuguese and I rather felt like my head was going to explode.

I spent my Friday night watching a show about the ocean with my host mumm

y and drinking tea.

I got up early and walked downtown, to the Place Royale (I timed it, and it took exactly an hour) to meet Katie and Stewart. We went to

the Marche Talensac, one of the main markets in Nantes. I bought some carrots, a massive cucumber and some chevre, and we all went in on a 3 euro local bottle of

wine. And Stewart bought the most precious snail-filled things, which mostly just tasted garlicky and buttery with a little chewy snail bits at the bottom. We made a delicious lunch at IES, since that was the nearest kitchen.

Katie and

I lounged at her house in the afternoon, and went on a toothpaste-buying expedition (which turned into a buying more wine expedition as well).

We had dinner at a sushi restaurant (it was Stewart's birthday last week, so we sort of made him choose the restaurant). Noms. We sat in the Place Royale afterwards, drinking our wine on the edge of the fountain, and met a bunch of interesting people. The Place Royale tends to be full of rather weird and drunk people on the weekends, from what I can tell. There was a vagabond sort of guy trying to speak English with us, some guy possibly trying to sell us drugs, and two 17 year old girls who befriended the vagabond. It was all very strange.

Saturday was my first night out really, and quit

e fun. We found some other IES kids eventually and spent most of the night at an Irish Pub. Not exactly an authentic cultural experience, considering we're in France, but it was grand.

Sunday I pumped up the tires on one of the bikes in the shed at my house and rode around for awhile. I played frisbee for a while, then biked downtown and met up with some other people at the Jardin des Plantes. I also had the most amazing and huge pastry, which was like a pain au chocolat, but also with custard and like three times the normal size. And it was so nice and warm out all day! I'm going to try to bike to IES as often as possible, because biking is just so pleasant. And not too scary here, because despite the craziness of French drivers, they're pretty good at watching for bikes.

I've started speaking French most of the time with my friends here, which makes me quite happy. Life is great, although it'll be nice to have a break at the end of the week. A plus tard!

best day in france so far!

it's true. yesterday, saturday february 12th was probably the best day i have had so far in france. too much fun.

however, friday was pretty amazing to

o actually. after grammar class and hanging out at the ie

s center for a while, i went to my teaching internship (more about my teaching internship soon!). probably the best about my internship on friday was th

e hour break i had between teachin

g, which i spent at the jardin des plantes, which is right next to the school. since it's february there's not a whole lot going on plant-wise right now, but there's a lovely selection of water

fowl always roaming around. it was at least 60 degrees and sunny, obviously unseasonably warm and amazing. the sky was also doing some crazy stuff and being really photogenic.

After teaching I went to the park near IES and played frisbee with katie, stewart and sam for awhile. unremarkable except for fact that sam broke the frisbee (huuuge crack) and stewart managed to melt it back together with a lighter.and it works perfectly fine now. i was impressed. i got peer pressured into seeing Black Swan again. it was much less scary the second time (which means it was still pretty damn terrifying) but it was nice to be able to appreciate the finer details of the movie. after an absolutely unremarkable dinner of french fast food, i went home to prepare for getting up super early.

sooo saturday i got up at 6 am to go to mont st. michel and st. malo. we went to st. malo first, which is a precious

little seaside town which is apparently q

uite touristed in the summer. we walked on the ramparts of the town (i didn't really know what ramparts were before. but for everyone else's reference, they are basically a huge wall surrounding an old town.). and then i basically just basked in the sun on the big rocks on the beach for a long while. there's lots of really cool rocks in the water (sea stacks? i wanted to be all geological at th

e beach but my geology memory is going. i did remember the difference between a summer and winter beach though!).

and then we forged on to mont st. michel, the most

visited tourist site in france (and with good reason!). it's the coolest thing to see from the distance, because it's sooo tall and obvious in the flat bretagne landscape. after trekking to the top, we walked around the church and the abbey (it used to be a monastery). the streets around the monastery are filled with touristy bullshit, but very amusing touristy bullshit and things i actually kind of wanted to buy. all i got were some postcards though. madame de pous, our grammar professor, was our chaperone for the day and told us that there is nothing but "les trucs horrible" in the shops (horrible junk). she also told us not to "monter comme les escargots" (climb like snails) on our way to the top of mont st. michel. such a sassypants.

