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!