Live Long and Prosper

I watched Star Trek with Sara the other night. Why isn't Star Fleet real? I would totally enlist. And with my anticipated B.A. in International Studies, I would be completely in sync with their "peace-keeping armada." Besides, I've heard that the Laurentian System is quite beautiful this time of year.



AHHH IT'S STARTED.

Like I said in the last post, I can still remember getting here like it was yesterday. It feels like I haven't been here long, but then I think of all of the excursions and trips I've taken and tests I've taken and it's kind of surprising. I did go through some pretty hard acculturative stress that I honestly haven't gotten over, but I've made some great friends, had some interesting experiences, and have had a lot of time to think. My French has gotten better, which is obvious when one lives in another country for an extended period of time. I've eaten amazing food, and have gotten used to saying "meet me by the castle" and "we're eating in front of the cathedral." I've been to a wine tasting, I've paid my respects to American soldiers in Normandy (Memorial Day came early for me, ha), and climbed to the top of one of the most famous monastaries in Europe. I've dealt with train strikes and volcanoes, and I've soaked up the sun in the South of France and lake-side in Angers. I've made stupid mistakes, and had a few drinks too many here and there. I haven't done nearly enough shopping, but I've eaten more than enough food. I didn't do as much traveling as I had hoped, but I saved more money than I had expected. I've found that I'm obsessed with Granny Smith apples and that I actually don't like pasta all that much. Even though the peanut butter doesn't taste the same, Nutella is a pretty good substitute. I've eaten way too much chocolate and not enough crepes, too much yogurt and not enough ratatouille. I haven't made french friends, but I met some pretty cool international students and I'm planning on keeping in touch.

But now it's time to leave. And apparently Mary Poppins left her never-ending carpetbag in my room because my little suitcase can fit a lot more than I expected. Hopefully I can say the same for my larger suitcase, because Inga bought some cherry liqueur that I'd really like to pick up, and H&M has some awesome tank tops that I want to snag on my way out. I've already talked in my first Paris post that I've been fairly underwhelmed with French fashion, but H&M and Zara never fail me.

It's been really therepeutic to finish exams and come back to the foyer and recycle all the class papers and textbooks that I'm not taking back home. I ditched both exercise books today. Ahhhh. I'm 2/3 of the way through with exams...just two left. I can't wait to be done. We're having a wine and cheese to celebrate on Thursday afternoon.

So now I'm starting to clear up my room and I'm pulling stuff off my walls and so on. My shelves look empty and my walls are looking bare again. It's weird to not have my map up. It's looking more generic here now, like how it was when I got here. I forgot it looked this depressing without my collages and maps and photos. I have all of this food though. And some stuff I don't know how to get rid of. I think I'm going to hide some of this stuff like mini surprise gifts for the nuns. Like my lamp. I'll leave it in the cleaning closet. And my blanket that I got from Casa (where I saw the cah-yutest elephant teapot today) I'll just tuck in with my other blankets. And the food I may just leave in the kitchen cabinets. Bon appetit, les filles! I bet that old nun who didn't know I wasn't French will hear me rummaging and will creep up on me again. She's got amazing ears. I don't even know where she comes from, but all of a sudden she just pops up in the kitchen and shifts towels and trashcans around while talking to us in indiscernable spanish-french. She's like the kitchen fairy. I think I'll miss her.

Trying to get my luggage to the airport will be interesting.

I can't wait to buy my first legal drink in USA. I wonder if I can buy an American flag in Houston. Or one of those stickers for my face. And I want to wander around WalMart at 2 AM on Sunday. And not have hooligans yelling in the street at midnight on a weeknight.

Knowing how many hours I have to travel is intimidating. Whatever. It's worth it. I'm taking my eye mask and I'm going to attempt to sleep a bit. Gaga's Alejandro video comes out Monday, and the Glee finale is Tuesday. It's like America is welcoming me home. It's a sign.

I just hope that the Powers that Be realize that I've been dealing with train strikes and volcanoes and ice storms anytime I've ever had to go ANYWHERE and will let me get on my plane and off the ground at the scheduled time.

Strasbourg! La plus belle ville du monde...

This is ridiculously overdue, but what can I say? It's been pretty busy this month.

For the weekend of May 13-16, also known in the Christian calendar as the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, I went to Strasbourg, France with Inga and Rebecca, two American friends also studying French at CIDEF. First of all, thank goodness I go to school at a Catholic university that feels obligated to give us time off to go to church/be with our families/get one last vacation in. We left on Thursday morning and came back on Saturday afternoon.

Angers is in the west of France and Strasbourg is so far east that it's practically Germany (more on that later) so it was really interesting to watch the landscape change during the train ride to and from Strasbourg. Angers is part of the Loire Valley, so it's flat and green, but almost a bright, colored-printer-paper green. If you've seen any aerial photos of the classic chateaux of France, that's what we're dealing with. It's also very immaculately kept, for the most part--all gardens are neatly trimmed, etc. By the time we got to Strasbourg, the trees and grass had become wet (because of the rain, but the colors struck me as "wet") and the green had become a deep evergreen. It actually reminded me a lot of Southern VA/Northern TN/West Virginia. It was a very pretty train ride.

Unfortunately, it rained for the first day, and it was very, very cold. My fingers were numb when I held my umbrella. Our hotel was kind of a dump, but that didn't matter too much because a) it was cheap and b) I'm a college student. I've always, always seen worse. But the TV didn't work and the shower head was crazy with practically no partition to keep the water from spraying everywhere. The internet also didn't work in our room, and we had to pay to use the computer downstairs.

The food, though. Glorious! I've been subsisting on mostly fruit and yogurt lately, so I wanted to eat some MEAT. From about 1870 to 1919, Alsace and Lorraine were a part of Germany (or Prussia, at that time). Napolean III had picked a fight with Bismarck, and the French army was absolutely destroyed. Typical. The Prussians took the two departments in retaliation because they are so rich in carbon. As a result, "French" children went to German-style schools, spoke German as a first or second language, and basically became full-blooded German citizens. In the rest of France, maps showed Alsace and Lorraine shaded in black, and the country was literally in "mourning" for their lost brethren. It became this deep wound on the French psyche, and is one of the reasons that France jumped so quickly into WWI at the height of nationalistic sentiment in Europe. At the end of WWI, Alsace and Lorraine returned to France, which was confusing to everyone by that point. Even today, Strasbourg and the rest of the area retains a lot of it's German heritage. Strasbourg is even right on the border of Germany. There's a line on the city map, like: FRANCE / GERMANY.



The moral of this story is that there is a lot of fantastic food in Strasbourg. For lunch, we had Flammekuchen, which is a really crispy, thin pizza with creme fraiche and mushrooms and bacon. We also saw a bunch of the little pastries and breads that are unique to the region. But the best was the dinner on Friday night, when we all had regional specialities. The image above is what I ate: Baeckeoffe. It's basically three meats, potatoes, and carrots cooked with white wine and cooked in a "terrine." I loved the terrine so much that I picked one up for myself to take home. Honestly, it was a little dry, but I'm sure that's something I can learn to adjust. I was seriously jealous of Inga's pork knuckle with sauerkraut. Mmm. It looked delicious. I noticed that many restaurants in this area had what I can only describe as "family" seating. I'm very used to very small tables that only seat two people, four at the most. However, at two restaurants in three days, we were seated at one end of a long table that sat anywhere between six and ten people. I watched hostesses seat two different parties at the same table. It was interesting. I kind of liked it. It fit with the cozy atmosphere of the region. We also ate lunch one day at a sushi restaurant that had a conveyor belt that moved all of the dishes around the room. It was really cool, actually. And one of the cheapest meals I've eaten all semester!





