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.