although i guess i didn't do a whole lot, just bei

ng in such pretty places was awesome. also, althou

gh the chateau trip was fun, this was 23843984 times better because now i now have legit friends. and it was beautiful and sunny out all day. the only bad thing was my camera is having major issues and is possibly broken (although i still managed to take a good number of pictures).

with some of the aforementioned friends

jumping on the quicksand! (well, not actually quicksand. but there is quicksand around mont st. michel)

the day concluded with kebabs and ice cream back in nantes. such a win.

today has also been an experience. i went to lunch with my host family at their friends house and ate one of the biggest meals of my life (seems to be a theme here in france). apparently it's quite rude not to finish the food on your plate here, so i have no choice but to eat ridiculous amounts of food when they are served to me. after a fancy salad (greens, grapefruit, radishes, goat cheese and scallops on a skewer tomatoes) there was scallops in sauce with mashed potatoes, then cheese and bread (literally 15 different types of cheese. i only had enough room to try 5). for desert there was both a fruit crumble and raspberry tiramisu. and then coffee. soo good but so much food. i sort of made friends with the family's 8 year old daughter, clementine, when we compared silly bands. she gave me her glow in the dark strawberry silly band as a present. so precious.

now on to studying the passe simple. ewwww.

1 mois en france

As of yesterday I have spent a month in France! It feels like I have been here much longer, but is also a little scary because it means that I'm 1/4 done with study abroad (although not with Europe!). This fact, combined with sitting on a bus for about 5 hours yesterday, as led to some reflection on my study abroad goals overall.

Really there is only one study abroad goal, actually. Fluency in French (or rather, more fluency than I currently have). While I do speak alot of French here, I speak almost nothing but English two days a week (fridays and saturdays when I hang out with other IES kids). No good. It's also interesting to think back on a month ago when we were in Tours for orientation, or even orientation in Nantes, and everyone made a really good effort to speak French all the time. I guess at that time speaking French was all new and exciting. And now the newness of being in France has worn off, and speaking English is just so much more convenient for making friends/having fun in general. But no good. I'm really really going to try to make more of an effort from now on to read/speak more French.

I also have some apathy towards making French friends. Not that I wouldn't like to get to know French people, but I think I'm being realistic in thinking that I'm not going to be able to make French friends in the next three months. As it is I have a hard time making time for IES friends at time. And I do meet alot of French people through conversation club at IES and orchestra and frisbee. I think getting to know people is more important than necessarily hanging out with them outside of set activities. Because after all, I'm leaving Nantes in 3 months.

And now on to my more exciting weekend-ish activities!

Awesome Things (with pictures!)

This weekend was Les Folles Journees, a huge classical festival which is apparently world-renowned. This year's theme was the post-Romantics, so lots of Brahms and Schubert and Mahler and such. I saw an orchestra from the Netherlands perform a Hindemith viola concerto and a Schubert symphony. It was suprisingly enjoyable, especially because the concertmaster danced around in his seat amusingly and had ridiculously short pants. And the music was swell too! It was a baby string orchestra, but there was no conductor, which I found impressive.

Yar be Speculoos, the most amazing spread in existence. It looks rather creepily like peanut butter, but tastes like cinnamony spicy

cookies. There are Speculoos cookies as well, and you can get crunchy Speculoos with cookie chunks in it. I bought a jar on friday and could only make it last until monday. ruh roh.

Frisbee Friday! I had a lovely afternoon with my friends Katie, Jessie, Stewart, Reo and Sam playing frisbee. Getting there was pretty awesome too, because we had to walk through this cute little park along a river, which reminded me of Asia because of all the bamboo (bamboo always makes me think of Asia). The picture is from our tree-climbing detour in the park. Frisbee was soooo much fun, but isn't it always. I got rather unfortunately muddy, and probably looked a little ridiculous with my muddy knees while taking the tram home.

Other things I did this weekend:

-Had one of the first truly inedible meals of my life. I ate dinner on Friday with my friends at university cafeteria (restaurant universitaire, or RU), and it was god awful. I've eaten at several other RU's before, and they've always been decent at least. But this was a plate of mushy ravioli and broccoli that was impressively even worse than Chef Boyardee. I only managed a few bites, which is saying something for me.

-Saw Arrietty, a super precious Miyazaki movie. It was in Japanese with French subtitles, but since it's a kids movie it was easy to understand. Awesomely cute, especially the parts with the fluffy angry kitty. It's about little people that live in an old Japanese country house (based on the Borrowers).