We also visited the cathedral, which is huge and beautiful and will probably always stick in my mind. It's very gothic and mysterious looking because it's made out of sandstone. Inside, I lit a memory candle for my grandfather, whose mother was from Germany and who was Catholic. Never let it be said that I am not thoughtful. Also, Petite France was absolutely stunning and basically straight out of a children's book. The buildings are all timber framed and white with steeply sloping roofs. Interestingly enough, it's called "la Petite France" because it used to be the area where all of the french prostitutes did their business. Now it just sounds (and looks) like it should be a part of Disneyland. It was in this area that I was able to get my pretty terrine for only 25 euro!

We also went to a few gardens, but other than that, we just wandered around. I loved it, though. Strasbourg is definitely a city I would love to come back to. Only about 10 days left in France! It's a weird feeling, but more on that later.

Blah blah blah no title here.

I really can't believe how fast this semester has flown by. I'm down to three pages in my planner before my flight on June 6. Scary! (I'm also almost done with my journal. I had to buy another one last week.) I took a test today in one of my Socio-Cultural Studies class, and my final is just three Saturdays from now! (Yes, a final on a Saturday. I don't get it either.) It's kind of weird, getting my final exam schedule and having all of my teachers start talking about it, but I guess it's getting me in the zone. Meaning I'm stressing out some. (a lot.) Sara says I need to find something else to worry about.

On the one hand, I feel like I've just gotten here. I remember almost falling asleep on the train, I remember getting to the foyer and being locked out, and being just awkwardly new here for like a week. But on the other hand, I feel like I've been here forever. I think about all the stuff I've done, like the excursions, and all the material I've covered in my classes, and I realize that yes, I have been here for three months already, and the time to go home is coming up, possibly a bit quicker than I'm ready for. Just thinking about studying for the history final makes me want to curl up into a ball and sleep.

My classes haven't been "hard" in the typical sense, but there's definitely an added layer of confusion and twistiness when it's all in another language. I'm not studying the French Revolution, I'm studying la Révolution française. And France doesn't have a National Assembly, it has une Assemblée nationale. And those are the easy translations. Plus, in the time period we've covered in history class, France has had a few monarchies, a few revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848), two empires, and five Republics. I'm going to have to make the biggest timeline ever... But yeah, it's like that with all my classes, the whole language thing. But it's getting a lot easier. I haven't started thinking in French yet and English is still the first thing that wants to spill out of my mouth (I say "thank you" way too much around here) but I can at least correct myself and write out complete sentences without having to erase something. It's the little things in life.

I'm leaving for Strasbourg tomorrow morning with Inga and Becca for just a few days. It's supposed to be raining the whole time; wonderful. It's my last travel of the semester, so I hope it's worth it! I was supposed to go to Cinque Terre, but all of the trains were full, so we had to cancel our reservations. I certainly thought I would have been able to travel more than I have, but it's really, really surprising how expensive it it. We also didn't get a lot of breaks, so I would have spent the money if I could have visited a city for more than a day and a half. However I have gone on some spectacular excursions to places that I wouldn't have been able to get to by train, and I've been able to stay pretty sane. I can't deal with lack of sleep due to traveling. I've saved a lot of money, too, so I won't be broke when I come back, and I'll be able to save for a car/an apartment after college/etc.

So, yeah, I have almost exactly 25 days left! That looks like such a big number to me, but it's really not. I changed my flight so that I fly into Jackson instead of Memphis, and I'll be stuffing my face with Jerry's Catfish the day I get back. I can't wait. I can't wait to bake and cook. I keep having dreams about Kitchen Aid Mixers.

Sidenote: it's amazing how much chocolate they have here. I really don't even eat that many sweets at home, so I'm going to have to kick this habit in the bud ASAP starting June 7, but Monoprix literally has an aisle dedicated to chocolate. Not one side of an aisle, but TWO sides. Chocolate. Everywhere. It's a cross between a dream come true and type 2 diabetes waiting to happen. I just bought a three pack of milk chocolate bars because I know that I'm going to want them Sunday when I get home from Strasbourg and everything is closed. It's going to be weird to like, be able to get milk and eggs on Sundays when I get back to the States.

And driving. I might need to borrow my neighbor's kid's toy jeep to practice for a few days before I trust myself with the Sebring. That, and I broke my rosary that I hung from the rearview mirror that had been blessed by the archbishop of Rome, so Jesus won't be protecting my travels anymore. I curse the hastiness in which I tried to move it from my car to mom's before my trip to VA. I've never been so nervous driving in my life. Haste makes waste.

Also my bed is going to be really, really tall. French beds are obscenely low--like, the top of the mattress hits the middle of my calves--and my bed at home is obscenely high. The top of the mattress is at my hip and I've gotten pretty used to having to hop a bit to get up into it. And I've been using this crappy roll pillow because I never got around to getting a normal one, so my firm, square pillows are going to be awkwardly large but divine.

Saw my baby boy on skype last night, and I can't wait to cuddle up with him for a week straight. I can't wait to take him to school with me too! Such an interesting mix between a guard dog and a teddy bear.

Like I said, it's the little things.

As much as I'm having conflicted feelings about leaving France, nothing is going to compare to hearing that the plane is beginning it's final descent. I may kiss the ground. And buy an American flag and wear it around my shoulders like a cape. It'll be good to be home.

Spring Break, Part II

Picking up from where I left off, we were in a taxi cab on our way to the hotel by Charles de Gaulle. Ibis in Roissy-en-France is probably one of the worst hotel experiences I've had in a while. The staff was generally unhelpful, unavailable, and un-nice (I know that's not a word, but I'm trying to keep with the "un" theme here). The room we were in is small and dark with only one window, but surprisingly the bathroom was kind of nice. Even as I say all of this, I'm going to have to deal with it all over again in a month when I stay there before my flight home. At least I know what I'm getting myself into this time around, though. And I know where I can go to eat dinner (hint: it's in another hotel).

On top of this, the news was not good and it was becoming clear that Mom wasn't going to be able to get out anytime soon, so she started crying and I almost wanted to peace out and go back to Angers and sleep for a couple of weeks. But I was a good daughter and started looking up other options. Like taking a ferry across the Mediterranean and flying out of Tunisia. Or taking the train to Madrid and flying from there. Or taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Or boarding a trans-Atlantic cargo ship as a passenger. Never, ever let it be said that I am not resourceful.

We ended up not taking any of those options and Mom rebooked herself for Thursday. By Monday morning, we were getting out of Ibis and back into the hotel that we loved so much in the center of Paris. The room was smaller, but we had a little bit of a balcony. There was just a shower though, and one with only a curtain, so water got everywhere and it was generally not fun. I wish we could say that we branched out for food, but I tend to find places that I like to eat and then keep going back, so that's what we did. We also finally got to go see the Eiffel Tower, and even though we didn't go up into it, we did walk around a little bit. It's always just nice to get out and walk around a little bit. Tuesday night, we went out for one last dinner and I had the best crême brulée and hot chocolate yet in France.

Wednesday, I went back to Angers. I left Mom at the hotel and I stayed perky and smiley so that our parting wouldn't turn into a sea of tears. Mom watched me until I turned the corner, which, yes, did make me cry a little bit but IT'S OKAY! because I'll be home very soon. It turns out that all of the attractive french men are in the army and wandering around the train stations. The TGV I took back to Angers was brand spanking new with bright seats and a very "modern" design. I liked it. I hope I get to ride in another one like that soon. It honestly felt like I hadn't been gone at all; it felt like coming home. I spent the rest of the week just hanging out, catching up on TV shows, sleeping, and reading.

