Tuesday.

Okay so I don't have a ton to say but I have two fun things and I didn't want to wait to say them.

1.) Finally I remembered to take a camera to the pool! So here's a picture.

You can see the lanes and the lack of flags on the other side of this very awesome exercise ball on which I really want to jump.

2.) We had a conversation club tonight at IES and I met this french girl named Emilie and we talked the whole time and now we're BEST FRIENDS. Well maybe not best friends yet but I can say she's my best french friend in Nantes cause she's my only french friend in Nantes! Woohoo!

Okee talk to you guys later byeee.

Just visiting castles, no big deal.

This weekend IES took a field trip to Mont Saint-Michel, an island with an abbey about two hours away from Nantes. We got on the bus at 7:45 and headed off. The kids on the bus went snore snore snore and we eventually woke up to a view of Mont Saint-Michel off in the distance.

We walked to the top and saw the gorgeous view from there. It was mostly dry around the mountain, surrounded by marshy clay-y wetland area, but I was talking to my family about it later in the weekend and they were telling me that it's only like that at low tide. At high tide, the water rushes in at a dramatic speed; it used to be a huge danger because people would go out searching for shells and get trapped in slightly higher land because the water approached the island with the "speed of galloping horses." Apparently since it's all pretty flat, the tide is late but once it comes, it rises very quickly.

There was a pretty garden in the middle of the top where the commune was:

We took a lot of pictures from the top of Mont Saint-Michel and walked through the abbey, seeing all the ancient rooms where monks ate, prayed and did other monkly things (notice I didn't say monkey... I was tempted.) It was a fitting adventure after having watched "Des hommes et des dieux" (The english title is "Of Gods and Men"), a french film about Cistercian monks who choose to stay and stand their ground when confronted by fundamentalists in Africa. It is a touching film, a little confusing in french, but it focuses more on the human aspect than the religious and there is not a lot of conversation so I definitely got most of it without having to know the details of its historic context, etc. I need to see a comedy here, though; all the movies I've been watching have been phenomenal but so depressing! It is another film I recommend to everyone, though. It's very good and my family told me it's up for a lot of international film awards. Anyway, it was very fitting for me to visit this beautiful abbey after having watched a movie about monks. I'm living a themed life.

We traversed back to the base of Mont Saint-Michel and I took another picture of it in all its glory...

After that, we drove another half hour or so to Saint-Malo, a walled port city in Bretagne on the English Channel. We traversed the wall around the city and then were free to explore as we wanted.

The architecture was breathtaking...

... But it was hard to tear our eyes away from the scenery!

We found big huge rocky mountains that were so easy to climb that we had to go to the top of the tallest one. This is me and my friend Abigail from Bates College in Maine:

There were beautiful ships at the port...

 ...And there were beautiful babes at the beach...

We walked around the town, got some treats at boulangeries and drank hot chocolate at a place where we should have been getting ice cream (apparently the place we went was renowned for its ice cream desserts... we saw far too many pass by us to other customers.) After our snack and rest time we saw some little markets with fruits de la mer outside...

And we got so excited that we just had to go back to the beach and jump for joy.

Elise from California, me, and Preston from Texas jumping for joy on the beach.

Okay, so these pictures and this story might be a tiny bit out of sequence. But I'm sitting on my bed writing this and it keeps falling apart which is very stressful because I have no clue when it's going to collapse on me and so I'm on the edge of my seat at every moment! Well, literally I'm on the edge of my bed. But I'm using it as a seat so I'm basically sitting at the edge of my seat as I write this. Also I had a cup of tea this afternoon and I think (know) it had a fair bit of caffeine in it because I am chatterin' away like a chipmunk here. Long and off-topic story short, we took a lot of happy pictures, had a grand old time exploring and climbing and jumping for joy, I have cool friends...

Cool friends Preston (University of TX) Abigail (Bates College) and Amy (also Bates College)

...and we like wine.

Yummy french wine

...The end. More to come soon when commences Les Aventures d'Amelia et Laura à Paris!!

Regular day

I think everyone who remotely knows me knows what's happening here, or at least how it came about.

