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.
I don't find your posts to be that long, though a little photographic intermission would be nice. :) Can't wait to see you babes!
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