I know. I live such an exciting life.

And that's it! Class started again and now I'm one week closer to being home!

Spring Break, Part I

I had two weeks of vacation for spring break, from April 9-26, and ended up spending the bulk of it with my mom. I was up at 5:30 the Saturday after classes let out, and on my way to Paris by 6:45. Her plane from Atlanta was a couple of ours late, but that was fine because I actually love hanging out in airports. So I had some breakfast--an espresso (they grow on you) and a croissant--and I read my new edition of Better Homes and Gardens from cover to cover. All in all, a good morning. When she finally exited the terminal, it wasn't a huge hysterical crying affair, luckily. I think that if we haden't been skyping each other religiously since February, it would have been worse. But we got our museum passes (which I highly recommend) and took the RER into Paris, which cost 9 euros for each of us! Ridiculous.

Our hotel was in the Latin Quarter, the oldest area of Paris after the little islands, and just a few blocks from the Sorbonne, only of the oldest colleges/universities in France. The rooms were soundproofed, which was great because Paris in general is very loud. I had a great time showing mom the typical Parisian vacation: the Louvre, the Orsay museum, and all of the other typical stuff. I have to say that anything less than five days in Paris is not enough if you want to see everything. At the end of each day, we curled up and watched International CNN and BBC World.




We spent an entire day at Versailles. The chateau itself is overwhelmingly and obscenely decorated and packed with rude tourists and tour guides. But afterward, we wandered in the gardents and ate lunch there, too. We both had the bruschetta at one of the little restaurants located on the grounds, and it was absolutely delicious. The bread wasn't too dry or hard, the cheese was only slightly melted, the halved cherry tomatoes were so sweet and warm, and the surprise of the spinach, pesto, and balsamic vinaigrette really made it perfect. I'm pretty sure they made my pear crumble from scratch, too. Yummy. It was one of the best meals I've had in France. Next, we headed to Marie Antoinette's getaways: the Petit Trianon and her hamlet all the way at the edge of the property. The Trianon was much more of my style--it had more of a Regency English feel, and unlike Versailles, they actually followed the caveat of "less is more." The hamlet was stunning. It was really interesting, coming from the tightly controlled and immaculately trimmed gardens of Versailles, to wander around rolling hills filled with winding paths, creeks, wild flowers, a grotto, and an open-air music room. The hamlet was a little farm where Marie Antoinette and her close friends dressed in simpler clothes, raises animals, and kept vegetable gardens. There are still sheep, goats, rabbits, cows, and even a few peacocks. I seriously wish I could impart how beautiful and serene it was. I wanted to just lay on a hillside and watch the swans in the lake and take a nap.

A few other things I would recommend to anyone thinking about taking a vacation to Paris: a boat tour of the Seine; a visit to the archeological crypt below Notre Dame; attending a Sunday afternoon organ concert at Notre Dame (free); and spending an afternoon at the Luxembourg Garden, making sure to take a little tour of the statues of the various women of French history that are in a semi-circle around the fountain.

During this whole time, the train conductors were on strike. This meant massive delays and cancellations. Mom and I found out that our train to Aix-en-Provence was cancelled, and that morning when we got up, I just happened to check online and saw that a train was scheduled to depart that morning...in half an hour. We were very lucky that it was still early morning, that the train station was close by, and that we had a wonderful taxi driver. We got there with 5 minutes to spare, and off we went! The Lyon train station is much bigger than I had thought, and I almost killed mom running to catch the train (sorry!), but we made it! After a quick conversation with an employee on the platform ("Our train was cancelled. We're getting on this one." "Okay."), we were good to go! The train was blissfuly empty and mom was able to nap a bit but also be awake enough to appreciate the scenery. The South is so beautiful and diverse. Cezanne lived in Aix and his Mont St. Victoire paintings do more than enough justice to the landscape. I spent a week with Emilie Dayan and her grandparents in Fos-sur-mer a few years ago and we covered a lot of ground in her car--mountains, islands, marshes, and the seaside! As breathtaking as the green hills of the Loire Valley are, they all look the same after a while.





Our time in Aix was nice and relaxing. We mostely ate, wandered, and did some shopping. Unfortunately, our hotel was further out this time around, and we had to take the bus to get into centre ville. But there was a market that first day where I bought my first real souvenir from France! (Sidenote: "souvenir" is a French verb that means "to remember." The more you know!) Mom and I went halfsies on four placemates and four napkins in a traditional Provençal print. The colors match my plates, so I'm really excited, and they weren't even horribly expensive! This is a photo from the internet, but it's the same colors and pattern:





We also went to the Cathedrale St. Sauver, which is famous for its cloister which was constructed in the first century using stones from the Roman forum that used to stand in Aix. We went on a little tour of the cloister that was all in French and explained the engravings on the columns, so I got to impress mom with my French --> English translation skillz. There were two Australians there though that got their noses out of joint that the tour guide couldn't do it in English, too. Aix is not Paris! Anyway, it was really nice to just wander around in a different, slower city, and to sleep in and read. This hotel didn't have English TV channels, so I think it got on Mom's nerves a bit, but it was good for me to listen to French while on break and to keep up with world events too. (Like volcanoes.)

We thought our train back to Paris had been cancelled, but there was just an error on the website. So, luckily, Mom and I had seats! The hallways between the cars and the stairwells between the two levels were full of people. Other than that, though, the train ride was fairly uneventful. Unfortunately, amidst my discussion (in French!) about the nuclear summit in DC with our taxi driver on the way to the hotel, we discovered that Charles de Gaulle Airport was closed, so both of our flights for the next day were cancelled...

Cliffhanger! And my fingers are hurting and I have class soon.

So there was this beach in Normandy, and one day in June the Americans kicked some ass on it.

Okay, well that's not quite true because the Americans actually didn't get as far up the beaches as the British and the Canadians, but whatever; my American pride chooses to ignore these minor details.

I had to be at the university gates at 6:15 that morning (last Saturday) which meant leaving the foyer at 6:00, which meant getting up at 5:25. When my alarm went off I definitely flailed around in bed for a minute or two, simultaneously trying to figure out why my alarm was going off so early and also turn it off really fast so that I wouldn't wake up any of the other girls on my floor. These walls are really, really thin. After having gotten dressed, I went to the kitchen to get some fruit out of my mini fridge and one of the entrances was LOCKED. Luckily, the other one wasn't, but I was still a bit annoyed. It's kind of like when they lock up the cabinet with all of the dishes and glasses for a weekend--how am I supposed to eat now? I guess my thing is, if you're going to give us a kitchen with our own mini fridges and stuff, why would you lock part of it up?

I digress. I did make it to the buses and everything on time, except Monsieur Melin didn't ride with us. He's also on my list of things I'll miss. He's so amicable all the time, and provides really funny commentary. I kind of feel bad for the students with a lower comprehension level of French because they're really missing out. But another teacher rode with us and I was pretty impressed by him for reasons I'll explain later. This time, the whole gang was together: Inga, Becca, Katie, Nolan, and myself and it was a general good time, except the Notre Dame kids all holed up right behind us and chattered away at 6:45 in the morning. It really got on everybody's nerves and I may have been a bit snappy when I tried to lean my seat back and the guy behind me was like "uh your bumping into my knees" and my response was "well, I'm sorry but I've been trying to go to sleep and it's been a bit difficult!" The only consolation is that he sounds EXACTLY like Tim Gunn. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear him say "make it work!"