En Grève

... That means "on strike" in french and it is a phrase and activity that is verrry popular in France. Our first week here, there was a big strike that had to do with protesting the government-sanctioned increase of retirement age for public transport employees (I think?) and it put on hold all public transport in the city of Nantes – I think select few bus and tram lines ran, but not at regular intervals and not for the entirety of the day. My mom drove me that day because it was something like my second day in the city and there is no way I could have figured out that puzzle. Which was nice.

Today was the second strike that involved public transit, but this morning and throughout the beginning of the day it affect mostly off-lines (i.e. less commonly used lines) of the tram, which I don't use unless I'm going to the university to swim or take my psychology class.

After our classes today, my friend Amy and I went out for an afternoon coffee date to boost our energy and catch up on each other's life history in high school college (where I ordered a drink that was called the "chocolat maison" with "café" flavoring, but tasted suspiciously like it contained brandy... My friend tried it and agreed with me, but I didn't feel it afterward so it musta just been a weird combination of other flavors. Interesting though!) and on the way back we had to squeeze our way through a huge group of strikers in the street to get back to the IES center. Then when I was walking to my bus stop to go home, I had to wait at a crosswalk for 12 police cars and two police motorcycles to pass in front of me.

Literally twelve and two, I counted.

The counting to two was a challenge.

Just kidding.

And these cars weren't like wimpy, pull-you-over for speeding police cars, they were like big vans and SUVs with french policemen WEARING ARMOR inside! I just stared like a typical shocked tourist, my head swiveling back and forth like a tennis spectator's as each new car passed in front of me. After they all passed and I started to walk across the crosswalk, my eyes still glued to the pair of bullet-proof, geared-up policemen on motorcycles, the cars all began starting up their sirens. It was so crazy!

Then a few streets down, I saw a huge group of people holding signs and making a lot of noise, shouting in french and chanting things and tweeting whistles and blowing horns. I made it to my bus stop, which I hoped was running, and there was a bus sitting by the stop but as I got closer I saw that no one was getting on. I asked a lady if we were allowed to get into it, and she told me it had been there a while and the driver wasn't inside.

Deserted buses? People marching and chanting in huge masses down the busiest drag in Nantes? Vast amounts of policemen prepared to be shot at?

Dang, France. Anything else?

Finally the driver of the abandoned bus came back but then he just drove off without anyone inside. Before too long another bus came and we all got inside and it wasn't the normal bus that goes on my line, and all the digital read-out signs on it were saying the wrong things, but it seemed like the other people at the stop were alright with it so I just pretended to be too.

Then the driver turned the bus off and we all just sat there for about ten minutes before he started it up again and started driving through our regular route.

We stopped at a couple of normal bus stops but traffic was really backed up and people kept just running up to the bus and knocking on the door and the driver would open it up and let them on in the middle of an intersection, acting like the whole situation bored him. All the other passengers were completely unphased by the situation and I put on my best "I'm a french student and I don't make any facial expression because I see this kind of thing all the time" face and pushed the "stop" button when i saw my stop coming up, despite the lack of digital sign indications and overhead friendly french woman announcing my stop.

I hopped off the bus and an old man standing at the intersection near my stop stood directly in front of me and said, "Bonjour mademoiselle..." with the intention of telling me something, but I muttered a "Bonjour monsieur, pardon..." and shrugged past him like a true french student.

Finally I made it back to my house and was all hyped up on my chocolate/coffee/brandy(?) drink that I was so excited to start telling this story and then halfway through I lost steam and had to listen to music and check my facebook and email, etc.

I think I'm developing memory-loss-induced AD(H?)D here. My friend told me today I remind her of the fish from Finding Nemo who has short-term memory loss. I can't remember her name. (The fish's in the movie, not my friend's.) I guess that's further evidence to support to my friend's point. Oh well!

In unrelated but just-as-exciting news, I bought two plane tickets this morning! One is to Dublin and one is to Geneva, and my friends and I are hashing out plans to go to Rome in mid-November as well. I'm such a world traveler! This weekend we're going to Mont St. Michel and next weekend I'm rendez-vousing in Paris with Amelia who's in Sweden this semester! And after our weekend in Paris she's coming to Nantes to stay for a few days before heading off on other worldly excursions.