-Went to a market on Saturday, which was overwhelming. So much food and weird fish and cheese and cheap clothes and everything. I took lots of pictures, which people found amusing. I don't think they're used to having tourists there. I also bought some legwarmers for 1.50 euros!

-Cooked Macaroni and Cheese for my host pappies for dinner on Saturday. It turned out quite well, and I think they were quite impressed, even more so since I also made a salad and set the table. I was going to make cookies as well, but as always happens when I cook, it took a much longer time to make than I expected. Afterwards they taught me a French card game and then we played Scrabble! In French! I always managed to think of words, but usually they were pretty short and not many points. Also, I decided that French scrabble is easier because you can conjugate verbs in sooo many different ways and and E's and S's to everything. It was a rather unconventional Saturday night I suppose (hanging out with my host parents?! what?!) but it was grand. If you couldn't tell, I'm a HUGE fan of my host parents.

C'est tout. I have so much more to write about! Life is too busy, but I'm in much better spirits this week. I also have tickets to Milan for break in a few weeks! WAHOOOO!

Classes and Such

I am far too sleepy to think of a creative title for this post. It's been a bit of a rough week so far. Just really busy and I was ridiculously tired on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday even though I slept plenty. I started getting sick yesterday, so I'm working on getting over that ASAP, because being sick on weekends is the worst.

So since tomorrow I'll be done with my second week of class and have my schedule figured out, I thought I'd tell you all a bit about my classes.

Topics in Advanced French Language and Composition:

Out of the four French grammar classes that IES offers, this is the highest one and thus we sort of got to choose what we'll be learning. Since it's the highest level, it was optional, but I realized that I'll probably never study fine points of French grammar on my own and I could definitely stand to review some things (relative pronouns?! the past subjunctive?!). The professor, Madame de Pous, is who I aspire to be someday. She wears bright blue eyeliner every day and lots of purple and has ridiculously spindly legs (which I could do without). She's intimidating but interesting and has a good sense of humor. And she knows everything ever about French. We do some grammar exercises and some vocabulary and culture. Last night we went to a lecture about Poland just to practice listening and such. It was basically a panorama of Polish history and some culture since the beginning of Poland, and although it wasn't very well organized it was super interesting. And since we actually had to take notes, I managed to pay attention for the full hour and a half. As a side note, I learned that croissants are a Polish invention. What?! There's a 3 week long Polish festival in Nantes this month, and I'd rather like to go to more events, especially the pierogi-making class.

Theatre Production:

An odd class. There's only 8 girls in the class, including me, and it is taught by Monsieur Mariel, a typical theatre type. We've spent much of the two classes we've had playing theatre games, which are very complicated when in French, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know what to do half the time even if they were in English. We've done a lot of massage, a lot of partner acting activities and a lot do with making sounds and facial expressions. We were just told on tuesday that the play we will be working on from now on, and putting on at the end of the semester, will be created from the works of Albertine Sarrazin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertine_Sarrazin

who we will all be playing in different sketches. I think Monsieur Mariel will be basically writing the play himself, or piecing it together from her works, and he said it will probably incorporate dance at some points. It sounds like it shall be very modern and bizarre, but fun. Overall, there's very little work for the class, since everything is in-class, except for one or two weekend rehearsals. And plays are always a hoot.

Teaching Internship:

Obviously, most of the class consists of the internship itself, which is shaping up to be a right shit show. I'll post about that later (after it actually materializes). But the class is good, mostly about ideas for lessons and what our goals should be when teaching. I think it will be very helpful, both for the internship itself and as a good introduction the the profession of teaching. It is also going to require quite a bit of work, as we are supposed to record lesson plans meticulously and make notes as to how classes went, and there's an oral project at some point as well as a final reflection. And I don't get credit for any of it from UPS. Harumph. I'm trying to forget that little detail so that it doesn't affect my work for the class, which I intend to do anyways.

Sociology of Culture:

One of the classes I finally decided on at the University of Nantes, after trying out quite a few last week. There's only 35 students or so in the class, which is fairly small for a college class here, and it's a little more interactive than some (although French students really seem to hate participating in class, so there's often painful silences). I'm the only American in the class, although there's quite a few Erasmus students, which I think the professor likes, since it is about culture after all. So far we haven't really gotten past the sociological theory part of the class, but I think it should be decently interesting, and if nothing else fairly easy to follow.