We finally got to the D-Day memorial around 10ish and went in. This photo is blown up to EPIC proportions in the lobby, with two captions:

The first is to the left, and it's more like a source caption, but it says, "June 6, 1944, Omaha Beach (Saint Laurent-sur-mer). 7:30 AM. Photo US Army." To the right, in larger font, is "On June 6, 1944, on the beaches of Normandy, more than 10,000 young men fell for our liberty." Yeah, I might have gotten chills. The rest of the memorial is dedicated to the progression towards WWII starting with the Treaty of Versailles, then describing the huge depression in Europe, the rise of Hitler, Nazi and fascist propoganda, the outbreak of WWII, Vichy France, the resistance movements, the general badassery of Charles de Gaulle and eventually the Normandy operations from June to August, 1944.

And there are photos--lots and lots of photos, most of which were shown during the two short films that I watched. I had no idea that photographers and video cameras followed both Allied and Nazi forces around, but it was pretty impressive. The first film was a split screen with the left side showing video reels of Allied commanding officers going over maps and weather reports and resistance reports, then the soldiers loading up onto the boats and getting ready. The right side was the Vichy France/Nazi/Resistance activities, so soldiers looking out over the channel, resistance participants cutting telephone and telegraph wires so the Nazis couldn't communicate, derailing entire trains loaded down with Axis equipment and so on. And then the next morning where the Allies started moving, and there are some pretty impressive shots of the entire fleet of ships moving across the channel with the planes flying just above them. On the right side of the screen, the Nazis finally see them and get all freaked out and start scrambling to their stations and so on. Finally the two screens merge into one and it's just a bunch of shelling and explosions and shots of the men crawling up onto the beach and Rangers basically scaling the side of a cliff because they're, you know, RANGERS.

So the first film was mostly the actual D Day operations and the next was more of the general Normany liberation operations. There were lots of photos of french women crying and clutching soldiers and soldiers carrying kids and animals out of the rubble and frenchies sewing American flags and stuff like that. Again, chills. There were also a lot of photos of dead soldiers and decimated cities. I've wondered why a lot of cities that we've driven through have these huge ugly General Steel-type buildings but now I know that it's because a lot of the country side and cities were absolutely destroyed by the fight between the Allies and the Nazis. Our teacher told us that they basically would go from Nazi stronghold to Nazi stronghold and shell the hell out of it until the Nazis didn't have anywhere to hide and had to surrender or retreat. I'm certainly in no position to judge, but it doesn't seem like that's the most logical way to save a country--I mean, where are all these newly liberated people going to live if all their larger cities are nothing but rubble. And when I say rubble, I mean RUBBLE. There were photos of groups of people (french citizens and soldiers alike) just standing around in the middle of heaps of razed cities with barely, if any, buildings standing. And I'm just such an academic and history freak that I can't stand the thought of destroying centuries of history.

But all of the frenchies seemed pretty ecstatic in the photos, so I guess that's what counts the most.




Thennn we went to the American Cemetary which was pretty humbling, especially after watching those films and discussing them over lunch. The Cemetary is actually on American soil, so I went to America just last week! And by bus! The Cemetary reminds me a lot of the cemetary in Arlington, but on a smaller scale. There about 10,000 men buried there, and there's a small chapel on the grounds, as well as a wall inscribed with the names of all the men that died on during the operations. Every cross (or Star of David) is marked with the name and hometown of the soldier, as well as their division. I definitely teared up a bit at least once. And felt really proud too. My patriotism has grown a lot since being here in France--not necessarily that I think we're the most legislatively efficient country or that we don't have any problems, but that I love America, and we have a good history save for a few significant hiccups (our horrid treatment of the Native Americans and Japanese-American citizens, along with McCarthyism and segregation, mainly) and I think I could even stomach an American history class now just because I want to learn more about my own country. I used to HATE American history.



Anyway. Next we went to the Pointe de Hoc, which is where the Rangers scaled up the sides of a cliff like the monkeys they are and kicked the Germans around for some fun. All in a days work. But the whole point of Pointe de Hoc is that it hasn't been cleaned up, so the holes are still in the ground from where shells hit and the concrete buildings are still all crumbly. It was kind of fun to run around in them, especially with all of the heavy stuff that we'd dealt with earlier. Also, leaving Pointe de Hoc, there was a road named after Bedford, Virginia, where my maternal grandmother's side of the family is from, so I kind of freaked out a bit in the bus.

The final stop was the German cemetary, which I really don't have a lot to say about. I mean, it was pretty, but after learning about and seeing photos of all of the Americans that were killed by these men...I didn't really want to stick around and admire their bravery or anything. Of course, they were probably just doing their job and wanted to go home as soon as the rubber hit the road, but it was a bit difficult to be there.

On the way home our teacher-guide person put a bunch of songs on that were written or sung by french people about the War, along with the english version of one: "The Partisan" by Leonard Cohen. (BTW I listened to Leonard Cohen's live in London concert CD and I might be hooked. I'm definitely buying it when I get back to the States.) I really liked listening to his commentary, from an aesthetic point of view. I like it when french people are very careful with their prononciation and enunciation; I appreciate it from a french-as-a-second-language point of view but also I think it just sounds better in general like that. When frenchies talk really fast I think the beauty is a bit lost. I kind of wanted to record it so that when I get frustrated, I could listen to it and be like "ahhh, THIS is what french can sound like!!" He also passed out a paper that had all of these photos of like, camembert cheese and cows and apples and cidre and so on and was explaining how these are all distinctly Norman products.

So that was my excursion run-down...my last excursion of the semester! (I can't believe I'm going to be home so soon...it's kind of crazy!)

It's halftime, y'all.

I've been living in France for two months now and I have two months left to go until I go back to the States. On one hand, I think "wow, two more months!!" because the first two seemed to drag on for a while. But then I realize that when I come back from spring break, I'll only have a month left! The time is really going to fly by. Four months really does seem like the best amount of time for me to be here--I kind of wonder: If I didn't have all this stuff laid out for me to do when I get back (camp, My First Place(tm), and senior year), would I want to stay longer?

The weeks tend to fly by faster than I realize. Like, it's wednesday already! Given, I had a test yesterday and one today, but still. All of a sudden I look around and it's wednesday or thursday. I have a paper (short and handwritten, and on history, thank goodness) due on tuesday and a short oral presentation on wednesday, and I hope to get those knocked out on sunday or monday, which we have off.

MI MADRE IS COMING. I would just like to repeat this for anybody who didn't know about it yet. She's coming, I'm going to snuggle up to her the first night like a chick to a mother hen, and we're going to eat all of the bread and cheese in Paris. And then we're going to Aix, where I will continually freak out about being in the same city that Cezanne lived in, and where we will eat so much bruschetta and other Fritalian dishes. She'll be here just past half-way through the semester, so I'll get a little bit of a fresh breeze from home. Then I'll just have, what, five weeks of classes? Interspersed with two more breaks (thank God for catholic countries) and then before I know it I'll be packing up my little room and heading for Paris.

There's a new nun at the foyer and I don't think I like her. I want to know where my little white haired nun went! This one accosted me and Sara on our way out of the kitchen on a sunday after I had gone in to grab my knife, fork, and spoons from where I had forgotten them while washing dishes. I was wearing flannel pajama pants(because it was Sunday and I like to relax on the weekends) and she made some crazy face and was like "did you just come from cooking?" But, like the other nuns, she's from Spain and her accent was kind of thick, so from there on out I basically didn't understand what she was saying. And so I was like "oh, no, I had just left these in there earlier..." and she said something else that I think was somthing along the lines of "oh, I thought that you had been cooking in that," referring to my pants. It was kind of weird. Yes, I cook in comfy clothes. And what are you even doing here on a Sunday? You nuns are never here on the weekends--hence me cooking in flannel pants. I'm pretty sure she's the one that moved all of the dishes back into the locked cabinet, which annoys me because the other nuns were like "oooh the weekends you can use these dishes under here!" Hm. This is sketchy to me. She was also kind of harassing this girl at dinner last night too: handing her an envelope and then circling back around TWICE to be like "you need to take care of this" in a really serious ominous voice. I'm surprised the girl wasn't like "look. I will. But right now I'm enjoying my mashed potatoes." She clearly wasn't as fed up as I was.