We're gonna have such fun adventures, I just can't wait!

Week #3

It's really weird to think I'm entering my third week here already.

At this point Orientation seems years ago and last Monday a vague memory. Time is really weird here; the days seem to go quickly because they're usually pretty packed, but by the time I'm brushing my teeth and putting on my pajamas, it seems like it has been ages since my alarm went off and I had to get out of bed. I've been through a week's schedule in its entirety so I know now what each day has in store.

I was late to class for the first time this week (luckily it was a class I had already gone to so it wasn't the professor's very first impression of me) because neither of the two buses that are scheduled to come to my stop at the right time showed up. I'm too far away to think of walking there myself – I would have arrived 15 minutes or so before the end of class – so I had no choice but to stand there glancing at my watch every two minutes, tapping my toe anxiously on the sidewalk, and watching the curve at the end of the street like a hawk. The next bus came 17 minutes after my first two were scheduled to arrive. Luckily it was a bus with fewer stops in between, I walked like a person traversing hot coals, and I had allotted ample cushion time to arrive before class, so I only ended up being about 5 minutes late. But still, I absolutely hate being late to anything and I even more hate being out of control when I am running late. I'm used to having at least the commute time more or less in my hands (sprinting to class at school, driving to things at home) and here you just can't have that same aspect of control.

I still don't know why those two buses didn't show up; I double-checked with my host mom later that day to make sure I was looking at the right day on the right schedule for the right bus at the right stop and all that logistical jazz, and she said I was right and sometimes they don't show up or are running late.

C'est la vie, literally.

I'm not exactly sure how to avoid such a problem in the future, since I don't especially want to plan on getting to the IES center more than half an hour ahead of time, but I guess that's better than getting there late.

I did end up loving my Art and Architecture class, it's very interesting and reminds me of studying the art topics in AcaDeca in high school. Except everyone speaks french this time around.

Contemporary French Society looks like it will get interesting soon, once we're studying french holidays and customs with food and traditions in France, though our first unit is geography and I must say I'm not a big fan of that. As much as I appreciate it, I'm just pretty inept when it comes to knowing where things are or what has happened there (which kinda nixes both history and geography departments in their entirety).

I don't deny their importance or the necessity of learning the subjects at all.

Just like I don't deny my inability to retain any information regarding either.

So that's fun.

This weekend was Les Journées de Patrimoine, which is a sort of holiday in Nantes dedicated to learning about and celebrating Nantais history, government, education in general, etc. Basically a lot of things were open or free that usually aren't – pretty much all museums, the hôtel de ville, the inside of the chateau des ducs de bretagne, (pictured in my "pitcho time" post a while ago) and lots of fairs and parties everywhere.

My friends and I celebrated by eating crêpes with IES people, buying some wine and playing some games while listening to a pretty awesome french techno radio station at a friend's house and then going out to a bar not too far from the chateau that had some live music playing. It was pretty packed so we didn't stay too long.

Then I was craving fries like never before and my friend said that a kebab restaurant nearby had some so we all went there and shared some delicious, authentically french fries before heading our separate ways for home (that was all Friday night). Saturday morning we went to a marché downtown that had clothes and shoes and bags and arts & crafts in one part, and fruits and vegetables and cheese and bread and frog legs and whole chickens and cut meats in another part. We all pitched in for some picnic fixings and ate brunch on some nearby grass before retiring home for some well-deserved naps.

Saturday night we gathered at Elise's house to make dinner (her parents were out of town for the weekend and her house is astoundingly beautiful, a perfect mix of ancient building and modern interior design).

After fixing our little french pizza, salad, bread and butter and wine glasses, I started to open our bottle of white wine, wondering why there was a metal wire wrapped around the cork.

Solved that mystery when the cork went flying out of the bottle's neck with a very loud POP, narrowly missing my head, hitting the ceiling, and rolling to a stop on the floor while the bottle steamed between my hands and three girls and I stood staring in awe at the situation.

Turns out not all bottles of champagne say "Champagne" on them.