Spanish:

Also at the University of Nantes, and quite interesting. I'm currently taking 3 consecutive 1-hour classes on Thursday, and just had the last two classes for the first time today. The first class is Expression Orale, which is basically conversation class. It's taught by a young Spaniard (with a fantastic accent) who basically has to struggle to get the Frenchies to say much. And I don't blame them completely, because many of them don't speak Spanish well at all. Today we played a game with numbers, and then played a vocabulary game, and next week we're going to talk about the Geography of Spain (!!!!). Since my Spanish skillz have definitely decreased since coming to France, this shall be quite beneficial.

The other two classes are taught by a different professor. The first hour is Latin American Civilization (basically a rehash of the Colonial Latin America history class I took freshman year) and the other class is A Panorama of Mexican Cinema, which should be interesting. The annoying thing is that the professor continually switched back and forth between French and Spanish, which makes taking notes incredibly difficult. Most of the time I didn't even realize when he changed languages, since I can understand both fine, but it's definitely not going to help me keep the languages separated, which is what I'm having the biggest issue with right now. I'm currently thinking it would be incredibly beneficial for me to spend the summer in Spain.

So there you have it. I'm only taking 5 classes (I'm counting Spanish as one, because although it's technically three different classes, it's only 3 hours total), and not getting credit for one, so academically this semester will not be very beneficial. I'll probably only get to take classes for my major and minors next year. But I'm going to be extremely busy basically all the time, mostly due to my teaching internship and extracurriculars, so its okay.

Bon weekend!

Weekend #2

I have spoken probably 50 words of French this weekend. This depresses me. It's way too easy to hang out with Americans all weekend and not speak much French at all.

It's been a mildly action-packed weekend, which is great. But it's also been extremely cold which has made all of this being out-and-about mildly unpleasant. For some reason the cold here really gets to me, partly because buildings are never properly heated here, so I never feel like I properly warm back up after being out in the cold.

Friday afternoon IES organized a walking tour of the historical sights in downtown Nantes for us. It was grand because the IES center is in a different part of downtown, so I haven't seen much of the historical bits, but I was way too cold to pay attention to most of the history the tour guide was telling us. There was way too much standing around during the two hour tour. Also the tour guide had one of those ridiculous tour guide voices, and spoke extremely slow so we could understand, and I just kind of wanted to giggle all the time because he sounded so bizarre. Ex: La VILLE de Naaaaant-uhhhs. He liked to unnecessarily elongate words and stress other ones. It was nice seeing the inside of the cathedral and the courtyard of the castle though. Anyhoo, I ducked out early and went home for a bit.

In the evening IES had organized dinner at a creperie for us. We have a social coordinator, a graduate student at the university, and her sole job is to organize fun, cheap activities for us to do in Nantes. It's awesome. Unfortunately, the dinner cost 15 euros, which is far from cheap of course, but it was well worth it. I had a four cheese crepe, and then a caramel crepe, accompanied with cider (the carbonated alcoholic kind). DELICIOUS.

Afterwards I went to a bar with Elise, the social coordinator, some of her French friends that had gone to the creperie as well, and two other Americans, Stewart and Jessie. Cider and spending lots of time out in the cold on Friday made me very sleepy, but it was fun just sitting there drinking delicious German beer and listening to Elise be crazy. She's a funny lady in the best way possible, and very animated all the time. I had a good time listening to all the French conversation around me and asking questions about French questions every once in a while.

Saturday I tried to find people do stuff with, but most people seemed to be busy. Which was actually fine. It was a lovely sunny day, so I walked downtown and took pictures. I walked to the Jardin des Plantes, which I'm sure will be a fantastic place in the spring. I found the school where I'll be doing my teaching internship, bought a used Agatha Christie book in Spanish for 1.80, got an espresso and apple tart at a cafe, and looked around the soldes (sales) that are everywhere. I also bought credit for my phone for the first time, which was a bit of a debacle. I figured I could figure out how to do it myself, so I bought the recharge card and then went into a bookstore to put the credit on my phone. Even though I would say I can understand French very well, I had no idea what the automated lady was saying. At all. I tried about 5 times to work my way through the menus to where I could enter in the recharge code, but I really had no idea what I was doing. So I had to go back to the store and ask the man that sold me the credit to do it for me. I think he found me silly.