I want my cute nun back: the one that laughs and is like "ahhhh the americans!" and then doesn't say anything else, or if she does I can just laugh and smile and say "oui, oui!"

On the upside, we're having potage (a smooth, creamy vegetable soup) as our appetizer tonight. Nothing can get me down on a potage night.

Some lists for you all:

Things I will miss
-Walking everywhere. 1) Because I strongly believe that it keeps me in shape here and 2) because it's nice to not have to pay for gas, or take the bus, or ride a bike.
-French specific cuisine. I'm talking about galettes, croque madames and monsieurs, and moule-frites. Yes, I can make these things at home, but I'll miss ordering it at a restaurant, or being able to buy them pre-made at the store.
-Trains. They're easy, cheap(er than a flight), and kind of fun. I don't have to check baggage, and the scenery is pretty nice.
-French notebook paper, which is basically graph paper. I like being neat, so I think I'll miss being able to perfectly indent my notes.
-The architecture. I've come to the conclution that I love French history, but not daily life (for other things that will make up a very sarcastic--not whiny!--blog post later this week), and for this reason I LOVE the architecture. I love looking out my classroom window and seeing the cathedrals, walking by the chateau, and just walking down the street and realizing that we don't have this kind of architecture in Mississippi. The white stone and the iron railings of the 19th and 20th centuries all the way back to the earth-and-wood buildings of the Middle Ages. It's amazing.
-The church bells. While they annoy me at 10:00 on a sunday morning while I'm trying to sleep, the bells have been great. They let me know what time it is as they go off every 15 minutes during the day and they're nice background noise. And I've gotten USED to them, as in, I think it's going to be weird to NOT have church bells. I think every time that the bells ring at the chapel on campus, I'll feel a bit nostalgic. I know that there are some bells in Oxford (oh, they just went off right now! It's 1:30 PM right now. Ding, dong.) but just...not like here.
-The people I've met. I've met some pretty cool people at CIDEF and I hope we stay in contact. To be honest, I haven't had the kind of connection with them like I had with the girls from 2008 (who I still talk to regularly) but they're not bad. I kid, I kid. We're going to go eat at a restaurant tomorrow that only makes soufflés. YES!
-The nuns (for the most part). They're cute--except for that new one--and I want to write a little card for them when I leave. They've been so accomodating and understanding that I have NO IDEA what they are saying most of the time, and they're always like "ahhh did you sleep well?" Adorbs. Plus I'll always be able to enjoy the look on people's face when I tell them I've lived with nuns.
-All of the cheese flavors. Notice that I did not say "types." Because let me tell you something: I thought all cheeses were made the same way here. Meaning for all of the normans who make camembert, the cheese ends up tasting the same. (Fun fact: Apparently it's not "real" camembert if it's not made in Normandy, which is weird to me. What is it called, then? It's kind of like that riddle: if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, does it make a noise?) But no--we are not in the land of Kraft. Every single camembert I've tasted, which is about five brands now, tastes different, has a different consistency, and different rind texture. The one that the nuns serve is drier and blander, while the one that I've picked as my favorite is soft, creamy, with an almost crumply rind and a nice nutty flavor. And that's just for ONE type of cheese. There are also Tommes, Brie, Gruyère, etc. The same with the bread: no two boulangeries produce exactly the same baguette, and the differences aren't subtle at all. I've had some amazing baguettes and some crappy baguettes, which I didn't think was possible.
-The bikes that the postmen ride. I need to take a picture eventually because they really are cute/cool/funny. They have the Hulk of kickstands too.
-The mama's walking their babies around in strollers covered in clear plastic. I just feel like they're saran-wrapping their babies, but I love it. They clearly don't want them getting wet/cold. Frenchies really do take their babies everywhere, too, and there are a LOT of babies and strollers around.

Things I can't wait for
-The food from home. Omigod, the food. I'm talking, like, a serious BBQ sandwich with potato salad and baked beans. Cobbler. Ribs. Chicken breast marinated in Italian dressing and grilled. Mom's chocolate chip cookies. Banana bread with chopped pecans. French toast (which doesn't seem to exist in France). Sausage and really crispy bacon. Overeasy eggs. Buscuits and molassas. Chicken salad. Ham and pea pasta. REAL steak. Pot Roast, brisket, pork chops. Greasy american pizza. Junior whoppers with cheese but no onions. American-style chinese food. I'm literally drooling all over my keyboard right now. (The bells just went off again...1:45!)
-Drip coffee. Yes this gets it's own hyphen. 8 o'Clock Coffee Columbian blend with two sweet n'lows and a generous splash of Land o'Lakes Fat-Free half and half. If you have never tried this coffee + this half and half, do it. Next time you go out to the store, try it. It's amazing. You can thank me later.
-Being able to understand people when they talk to me. I am getting better at inadvertantly eavesdropping because I can understand French for the most part (when I first got here I had to translate sooo much in my head and it's more second nature for me now) but I'm ready to go to a restaurant and understand what a waiter is saying to me. Subpoint: I'm ready to be able to understand people the FIRST time they talk to me, without me saying "excuse me? I didn't get that."
-Cars. I might need driving lessons when I get back though. I might just need to take a few practice laps around the neighborhood to get my sealegs back.

What I'll find/am finding really bizarre
-Not hearing chinese all the time. It's kind of becoming background noise already. I thought the other day, "wow it's going to be weird not hearing this all the time." There are a LOT of chinese students here.
-Some french words are a lot easier to say than english words. "La couverte" comes off the tongue so much easier than "the silverware." I already talk english with some French thrown in because either a) I've forgotten the english word at that moment or b) it's easier to say. "Tu rentre chez-toi?" is faster than "are you going back to your house?" and here the french version actually makes more sense because "chez" means just like, where you are staying, where you rest, while the American version of "home/house" has more of a connotation of actual ownership. So for the students staying with a family, "chez-toi/moi/lui/elle/etc" is more correct, because they just sleep and eat there, instead of owning their place. So, voilà, a little french lesson. (you also go "chez le dentiste," not "au dentiste" because you're going to see the DENTIST, not his office, but you do go "à la patisserie" because you're going to the store, not the patissier. The more you know.)

I have to get ready to go to class now, but I'll be back later to write about Normandy and other stuff I forgot to talk about. Bye!

Okay, this is my whiny post. Read at your own caution.