But nothing calls for celebration like a surprise bottle of champagne and my miraculously still-intact face, so we let the adrenaline run its course through our veins, clinked glasses, and sat down to a delicious dinner.

Afterward we watched a french movie called "Le Scaphandre et le Papillon" ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") which is about a man who undergoes a severe stroke and is left completely paralyzed all except for his left eyeball. With the help of an alphabet arranged from most commonly-used letters to least and an unbelievably patient woman, he blink-dictates out an entire book and dies ten days after its publication (my dad had told me a long time ago that this happened so I was really excited when I discovered that I was watching a movie about it!)

The film is phenomenal but exhausting to watch, so after that we all went home to bed. I'm really interested in reading the man's book now. Its title matches the movie's and was written by Jean-Dominique Bauby. I highly recommend the movie to everyone. It's very well-made and thought-provoking so you should be ready to kinda be blown away afterward. It's one of those films that makes you be very thankful for all you have and take for granted; I found myself clenching my fists and wiggling my toes at certain intervals throughout the film just to remind myself that I was still capable of doing so.

Natation!

Today I swam for the first time with a team! It was so fun, it felt SO good to get back in the water, and it was like a game figuring out what the different strokes and drills and sets were. The pool is really beautiful, nicer than any pool I've swum in (haven't swum in Grinnell's new pool yet... can't wait!) but there are no flags to indicate where the wall is and the roof tiles kind of wrap around in an artsy way so i keep running into the lane line. But overall it was an awesome practice and I'm thrilled that it worked out this way. After that my friend Kelsey-Kei and I walked over to the Université where we had our Developmental Psychology class. It was a gigantic lecture hall with about 200 students and a professor who mumbles really slowly most the time and occassionally speeds up a lot to finish her phrase. It was really hard to understand her alone, but the white noise of all the students whispering to each other, shuffling papers, zipping backpacks, etc. made it even harder. I think I'm gonna stick with the course, but it's definitely gonna be a challenge. I had a little help this class cause there was a girl in front of me taking notes on her computer so it was almost like i had subtitles for what was being said, but the girl left during the break after an hour so I didn't have her as an aid for the second hour and took much fewer/less comprehensive notes. I think most of the important stuff is written in the powerpoint slides the professor puts up every so often, but I'm sure I'm missing a lot in between the vague bullets. As for IES classes, I still have two first days to go, but so far they are shaping up to be alright. I'm not that excited about the two I've been to already, because grammar is grammar and I'm not a hug fan/great student of history. I'm thinking I'll love the Contemporary French Society class and the Art and Architecture class though, and I absolutely adore swimming, so it's three for three.

Catching up

So the photos in my last post are primarily from this weekend, but there are some thrown in that I've been meaning to put in for a while, like the ones of my room and the fortress and the chateau. I visited both of those sites with IES, my program here. I'm also putting pictures on facebook as I go along, so if you have a facebook you can see those too and if not, get one or try to find someone who does or just be patient and wait 'til you see me next and I'll show you all my pictures myself. :)
I start school tomorrow! But only kind of because I just have one hour-long class at IES, so I'm not too stressed out about it. I'm getting to be really good friends with some people in my program and we're already talking about how sad it will be to leave each other at the end of the semester. I think these will be lasting friendships.

Okay, storytime. This weekend at one point I was sitting next to Timothé in the car and he was trying on my ring, and I told him that men don't wear rings very often and he said, well, he was married. I asked him "to whom?" and he said, "hopefully to you!" Cute. Story number 2: Tonight at dinner (God, just typing this I'm starting to laugh again.) we had little baked strips of dough with tomato sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms and different kinds of cheese on top. Some had goat cheese, some had mozzarella, it varied. Blandine asked Thaïs (5) which kind she wanted, and she exploded, "CHEVRE!!" (that's "goat" in french) arms flying out from her body, chair tipping over, plate and silverware flying, Thaïs landing on the ground. After a few tears were shed and booboos checked, more tears of laughter were shed in reflecting on her outburst. Needless to say, the french love their fromage. Story number 3: Philippine (12) and I had a good laugh today when we discovered that "ongles americains" (translated: american nails) is what we in the states call a "french manicure". I wonder what they call them in Germany? Story number 4: These are out of order because I'm remembering them as I type. The first day I got here, Thaïs asked me if I could speak English. I responded, yes, I live in the United States. She didn't believe me, no matter how much I insisted I could, so, in English, I said to her, "Fine, I'll just talk to you in English all the time and then maybe you'll believe me." She stared at me and said, "Je te crois." (translated: "I believe you.")

