Going all the way back to Friday, I had to get up really early to walk all the way over to Fromont for my 9am French Writing class. It was sort of drizzly and wet when I stepped out the door, but I didn't have time to run back upstairs for my umbrella so I just figured I'd tough it out. The walk to Fromont, in case I haven't mentioned it, takes about a half hour. I got there just in time to run into Christina, who is Kate's friend, and find out where the class was being held. We went in and sat down. The teacher is Beatrix (She told us to call her that. She said she hates being called "Madame" and refuses to get married for that reason. ;P), who is the same teacher as my Actualités class. There were eight of us; two Americans, two Canadians, two Germans, an Australian and an Englishwoman. Only one guy in the group, but I get the feeling that's pretty common when it comes to studying languages (at least in North America). Beatrix is amazing. She moves like a stalking heron, is very friendly and approachable, and is the only French person I've met so far who actively and bitingly criticizes France and French culture, which makes for really engaging discussions. My French Oral class was scheduled right after Writing, with a half-hour break in between; but since pretty much everyone taking the oral class was in the writing class (we added one more girl to our number); we decided that in the future we'll just go straight from one to the next and have a short break or two when we need it. I don't know necessarily how much I learned in those four hours - Beatrix has a tendency to go on tangents really easily - but it was a lot of fun and we were speaking and learning French!
After class, I headed back home through the rain, which had only gotten a little bit stronger. It seemed to be coming and going in spurts. I went to Rue Bordeaux and got a kebab-frites panini (A panini with lamb and french fries. It's probably the best of the ones you can get at the Grignotine) to eat on the way, which was yummy. When I got back to the house, I was coughing a little, but I drank some juice and felt better. After a while the others woke up and went out for lunch, and I took a shower enjoyed not being outside.
That night, Jacqueline had invited a bunch of Géraldine Dhommée's friends to have a soirée and meet us all, since we're the last group to be in Le Nonante. We found out about an hour beforehand that we were supposed to be sort of dressed up, so we all scrambled to find outfits. The evening itself was pretty fun, if a little awkward at points. We met a bunch of older French people, and spoke a lot of French. There was sangria and amuse-bouches (little hors d'oeurves thingies) and we all introduced ourselves several times and said what we were studying and what our intended careers were. For dinner we had several different quiches, salad, cheese and bread, and this scalloped potatoes salad/seafood thing that was really good. I haven't been a fan of quiche since I had it in Paris when I was little and didn't like it, but these quiches have changed my mind! There was a seafood quiche with mussels and shrimp that won me over times a million, and I also tried one with vegetables. I also had Roquefort cheese for (what I thought was) the first time, and recognised the taste; apparently I must've had it before and didn't know. I ended up talking a lot with one of the women named Edvige (I have no idea if that's how it's spelled; it's not a name I'd ever heard before). She smoked, so a couple times I went out with her in the garden while we were talking. She explained to us how to properly taste and pour wine, and another time she told me about the basic principles of the Social Security system in France, and we had a discussion about how in the US people don't want to pay the government so that everyone can go to the doctor and get help when they need it (/my socialist rant). Overall, I had a lot of fun, although throughout the night I could feel a building sinus headache, which I'm sure wasn't helped by the dehydrating effects of the wine. I also asked Edvige and her husband if they knew where I would be able to find the champagne Veuve Clicquot, which Aunt Roxy introduced me to in Seattle and is really amazing. She told me about a liquor store on Rue Nationale that should have it, but they also told me that if I'm looking for good champagnes, Bollinger is supposed to be very good. There were some others they mentioned, but I don't remember them because they were listing them off too quickly. (Aunt Rox, I hope you're paying attention, because I asked for you! :P)
The entire evening lasted about 5 1/2 hours, and we were all ready to drop by the time everyone finally left. We basically came upstairs and fell into bed. This morning, I woke up and felt awful. I had no voice, the sinus pressure had moved down into my throat, and every time I coughed or sneezed my head reeled. I've spent most of today sitting in bed, drinking liquids and taking the occasional headache reliever/fever reducer. For brunch we had the leftover quiche (I tried one with bacon and had another piece of the fantastic seafood one), which was good, although I tried not to touch too much stuff or move too quickly. Dinner was some kind of shredded vegetable in the same slightly acidic sauce she usually uses for cucumbers, then little meatballs and ratatouille, and dessert was a big cake cut in half along the middle with Chantilly crème filling the center. It was all really good, and worth leaving my bed for. I made myself some fruity tea and put in lemon juice to help my throat, which felt really good. I'm sad that I had to get sick right now, though; everyone's going out tonight with the French boys again. Sierra said Ted came back to Tours this weekend to see me, which makes me feel horrible that I can't go. Oh, well; there will be other nights! For tonight, I'm going to take the medicine Jacqueline gave me and sleep!