This is going to be pretty stream-of-consciousness with no real rhyme or reason. Pleave forgive any whiplash-inducing topic changes.

and no caps from here on out, because additional finger movements are superfluous at 10:00 pm. plus for some reason i like the way the font looks with no caps. i feel like it all flows better without interuptions. somewhere, my english teachers of yesteryear are crying.

went to paris this past weekend with sara and margaux and stayed at margaux's house which is in Massy, a suburb of paris. her family was really nice, and there's an exchange student living there named walter. he's colombian and iranian and for some reason he ended up being named walter. this will never, ever get old or any less hilarious. we went out friday night, it was pretty cool. the two other times i've been there i didn't go out so it was interesting to see the city at night. The next day we got up to go shopping and spent all day wandering around. however i was rather unimpressed with parisian shopping, to be honest. i kind of wonder if it was just the area we were in -- le marais. it may just have a general style, but then again we stopped in other stores and it was basically just a massive repetition of the same style. i did come out with an old, olive military jacket that i have to definitely wash because it smells like a vintage shop but i think it'll be cute once i finish working on it. and that's about it for paris, actually. i looked for a purse--couldn't find one i liked; looked around for other stuff, too. i'm excited for my mom to come with me so we can do touristy things. ahhhh architecture and museums!

ugh i'm such a nerd i can't even handle it sometimes.

speaking of, i've been working on my schedule for this next semester and i think it's going to work out pretty well. it looks like i'll end up taking 18 hours + thesis. i have to choose between INST 203 and FR 331 at some point, which is kind of scary because they're both required by my respective majors. great planning there, y'all. and i think i'm going to take that intro to american law class? just because if i'm going to swear off law school definitively and say i never, ever want to be a lawyer, i'd better know exactly why. although knowing me i'll fall in love and go to law school and be a paper pusher for the rest of my life.

i've been in a weird mood lately. i think i'm at the bottom of that inverted bell curve we learned about in predeparture. (for those of you who don't know what i'm talking about, it's basically a way of analyzing culture shock/homesickness.) last night i told sara that if i could go home right now, i would, and it's only slightly less true today. it's really hard to like, put into words, and i know that is annoying because i just sound like a whiner. but really i just want to be in my own bed and watch 24 straight hours of tv, even if it's qvc or something, and to bake and take a bath and drink drip coffee and not have to constantly translate in my head. i miss the quiet. living in a city is loud and i live right off a busy street. i want to not have to ask people to repeat things 5 times, or worse, have someone re-explain something three times and STILL not understand the words that are coming out of their mouths. i miss the american way of doing things. i miss that publics works projects actually get done in a timely manner in america. and i feel like i wear the same thing all the time...because i DO. the totality of my clothing takes up two shelves and a couple of wire hangers, plus one drawer for underwear. and i have four pairs of shoes, one of which is too small and another which is too big. this is literally the longest i've ever been away from my house, too, which i'm sure is playing a role. The five weeks i spent here in angers in 2008 was the longest before this.

it got a lot better today, though. i skipped my afternoon classes and went for a long walk and that helped. i got some sunlight which i'm sure kickstarted my serotonin and the exercise probably gave me some endorphins. ("exercise gives you endorphins, and endorphins make you happy. happy people just don't kill their husbands.") and then today i worked at the USA table for international day and danced some to the cha cha slide and cupid shuffle. i attempted to do the soulja boy dance but just kind of embarrassed myself so i went back to sneaking peanut butter and jelly squares.

i need to go walking/running more. it felt really good.

i love my grammar professor. she actually explains things and they make sense to me. i feel like i learned more about how the french language actually WORKS in our one hour of class today than i've learned in two or three weeks. and it's NOT that complicated...it seriously made me so happy. because in the end, i want to be speaking correct french, not just throwing together whatever sounds right. my langue professor is kind of the same way, but is less clear in her explanations. i dunno. i understand that she's telling me something, but i guess i don't get the way she explains it. but i can tell now from her body language when she stands over my shoulder that she's about to correct something i've written. i've started just saying, "okay, qu'est-ce que j'ai fait cette fois? (what did i do this time?)" and she always snicker-laughs and points it out. but she's always nice about it and i feel like i can ask questions and stuff even though half the time i have to look up explanations in english.

i got a 16.5 out of 20 on my History test. yesssss. in France, that's a really good grade. at the bottom of one of my mini essays, she wrote that my essay was very satisfying. and i had a lot of "TB"s in the margins, which stand for "très bien = very good." i seriously love it when i get good grades and i feel like my teachers are kind of proud of me. again: i'm such a nerd. and a teacher's pet.

what else? i guess i'm going shopping this week/weekend. and i'm going to normandy on saturday, so i'll try to put up pictures next week. i have to be at the university at 6:00 in the morning. i'll be sleeping all day friday in preparation. we have three weeks until spring break, and i cannot wait. and after spring break there's only a month left of classes. i can't decide how i feel. i don't want to be weird and bitter and count down the days, but i'm kind of counting down the days.

please, france, i want to be in love with you again. i promise to come out of my funk soon.

i think i'm just thinking about stuff too much. i'm second guessing a lot of my life choices i've already made and trying to think about what's in the future, and i wish i could be in a familiar enviornment while i think about everything. but alas, i'm abroad in a country whose language continues to baffle and confuse me.

i need to buy some more chocolate tomorrow.

Dear Mom:

You'd better start getting ready for this:




And just to prepare you a little bit, because things are generally, shall we say, "looser" in France:



I can't wait to see you! It's less than three weeks away!

I can't believe people used to live here.

On Saturday, I went on an excursion with CIDEF. We didn't even have an entire bus of people, so it was pretty nice and low key. We still lost someone though. I'll talk about that later though. I had to be at the university at 7:15 AM, and when my alarm went off at 6:00 AM, I just stared at it trying to figure out why I was getting up so early. I had legitimately forgotten. But luckily I remembered and I dragged myself out of bed and got there. There were some other Americans and some Asians, but I predominately stuck with Inga and Becca for the trip. The three of us made a good group. The bus ride was about 3 hours out, and we slept for most of it. The rocking was actually quite soothing. The first chateaux was Amboise, in the city of Tours:




This is also the burial place of Leonardo da Vinci, who designed the chateau, so it was really, really cool to see that. But he just has a marble slab, as you can see in the photos, so it was kind of a let down I guess. I mean, he's one of the greatest minds in all of Western history and there's not much to his final resting place at all. There's not even a legit barrier keeping people from walking all over him. Oh well; it was about the same with Jacques Cartier's burial place in St. Malo.

Amboise itself was pretty generic as chateaux go. I mean, that sounds kind of harsh, but it's basically a big stone house. There wasn't much there (other than da Vinci's bones) to distinguish it from the other chateaux I've seen. There was a real fire going in one of the fireplaces, which was nice because it was actually quite cold. I will admit that the garden was amazing. The bushes are all trimmed into spheres and there is a bust of da Vinci. There are also some arabic-themed motifs there, I haven't figured out why yet. But other than that, there wasn't much ambiance. Kind of like with Mont St. Michel: after a while, all the big, empty stone rooms start to look the same.



Next, we walked a little bit aways to da Vinci's house, Clos Lucé. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, which was a shame because there were some really nice looking reproductions of his work. A bunch of his quotations were etched in glass and framed on the walls, so we spent some time just looking at those and discussing them. They were all in french though. It's interesting, because it's pretty easy to translate them, and I've read the english versions enough, but it's almost like there is a difference sense with the french versions. It's like when I read The Stranger for the first time in french, and I realized that the english and french versions are basically two completely different books. (Not really, of course, but there is so much that is lost in translation.) Next, we did a brief tour of his garden, but there really wasn't much to see since nothing has budded out yet. From the Terrace we could see Amboise, and apparently da Vinci liked to sit outside and "gaze upon" his masterpeice. Not exactly my idea of the best way to pass time, but then again I haven't constructed a huge chateau that's lasted a couple of centuries.

The three of us then got some lunch--I had the most amazing pizza with goat cheese, oregano, semi-cooked bacon, creme fraice, and HONEY. I'm going to have to find a recipe or something because it was pretty spectacular. We didn't realize it until later, but somewhere in Tours we lost a member of the excursion. I saw her today at UCO, so I know she got back, but, yeah. I can't believe that happened. I think the head count got screwed up or something.