Pitcho time!

My bed is very comfortable. Or maybe I'm just really tired all the time.

My desk is a little messy, but cute and comfy nonetheless.

My old-fashioned window has shutters!

Jeanne, Timothé and I found a sweet tree when we were adventuring around.

We went to mass this morning in a beautiful cathedral.

La mer at sunset is an alright place to be.

Monsieur LeCrabbe

Their fixer-upper vacation house near the ocean! They got it five years ago.

Left to right around the table: Celène, Thaïs, Philippine, Timothé, Blandine, Jeanne, french baguette.

We used a skinner to skin the apples from the orchard before making applesauce!

Found some spiders in the bathroom... size not exaggerated.

Corn is everywhere I go!

Left to right: Celène (Thaïs' friend) Timothé, Thaïs

Chateau of the Duke of Bretagne on the edge of Nantes.

We visited Carnac, which has a ton of ancient big rocks

We visited the Forteresse de Largöet and got to look around in the ruins.

Le bonheur

They say orientation week is the hardest, most stresful, busiest and most tiring week of the whole semester. If that's true, I'm doing alright. I finally got all the cards I need (bus pass, student ID card, phone prepay card) and today we had meetings with our advisers to determine which classes we're going to take, starting Monday. Somehow I tested into the top level of French Language classes, which they place us into according to our exams taken last weekend during our three-and-a-half-day tour. That's pretty sweet I guess, but I was very surprised to hear it. I think I'm getting very used to feeling very stupid every day – my friend Preston and I were talking about how we don't just feel dumb in reference to speaking a foreign language, but just in simple problem-solving or in matters of common knowledge. It's a whole way of life. We're so used to being confused that we are too ready to not understand even simple things. So we'll see how that goes over once I'm taking Developmental Psychology en français next week. I can't write a lot right now because we're about to leave for the weekend; we (my host family and I) are going to their little vacation house on the beach! I hope it doesn't rain. Tonight was the first dinner I didn't love; it was cucumbers (yum!) and tomatoes put in goat cheese (which is not my favorite) in a hotdish. I ate it all, chasing each bite with red wine which seems to sufficiently kill any unpleasant after-taste. Blandine (my mom) asked me how I found the cheese and I told her it wasn't my favorite; I told them about my mom making goat milk soap and they were shocked, full of questions. I've taken pictures of my siblings and me and my room but I don't have time to load them now. Soon! Au revoir!

Commencement d'Orientation

We went on a three-and-a-half day trip to Vannes, a small ville about two hours northish of Nantes. It was four people in charge and all 80 of us IES programmers, many of which persisted in speaking English to each other even though we were strongly encouraged to communicate in French given that it is the language we will be speaking our entire time here. My first friend Kate (who reminds me a lot of Miriam, a good friend at Grinnell) and I spoke French to each other because we were excited to get started in conversation. I don't even remember all that we did; IES is extremely organized in their affairs and we all just went along like a herd of sheep where they told us to go. We had a lot of free time in each place because they always allow extra time in case of an accident (luckily we don't have a huge accident every time we stop somewhere). There were a ton of activities every day and every night we were exhausted and fell asleep really easily. We toured an island and rented bikes for five hours and traversed the entire island and had lunch, it was so small. And we went to a crazy old fortress and walked all the way up to the top tower, which had an incredible view. There are a lot of students from Whitman and Grinnell here, six or seven from each, and the rest are from other fairly good schools like Bates (two of my favorite people so far are from Bates, one a swimmer and one a rower), Berkley, Harvard, Wesleyan, Northwestern, etc. Many of them seem smart, but I was surprised to find that many people have a very closed mind when it comes to going abroad. The whole point of this experience is to delve into a new culture and language, let down your defenses and try new things. People who know me well should know that's not the easiest thing for me to do, but I find myself being more open to new foods, activities and ways of living than many of the students here. A lot of people also don't seem to understand that the point of being here is to blend in and immerse oneself in French culture, not to persist in being as American as possible and making that clear to everyone around you. I think things will get better once classes start and we all have schedules and are forced to speak French (English is forbidden in the IES Center) all the time. I'm also more easily irritated when I'm tired and I've been tired a lot since arriving here. But it's hard to be cranky when I'm living in a house with four of the coolest, sweetest, nicest and cutest kids on the planet. Tonight Jeanne and Philippine and I played Uno and Timothé and I read Tintin, a french cartoon book together. Thaïs just talks to me nonstop and I catch about 10% of what she says.