(Oh, and bonus points to anyone who can guess the origin of my title without looking it up on Google. :D)
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Finally Accomplishing My Reason For Being Here
This week has been interesting; it's the first week since I got here that I have an actual (mostly) stable, normal class schedule. Monday morning I slept in, since I didn't have class until late evening. I went out with the others to buy sandwiches for a late lunch, and then we found a little art supply store where we found folders and paper for classes. The artistes (Valeria and Mamie) needed sketchbooks and pencils for their drawing class, so they found those and everyone went back. I, however, had class to go to.
My new Ancient Greek class goes from 5-7pm, so I made my way up to Rue des Tanneurs and found the classroom. I made sure to ask the professor what class it was, to verify that it was definitely for beginning beginners and not halfway through. I had missed the first class period, but it turned out that several other people had too, so at least I wasn't alone. He briefly went over what he'd talked about last time and gave us the book list, the Greek alphabet, and a couple of worksheets. I quickly discovered that he is extremely fond of photocopies; I left the class with 8 or 10 pages of worksheets and other random things. After getting briefly lost in the Tanneurs building (they apparently close stuff down by 7pm, and it was hard to figure out where to go) I headed back to Le Nonante. Since it was the first time I'd had to walk around the city at night by myself, I was a little paranoid. I ended up taking the longer way around down the larger streets, rather than going through the little tiny old ones.
When I got home, everyone was just finishing with dinner. Jacqueline had saved some for me, though, and I was ravenous. I had to hurry, since we had planned on going to the Café des Langues again. We went with Luzé and her friend Sarah again and managed to get there before it was crowded with people. The group basically got split in two, and our end became the "English" table. I talked to some nice Swedish and Danish girls, who were in Tours doing mission work, and some creepy French guys who seemed to be there to try and pick up Americans; one of them kept trying to say that he knew Sierra, when obviously he didn't. After a while we left and came back to the house.
On Tuesdays I don't have any classes at all, but everyone else does. So I slept in, relaxed, and did my Translation homework for Wednesday. It was really nice to have a chill, solo time. I did go out briefly for some shopping and to get a brioche, though. Yay, brioche! That evening, Mamie and Aaron found out from some German girls that there was an event planned for exchange students, so they went to check it out. Apparently we were all supposed to go; they had our named on lists along with our French buddies, and they had sign-up sheets for the various school events throughout the semester. We hadn't heard anything about it, which was a little frustrating, but we didn't really know if there was a reason why we were left out.
Wednesdays, in contrast, are my intense days. I had a meeting at 9am over at the Fromont building to sign up for my CUEFEE classes, so I hurried through breakfast and made the half-hour walk in record time. Kate and I both needed to sign up, so it was cool to see her. We finished early enough that I came back to the house before Translation and walked to class with the boys. It was a fun enough class; we mostly finished the article we were translating from French to English and have one going the opposite direction for next week. Pelletier talked to us after class about not going to the event Tuesday night; we explained that we hadn't heard about it and got that taken care of. Now we should hear about things when they happen!
Then Grant and I walked down Rue Nationale on our way to Fromont, for my first CUEFEE class, and got delicious "complete ham sandwiches" on our way (the complete part is the mayo, and tomatoes, and lettuce, and stuff). It turns out that the little sandwich stall is La Grignotine, the same business as on Rue Bordeaux. I like them a lot. The CUEFEE class was called "Actualités," which means Current Events. It seemed like it'd be a pretty easy class, although it'll require more work. Kate and her friend Christina are in the class, as well as a Swedish girl that Grant knows from choir, so we even have people to talk to! We had a brief discussion about the metric system and conversions, as well as how cold it gets at Concordia. Don't we Cobbers love our school; we complain about the location constantly! ;-P
After class, Grant had to hurry home to check his email (RA stuff, apparently. He had ants in his pants all class about it.) so I waited the half hour for my second CUEFEE class: French Sciences. I ran into Sierra, who had a different class at that time. The Sciences class turned out to have less than 10 students, and most of them were older. There was a British girl named Natasha there who's also in my Translation class, so we talked a bit. The topic of the period was global warming; apparently the first unit will focus on the environment. I kind of felt like I was back in 9th grade, it was so easy, but whatever. I'm really only taking it because it fits my schedule. We're also doing some work on constructing a scientifically well-composed written argument, so that should help me improve my writing skills. When I got back to the house after dinner everything was weirdly quiet; most everyone had either class or choir, so they were all gone. I was starving after all my day's walking, so dinnertime seemed to be forever away. In the future, I think I might have to buy snacks at the store and come up with things to do on Wednesday nights.
Today I was pretty tired, since I'd stayed up really late. That was okay, though, since I didn't have class until 2pm. I dragged myself out to Tanneurs for Italian, which we thought would be the actual class we would take. It turns out, however, that the session we wanted is also really full and there wasn't space. Grant and I stayed anyway, figuring that the extra exposure to the language would be good, especially if we're going to have to transfer to a different group. Now we have to email one professor to see if she has space, and if not there's one last group we can hope for. Still, that'll be next week's concern, and at least the different groups are at the same time so our schedule won't change, just the classroom. He and I went and took care of some other administrative stuff we still needed to do, and bought sandwiches on our way back to the house (ham pizza panini om nom nom!).
