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!