Tomorrow and the rest of this week we have continued orientation at the center. We took a four-part test during our little trip to determine what level of french classes we should be in this week. We find out the results of the tests tomorrow and then start our orientation. Then I think real IES subject classes and classes at the university start the following week. We shall sooooon see. A bientôt!

Guys! I'm totally here!

Je suis arrivée! After the most hectic packing I've ever experienced, one checked suitcase, three flights (Spokane to Seattle, Seattle to Chicago, Chicago to Paris) and one three-hour train trip to Nantes, I am sitting in the room I will live in until December 18th. I can't believe it; I'm abroad. I'm too tired and exhausted and generally not-here mentally that it just seems kind of surreal. I got to the IES Center (the program I'm here on) and my host mom and four host siblings (5, 7, 10 and 12 years old) picked me up and took me and my impressively small collection of baggage to their sweet home. It reminds me a little of the Stewart Little movies where there's this adorably perfect little house with character tucked neatly between two large attractive but generally uninteresting buildings. The little dormer up above that you can see from the street is right by the dining room table and Blandine (my mom) told me that it's so quiet in the neighborhood because on the other side of a large, old brick wall across the street is a cemetery. It's so beautiful to look out through that top dormer window through these big coniferous trees into the oooold cemetery on the other side. It's majestic, not creepy.
Somehow I've talked to all of them and I know what we're having for dinner (eggrolls and rice... am I abroad in China?) and that I'm the first student they've hosted and that no one knows English in the family, and all the kids' favorite activities... and I did it all in french without really thinking, I guess. Which is good, right? I'm just too tired to remember the conversations I'm having. But I love my family already. Thaïs (Ta-EES), who is 5, just stares at me and if I smile at her she grins and buries her face in the nearest skirt/pants. In fact, right after I wrote that sentence I looked up and saw her peeking around the door at me and when I smiled at her she giggled and hid behind the door. These kids are the cutest. I haven't met host dad yet but I have a feeling he'll follow the pattern.

Okay it's later now (we were called to dinner so I left my computer open without posting this thread) and I gave out my presents to everyone (steel life, huckleberry jam, stuffed killer whale, sidewalk chalk, bug stickers, silly bands, decorative journal and Uno) and they were thrilled and so thankful. Thaïs won't let go of the killer whale's tail and Timothé (TEE-mo-TAY, 7) took the liberty of teaching me each of the french words for all of the buggy critters on his sticker sheet. Jeanne (Zhan, 10) is thrilled with the silly bands (all of them are, actually) and I have a feeling that Philippine (12) will get good use out of the journal I gave her. We also talked for a long time about huckleberries. Dinner was lovely and Joseph (host dad) came home and is just fantastic. He's a very calm and loving guy, with a subtle sense of humor and a very endearing wink. He and Blandine gushed over my mom's steel life and were very excited to put it in their garden. After dinner Blandine told me they say a little prayer/song every night (they're Catholic) and that I could feel free to stay around or go to my room or do whatever, so I stayed and sat with Thaïs on my lap and swayed to their little mini-hymn and french version of "Father, who art in Heaven..." it was totally comfortable and endearing. Tomorrow is Tim's first day of school so he's off to bed and so am I... I've had a very long and vastly improving time since 7:20am August 31st when I waved goodbye to my parents at the Spokane security gate.