Next, we went to the Chateau of Blois, which was significantly more interesting than Amboise. It's been constructed over four different time periods, and I couldn't get all of them into one photo. The courtyard is mostly white stone, and there is a single white tree, and Becca and I were going crazy over the Lord of the Rings implications. There is a photo of me staring up into said tree, pondering my fate in Middle Earth. The interior was much more intricately detailed than Amboise--the majority of the rooms had hardwood floors and handpainted wall paper. I thought it was wallpaper at first, but then I was like "silly Porter, they didn't have wallpaper then. Someone did this all by hand!" There were also radiators throughout, which was very nice as it was pretty chilly outside. The former royal apartments have been trasformed into a small museum with some statues and paintings, mostly portraits. All in all it was a very good visit.




Finally, my favorite!! They were clearly saving the best for last. Cheverny is most definitely the most "modern." It's still used as a private residence by the family that's owned it for at least a century. I'm pretty sure it falls into the "hunting lodge" category since they still raise hunting dogs and do the traditional hunt during the season with the horses and the red coats. The inside has been updated, and I really, really liked it. I could see myself living there, to be honest. The decor and the general layout of the house reminds me a lot of legitimate American colonial style homes. I loved all of the tulips and crystal and china and I ended up taking some kind of artsy perspective photos.

There is a dog run out back with about 40 large hunting dogs. There's a huge sign that says "do not excite the animals" and when you realize that these dogs hunt down foxes and other woodland creatures, you really don't want to! There was kind of an awkward/bad moment when a small child, maybe 5 years old, started running up and down the side of the dog run and the dogs got all riled up and started chasing him! I was just glad that there was a fence between them...they're definitely not domesticated dogs. I actually felt kind of bad for them, because I just wanted to give them all baths and take them for a little walk around the garden because it seems like they just spend all of their time in that concrete floored dog run.

It was on our way home from this chateau that we realized that we hadn't seen Liz since Amboise. But I guess everything worked out alright? I don't want to talk to her and be like "sooo, did we accidently leave you?" Other than that hiccup, it was a pretty successful day and I'm really glad I went.

In a couple of days I'll be in Paris with Margaux and Sara, and then Normandy beaches the next week! I hope to post another blog just rambling about whats great/horrible about France so far and so on. I took some photos of the neighborhood where I live so I can talk about that some. I hope you're all doing well and I can't wait to see you soon!!

Oh, and all of the pictures of the Chateaux are in this album. I need to do a massive upload for facebook too; I haven't uploaded any pictures the whole time I've been here!

More rambling, because I have a spare hour

I have an hour before I have to head back to class so I think I'll try to finish up this blog post kind of quickly. Sorry in advance for any errors, weird syntax, etc. Tuesdays are kind of horrible for me, because I have five classes from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM, and even then I have to rush back to my foyer for dinner 15 minutes later. However, classes today haven't been too terrible, although it looks like all of my classes are going to give me a test either this week or next week. Joy. I had hoped to go to Poitiers this weekend, but it doesn't look like that's going to work out. I probably need to stay in and study anyway. I have a test in History and a test in Soci-Cultural Studies, and both of those will most likely require some wikipedia-ing in addition to the notes.

On the upside, I got one of my writing assignments back today and it was topped with a sun with a smiley face:

I'm pretty stoked actually. I think my teacher likes me. We had to talk about what career we want and the steps that we want to take, what keeps us motivated, etc. I talked about wanting to come back to France and teach english to younger students, and I think that's what made her the happiest. I found out after I turned it in that she spent a year in England teaching french. And, I also ended it with this kind of philosophical sentence about how I want to keep my options open and not tie myself down. Either way: sunny smiley face.

My room has gotten a bit homier over the past couple of weeks:

Please note the written-but-not-yet-sent post cards, the cards from parents on the walls, my mini-pantry, all my books, etc. My make up bag also hasn't really been touched in a while. I've kind of given up on makeup...none of the girls in my foyer wear it, and it always wears off by the end of the day, so I don't even bother anymore, except for mascara. When I go out, of course I do my makeup, but there's nobody really worth "impressing" in class or in town. And yes, I read PerezHilton. Don't judge.

I've also started a collage on my closet door. The images have come from either Elle or National Geographic and I need to get another magazine soon to add to it. This is just one of the doors; I'll put another photo up if I get a lot more done on it. It's a nice way to pass the time, and I do make sure to read the articles en français:

I do think my favorite part is Alexa Chung sitting on the galaxy.

I've figured out that no matter what anyone tells you, it's completely true: French people do eat a lot, all the time. I haven't seen too much "moderation" since I've been here. They all eat a LOT of white bread, they pile it up with cheese, have dessert most of the time, and when they go out to eat most of them clean their plates. AND the servings in the restaurants are just as big as in the States. Even for lunch, they have three course meals! So, I've come to the conclusion that they just have superior metabolisms and it's impossible for me to keep up, so I need to STOP eating like a French person and restart eating like an American!! In ironic contrast, they have tiny, tiny glasses. It's impossible to find glasses larger than this:

And yes, my nails are purple. I love them.

My mom and I are in the process of planning our spring break in Paris/Aix-en-Provence. It's going to be here in only 5 weeks!! I can't believe that at all! I sat down and looked through my calendar while I was talking to Inga about where we want to go for weekends, and the semester is going to be over in the blink of an eye. Now I really do understand why people always want to stay abroad afterwards. However, I really kind of am ready to go home. Homesickness, I've found, isn't necessarily something that slams into you and makes you cry like a baby. It's more like a lingering pessimism in the back of your mind that constantly compares everything you see or hear to what it's like "back home." It's having a dream about moving into your new apartment and waking up and being disappointed. It's being frustrated that you can't even communicate half of what you want to because it's all in turns of phrases that can't even be translated into the other language. I think that homesickness leads to culture shock--I don't think you can have one without the other, because both require a comparison of the host culture to the home culture. I am having some acculturative stress, but, again, it's not this huge breakdown with tears. It's just...frustration, mostly. And hesitation. And putting off what I want/need to do because I don't even want to deal with getting this or going there or buying that in another language, another city, etc. I've been dealing with this by thinking "I'm going to do A, B, C, and D" when I get home, but maybe that's making it worse.

Hm. Who knows. Anyway, seeing my mom is going to be great, and we're going to tear Paris up and eat all of their cheese and be obnoxious Americans. And then we're headed to Aix for two days after that to just hang out.

I think this week a bunch of us are going to sit down and plan out our travels just until the end of the semester. It all starts with Easter!! I'm headed on a Chateaux excursion the 13th, and then Normandy the following weekend. I'll probably cry on that one. Count on pictures!

Ramblings

I thought I'd just take a minute to talk about some random things about France and living here and everything, since it's been about two weeks since I've done that. First of all, classes are great, blah blah blah. The only thing that isn't so great is that I'm constantly having to carry my schedule around with me because the rooms change from class to class. For example, my grammar class is in room 305 on Mondays, 319 on Thursdays, and 309 on Fridays. My Langue class is in the Philosophy building on Mondays, room 517 on Tuesdays, and 309 on Fridays. So, I can't really keep them all straight all the time.

I'm suffering from girl-crushes on basically all of my teachers (except for my grammar teacher). My langue teacher is also the theatrical expression teacher, so she's very animated and uses a lot of body language and sound effects to explain concepts to us. She also encourages us to read the newspapers, not get hung up on what we don't know, and to read children's books because of their simple words and grammar structure. My expression orale teacher is Marion, and she's 25 years old and tall and has short wavy brown hair and I kind of want to be her when I grow up. She's extremely nice and perky but sometimes she starts talking way too fast and we all give her lank stares until she starts over. I've already talked about my history teacher, and I just feel my inner history nerd light up like a lightbulb whenever she starts listing dates and governing bodies. My socio-cultural studies teacher is so sassy that I just want to admire her from afar without getting close enough to be snapped at. She went off on a tangent the other day about the "neo-bourgeoisie" and how they all dress alike and take "Sunday promenades" after Mass. She's also talked about how the French youth have no desire to work hard anymore and that they get bored after working at a desk for four hours.