After spending allll day by my lonesome, I met up with Cori, Sarah, Katie and Stewart for dinner, then went to a different Katie's house to watch The Road, a horribly depressing movie with good ol Viggo Mortensen. Katie has a cat, which made me quite happy. Getting home kind of sucked though, because trams run very infrequently at night, and Katie lives nowhere near me.

Today I went on a run then got coffee downtown with some people. I haven't seen my host mom since Friday afternoon, and it's been a little weird being home alone so much. She worked during the day yesterday, wasn't home last night or this morning (I'm assuming she spent the night at her boyfriends house?) and is working this evening.

I need to stop making such massive posts. Gaaaahhhh. After this week I'll talk more about classes and such. Last week was just a test run, and by friday I should have my schedule actually figured out.

La Langue Francaise

As mummy dearest suggested, I am going to start doing some thematic blog posts in an attempt to cut down on the length of posts. And this is a topic that has some relevance to today, because I found out my results from the IES French test we took during orientation. (Albeit inadvertently. I overheard Madame Rouchet, one of our program directors, talking to the phonetics professor about how all of us Americans tend to stand around speaking in awkward French to one another. I laughed, and Madame Rouchet and I started talking about my French comprehension. And she asked me if I wanted to see my test scores).

Not to toot my own horn, but out of all 60 students that took the test, I scored the 4th highest. And I got the highest listening comprehension score out of everybody. My grammar score was fairly average, which didn't really surprise me, since it's been a looonggg time since I've thought much about grammar.

Considering that I haven't spent much time in a French speaking country before, I was rather pleased to find that from the first day I arrived I could understand things fairly well. I can understand everything that they tell us at IES, I can understand everything my host parents say to me (except when there's some obscure vocab word thrown in) and I can understand the news on TV. Understanding French children, any movie or TV show and slang-y French is much more of an issue, although I can generally get the main idea. I plan to watch lotsss and lotsss of French TV to work on this.

My speaking ability seems to depend on the day largely. Some days are just peachy, others not so much. I can communicate everything I need to, but my accent largely depends on the day and who I am speaking to as well (better around French people of course).

Overall I'm very pleased to be in living in a country where I actually speak the language decently, unlike my previous experiences. It's made the transition into life here pretty easy. Although it's notoriously hard to make French friends, I'm sure speaking French already will help enormously. And I'm having a grand time with my host family because we can actually have decent conversations about a multitude of topics.

Speaking French is really quite fun, it is.

Une Semaine a Nantes

Yesterday was officially a week that I have been living in Nantes (I'm not going to count the first night I was here, because that was all a blur anyways). It's been a week with very little downtime so far, but that's really how I like my life so I suppose it was alright.

Last sunday we returned from Orientation in Tours, and returned to our respective host family's houses. After dinner at 8 (dinner at my house is always at 8, which is sort of painfully late for me) I watched a movie on TV while my host parentals did other various things in the living room. This has sort of become a bit of a ritual over the last week. After dinner, which ends somewhere from 9-9:30, I usually watch TV until 11ish in an attempt to be social with my parents. Also, it's really good for my French. I can understand the news okay, and basically everything my host parents say, but TV shows and movies are a different story, since they speak much faster and use alot more slang of course.

I suppose I haven't really talked much about who I'm living with. My host mummy is Corinne, who is 54 (at least I think that's what she told me) and works at a car or an insurance call center (not really sure which). She works semi-irregular hours (one evening a week and most weekends) so she's not always around. Her boyfriend, Michel, also basically lives with us, although he has a small house in the country near Nantes somewhere. His grandpappies were lettuce farmers on the land near his house, which I think is just precious.

Aaaand orientation in Nantes was boring and not worth commenting on really. It mostly made for me being very exhausted this weekend. I did some shopping with mes amies on saturday, saw Somewhere (the newest Sofia Coppola movie) and went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant to celebrate my friend's birthday. It was oodles of fun but too expensive. Et voila.

La Premiere Semaine

I do apologize that it's taken me so long to update. The last week has been ridiculously busy and I've had very little free time. It's been one of the longest weeks I've had in a very long time.

