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.