I can't believe it's taken me about three weeks to do this, but I've finally done a better job of scoping out the area where I'm living. There are bread shops, seafood shops, flower shops, a butcher shop, a small supermarket, pharmacies, and some restaurants within just a minute or two of my foyer. I'm glad that I don't really have to go all the way down to centre ville to do my grocery shopping.

I've started reading Eva Ibbotson's A Song for Summer and I'm really, really liking it. It's pretty hefty, and her prose took some getting used to, but she's a really gifted writer. Her descriptions of the Austrian country side are making me want to visit Vienna very badly! It's a young adult historical romance, but it's SO much more than a romance. It takes place while Hitler is building power, before he annexed Austria, and there is a lot of mystery about what exactly he is doing, where people are going, what countries are still "safe," etc. The political and historical tension is balanced by the setting of a small drama school in desperate need of a "woman's touch," which arrives in the form of Ellen, the daughter of an English suffragette who really just wants to perfect the art of making Apple Strudel and to make the old castle more comfortable for the children and teachers that live there. I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through it now and I already know I'm going to reread it almost immediately when I'm done.

Annnnnd Sara and I have commenced Mad Men, season one! I've only seen two episodes, but I can already see why this show wins all sorts of awards.

I'm ready to do some traveling outside of Angers. Sara and I are talking about maybe going to Paris this weekend...if not I may take a day trip to Poitiers. Chateaux the weekend after next (the 13th of March) and hopefully Amsterdam soon after. The weather has been absolutely dreadful for the past week...two weeks? And before that it was just cold, cold, cold! I'm ready for sun and clear skies so I can escape the buildings!

un verre du rouge, s'il vous plait.

Sunday (Feb 21) I went on a smaller excursion to some caves around the area. Unlike Saturday, though, I was more on my own for this one. There was a huge group from Kyoto and a group from another US university that stayed pretty cliqued up the whole time, so I just kept to myself.

All in all, this was not the most fanastic trip I've ever taken, but it was kind of cool to see a different kind of achitecture. We first stopped at an old farming village, which was abandoned around the 1930s and has been refurbished to look like it used to. The caves served as stables, bedrooms, kitchens, etc. There were also storage areas, and instead of hen houses, the chickens roosted in niches carved into the rock. Above the caves were the fields that they tended to.

It's not letting me upload any photos right now...the Mont St. Michel post might have overloaded it. But the album is here if you want to see the photos.

Next we went to the winery of Langlois-Chateau, which actually does a very tasty rosé that Sara and I had a week or two ago. This one was cooler...the guide gave us a lesson on how exactly wine is made. He says that all you need are the grapes; there is no need to add anything (i.e., sugar) if you're doing it right. Both white grapes and black grapes have "white" juice, but it is the skins of the black grapes that add color to the varieties of red wine. The longer the skins are allowed to break down into the juice, the more tannin is released from the skins. The tannin is what is "good" for the heart. So, 3-4 hours gives us rosé, about a day gives us a medium red color, and 2-3 days gives us the deep, dark reds that have the most tannin. (I think these are the correct numbers...but basically longer stewing time = darker color = more heart-healthy compounds)

Then the wine is drained from the vats and put into bottles with bottle caps, not corks, then they are stored in the caves for at least TWO YEARS. The guide showed us the storage area...walls and walls of dust-covered bottles. Before he even mentioned it, I noticed a whitish sediment sitting at the bottom of the bottles. (It shows up in some of the photos) Over the course of storage, that sediment builds up and of course has to be removed before they are sold. After the two years (or more) of storage, the bottles are turned on their ends so that the sediment can slide down to the mouth of the bottle. They are put on these huge machines that look like cubes and are rotated a quarter turn every day for two weeks. At the end, the tops are taken off, the sediment scraped out, corks put in, and labels slapped on. Hopefully some wine person isn't reading this and going "NO, THERE'S MORE TO IT THAN THAT!" and I'm sure there is; he probably gave us an abridged version.

Then we had a wine tasting of four different wines: a white, a rosé, a red, and a red that had the consistency and fizziness of champagne. Our guide said that, in short, it is champagne, but because it's not made in the region of Champagne, France, they can't call it champage. But aren't there American champagnes? I didn't ask...wikipedia will tell me all I need to know.

In the end, I bought a bottle of the fizzy red, which is sweeter than reds I've had. I haven't opened it yet because once I pop the cork out, I can't put it back in. Plus, I don't really know how to even open it (it's got the champagne knobby thing), so Sara is going to have to do it for me, haha. I smell a movie night in our future...perhaps Mad Men? I would think that True Blood and french champagne wouldn't mix too well.

So this makes two posts in one day...I think I'm going to take a nap now. I wish my bed and pillow were more comfortable. And that three blankets and two sheets would keep me warm. I think I just miss my big american comforter. Oh well: Spring approacheth anyways.

St. Malo and Mont St. Michel

This past Saturday I went on an excursion to St. Malo and Mont St. Michel. Other than having to be at the University at 7:15 AM and not getting back until 8:00 PM and being hungry and kind of nauseous from the rocking tour bus, it was really cool. Freezing, of course, because both places are right by the sea but Becca, Inga, and I got some galettes in St. Malo in the cutest creperie that kind of reminded me of sea-side restaurants: white beadboard, lavender walls, and lots of windows.

St. Malo is the birthplace of Jacques Cartier, who "discovered" Quebec/Canada, and he is buried in the Cathedral. Being in Europe is kind of surreal to me, because I'm such a history nerd. I always forget that these people actually existed, and seeing their burial places, or walking down the same streets that they once walked down, is a slightly exhilerating reminder that these people lived and breathed and they STILL exist--their bones are right there in front of me. It's kind of like looking at a map and being like "Oh, there's Bethlehem/Gallilee...I could go stand on the same shore that Jesus stood on if I wanted to." The same for Mecca and Mohammad, and the Mahabodhi Temple and Buddha. Anyway, pictures:






Click here if you want to see all of the pictures from St. Malo.

Next, we went to Mont St. Michel, which is an abbey that was built on tiny, rocky "tidal island" in the middle of a marsh in Normandy. It is named for, of course, the Archangel Michael. The story goes that the Archangel appeared to an bishop and told him to build a church on the small island--the bishop ignored him until Michael burned a hole in his skull with his finger. Since then, the monastery has enjoyed important political roles throughout history, like supporting William the Conquerer's claim to the English throne. More recently, Peter Jackson apparently modeled the city of Minas Tirith after Mont St. Michel in the final LOTR movie.

Other than the abbey itself, the entire town is basically a tourist trap. To use the bathroom, I had to pay 40 centimes and the bathroom was wet and disgusting. There were LOTS of places selling postcards, overpriced food, stuff like that. The abbey itself is very beautiful, but without any furniture or any sort of decoration, all of the big, empty stone rooms start to blend together. Photos:






You can see the complete album here if you want.

All in all, it was a good day. It was nice to get out of Angers for a little while. I'll be here this weekend, doing shopping and washing laundry. Hopefully I'll go somewhere next weekend...we'll see. Already planning for Paris with Mom in April, and still looking for someone to go to Scotland with me for the second week of break.

Next: my much less satisfying visit to some cave villages.