So last Thursday (January 13th I do believe) we all returned to the IES center to depart for our off-site orientation in Tours. It was a 2 1/2 hour bus ride, which I was not pleased about. I spent most of last week sitting. In Tours I roomed with Sarah who goes to Georgetown. I don't even remember what we had for dinner the first night at the hotel restaurant, but every single meal we had there over the course of the next three and a half days was three courses (soup or salad, entree and dessert plus bread) which all got to be a bit much after awhile. And they decided not to serve red meat or pork to better accommodate everyone, so we ate ALOT of fish.

The first night was a bit of a welcome to the program, and group introductions from all 60 of us. But the main reason we were in Tours was to see the Chateaux de la Loire, all them famous castles of France. The first one we saw on Friday morning was Loche, which was the oldest but also the least impressive probably. The most remarkable part of it was the dungeon, which was used for political prisoners for a very long time. But since it's so old its mostly just ruins at this point. There was a lovely view of the cutesy little town of Loche though.

In the afternoon we went to Chenonceau, which is one of the most famous chateau of France. It's built basically in the Loire, which is pretty ridiculous, and has some very lovely gardens. Chateaus are very cold in winter, because they're basically big uninsulated stone buildings, which I didn't exactly appreciate, but they are also alot less crowded which was cool.

In the evening, after our return to Tours, I walked around the city with three other girls. It's kind of unfortunate that we didn't have a day in Tours, because there's alot of cool stuff to see in Tours itself. It's pretty lively at night, because it's a university town, but we were a little unsure how bars work in France, so we decided to just walk around. When we got back, one of the girls I was with, Dana, was locked out of room so we watched TV, which was horribly depressing. We watched a show about dysfunctional, mildly abusive couples who have relationship interventions. Not any better than trashy American TV.

The next day was chock full of more castles. First we went to Blois, which was cool because it's actually in a fairly decent sized town, which is not all that common for castles, from what I can tell. My favorite part of Blois was the stained glass porcupines (porc-epic!) which were in windows throughout the castle. I also very much liked the fleur-de-lis which were painted in gold all over the ceiling of the big hall ( I can't really think of the appropriate word for it). I think because all of our tours were in French all the historical information hasn't stuck with me super well. I understood the tours just fine, but things are much easier to tune out in French.

Possibly my favorite part of orientation was lunch on Saturday, which was simply epic. We went to this little hotel/restaurant in the countryside right next to the Loire. From where I was sitting at lunch, I could see swans across the river in the Loire. It was just so typically lovely and French. Most remarkably, it was probably the most expensive meal I've ever had, since it was five amazing courses. I had a vegetarian meal (there was a bit of confusion since people with allergies or special diets got blue cards at every meal, to let the servers know, but most people just assumed that I was vegetarian, and didn't ask about allergies, which was fine). First we had a sort of puff pastry egg roll, filled with a mixture of vegetables. Next was one of the prettiest salads I have ever eaten. The non vegetarians got a plate filled with various meat items, and I tried somebody's pate (gross) and foie gras (not as gross) just for funsies. After that was the main course, which for me was mashed potatoes with a little puff pastry boat filled with mushrooms in cream sauce on top. Soooo goooood. Then came the cheese plate (amazing chevre and some sort of muenster) and then dessert. Dessert came on full main-course sized plates because it was HUGE. There was a creme brulee, a fluffy chocolate cake with fruit sauce and a scoop of raspberry sorbet. So basically three desserts. Everything was amazing, and I was obscenely full afterwards. I wish I would have taken pictures of every course because they were all beautiful.

After that we went to Chambord, which is also one of the best known French castles. I was probably the most impressed with Chambord, because it's very striking and HUGE. I got lost multiple times, and separated from the people I was attempting to walk around with. It's got all these awesome towers, and a double helix staircase in the center. It was Francois 1er, who had a huge nose. That was really the most remarkable thing about him to me. And his official crest was a fire-breathing salamander, which I enjoyed. There was an overwhelming amount of stuff to see in Chambord, so after seeing the main rooms and the balcony, I went outside and played frisbee instead. We were there fairly late in the day, so the sun started setting and the castle turned all pink and orange. It was just fantastic.

After our return to Tours, I was too tired to do much of anything, so I just played Set with some people. One of the most exhausting parts of orientation, aside from getting up early every day, was just meeting so many new people. It was like summer camp or freshman orientation. 60 new people is just an awful lot. But after knowing them for about a week now, it's much better. Just keeping track of all those names is overwhelming at first.

Sunday, after three hours of French exams, for placement in our French grammar classes(French grammar?! What?! I haven't thought about grammar in years), we returned to Nantes. After two intense days of tourist-ing, I was fairly glad to be back.

That was alot more in-depth than I intended. So. I guess I'll finish writing about orientation in Nantes later, because it's saturday and I have things to do.

Je Suis La!

I'm hanging out in my precious little room in Nantes, waiting for my host mummy to get home from work to make crepes for lunch. It's been a crazy 24 hours or so.

When I got to my gate in Chicago, I sat by a bunch of people who looked to be about my age, assuming that they were probably also studying abroad in Nantes, or at least France. And correct I was. They were all from Illinois Wesleyan, and mostly going to Nantes. The flight was incredibly uneventful, except that I actually managed to sleep a bit. I was on the aisle in the middle section, and there was a open seat between me and the other guy, which helped ALOT. Upon arriving in Paris, I got my huge suitcase and got my passport stamped and then was off to the train station in the airport. Apparently they don't really do customs in CDG, because they literally just stamped my passport and didn't even ask me any questions about what I was doing there. It was ridiculously easy.

There was a three hour wait or so in the train station, but since I was with a bunch of other people, it was okay (our numbers just kept amassing as the day went on, and by the time we got off the train in Nantes there was probably about 20 of us). I managed to buy a train ticket in French, and order a baguette sandwich and a coffee. I didn't exactly anticipate problems, but it was rather reassuring that I am intelligible in French. I rather wanted to stay awake during the train ride, to see the picturesque scenery and whatnot, but I mostly failed. It actually wasn't a particularly pretty ride, since it's rather dreary in France right now, but there were a few cute little villages. When we arrived at the train station in Nantes, the large group of us went to the exit, where we expected to be met by an IES person, as we were promised in the information we had received. No such luck. So we were all standing around like lost children, which was highly unproductive. If I had been by myself, I would have just gone to get a taxi, since that's what we were supposed to do anyways. But I didn't want to leave the whole group, so me and another girl convinced everyone that we were indeed supposed to get taxis and go to the IES center. It was a little frustrating.

So we arrived, got all our luggage upstairs by means of a tiny little elevator, then I chatted with people for about 45 minutes until my host mom arrived. The IES center is in an old building downtown, and seems like it should be a good place to hang out and such. I didn't really get to thoroughly explore, since I wasn't there for all that long.

My house is about 20 minutes or so from downtown, not really within walking distance. It's really cute and well-decorated and not really what I expected. It's probably a newer house, but by nature of it being European seems much classier than a newish American house would be. Another thing I noticed right away was that all the houses on my street are white. How dull. There's a small kitchen, living room and a sunporch thinger downstairs, and four bedrooms upstairs with two bathrooms (one is just a bathtub and a sink).

For dinner, for which Corinne's boyfriend Michel was also in attendance, we had a cheese omelette, some baked veggies and a salad. After came the cheese (my host mom tells me she likes cheese alot, so I do hope we shall be eating lots), and then la galette des rois, which you can read about here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_cake. It's traditional for the festival of the Epiphany. Of course, I got the "feve", the trinket inside the cake, which is now sitting on my desk. It was also super delicious. I told my host mom that I enjoy cooking, which she is quite excited about. She's hosted quite a few students before me, and she said that I'm the first one who knows how to cook. I'm not really sure what to cook though... She also told me that she doesn't really eat a lot of meat, mostly fish and veggies, which is awesome.

I've spoken the most French in the past 24 hours than other day in my life, and it's nice to know that I can get by just fine. I watched the news for a bit yesterday and could understand basically everything. Corinne said my French is quite good, which is reassuring.

I didn't have a chance to post this before orientation, so I'll do that now, then write about orientation.

Just trying out the picture posting thing... Chou Chou as a baby kitten with her friend echidna.

bienvenue

Here be the inaugural post for my blog. I'm leaving for Nantes, France a week from today. I'm ridiculously excited to get out of the Wisconsin cold, as much as I'll miss dear Bruisy and Mummy. Also, I literally haven't had anything to do during the past two weeks, aside from outings with friends, and I'm not good at not being busy. Not that I've been completely bored, just all this free time is a new concept. Not only am I looking forward to France, but learning again will also be lovely. Anyways, since I have yet to pack or do anything related to getting ready for France (aside from raiding the bathroom for toiletries) I really have very little to say. I do intend to post again before I leave though. Ballyhoo!