Dinner tonight was chicken and some cooked vegetables that were really delicious. It was a little awkward, though; Xavier decided that the topic for the dinner conversation would be gender equality, in his continuing efforts to get people to speak up in French. No-one wanted to say anything, though. Valeria and Luzé and I spoke some, but a lot of people didn't say anything. I'm not sure if it was the topic or Xavier's intimidating insistence that kept them quiet. After dinner and dishes we came back upstairs. Everyone else went out, since they don't have classes on Friday and their weekend is already started. Since I tested into a higher level on the CUEFEE test, though, my written and oral classes are bright and early at 9am over at Fromont. I'm not looking forward to it.
Bonne nuit, tout le monde. Dormez-vous bien!
My new Ancient Greek class goes from 5-7pm, so I made my way up to Rue des Tanneurs and found the classroom. I made sure to ask the professor what class it was, to verify that it was definitely for beginning beginners and not halfway through. I had missed the first class period, but it turned out that several other people had too, so at least I wasn't alone. He briefly went over what he'd talked about last time and gave us the book list, the Greek alphabet, and a couple of worksheets. I quickly discovered that he is extremely fond of photocopies; I left the class with 8 or 10 pages of worksheets and other random things. After getting briefly lost in the Tanneurs building (they apparently close stuff down by 7pm, and it was hard to figure out where to go) I headed back to Le Nonante. Since it was the first time I'd had to walk around the city at night by myself, I was a little paranoid. I ended up taking the longer way around down the larger streets, rather than going through the little tiny old ones.
When I got home, everyone was just finishing with dinner. Jacqueline had saved some for me, though, and I was ravenous. I had to hurry, since we had planned on going to the Café des Langues again. We went with Luzé and her friend Sarah again and managed to get there before it was crowded with people. The group basically got split in two, and our end became the "English" table. I talked to some nice Swedish and Danish girls, who were in Tours doing mission work, and some creepy French guys who seemed to be there to try and pick up Americans; one of them kept trying to say that he knew Sierra, when obviously he didn't. After a while we left and came back to the house.
On Tuesdays I don't have any classes at all, but everyone else does. So I slept in, relaxed, and did my Translation homework for Wednesday. It was really nice to have a chill, solo time. I did go out briefly for some shopping and to get a brioche, though. Yay, brioche! That evening, Mamie and Aaron found out from some German girls that there was an event planned for exchange students, so they went to check it out. Apparently we were all supposed to go; they had our named on lists along with our French buddies, and they had sign-up sheets for the various school events throughout the semester. We hadn't heard anything about it, which was a little frustrating, but we didn't really know if there was a reason why we were left out.
Wednesdays, in contrast, are my intense days. I had a meeting at 9am over at the Fromont building to sign up for my CUEFEE classes, so I hurried through breakfast and made the half-hour walk in record time. Kate and I both needed to sign up, so it was cool to see her. We finished early enough that I came back to the house before Translation and walked to class with the boys. It was a fun enough class; we mostly finished the article we were translating from French to English and have one going the opposite direction for next week. Pelletier talked to us after class about not going to the event Tuesday night; we explained that we hadn't heard about it and got that taken care of. Now we should hear about things when they happen!
Then Grant and I walked down Rue Nationale on our way to Fromont, for my first CUEFEE class, and got delicious "complete ham sandwiches" on our way (the complete part is the mayo, and tomatoes, and lettuce, and stuff). It turns out that the little sandwich stall is La Grignotine, the same business as on Rue Bordeaux. I like them a lot. The CUEFEE class was called "Actualités," which means Current Events. It seemed like it'd be a pretty easy class, although it'll require more work. Kate and her friend Christina are in the class, as well as a Swedish girl that Grant knows from choir, so we even have people to talk to! We had a brief discussion about the metric system and conversions, as well as how cold it gets at Concordia. Don't we Cobbers love our school; we complain about the location constantly! ;-P
After class, Grant had to hurry home to check his email (RA stuff, apparently. He had ants in his pants all class about it.) so I waited the half hour for my second CUEFEE class: French Sciences. I ran into Sierra, who had a different class at that time. The Sciences class turned out to have less than 10 students, and most of them were older. There was a British girl named Natasha there who's also in my Translation class, so we talked a bit. The topic of the period was global warming; apparently the first unit will focus on the environment. I kind of felt like I was back in 9th grade, it was so easy, but whatever. I'm really only taking it because it fits my schedule. We're also doing some work on constructing a scientifically well-composed written argument, so that should help me improve my writing skills. When I got back to the house after dinner everything was weirdly quiet; most everyone had either class or choir, so they were all gone. I was starving after all my day's walking, so dinnertime seemed to be forever away. In the future, I think I might have to buy snacks at the store and come up with things to do on Wednesday nights.
Today I was pretty tired, since I'd stayed up really late. That was okay, though, since I didn't have class until 2pm. I dragged myself out to Tanneurs for Italian, which we thought would be the actual class we would take. It turns out, however, that the session we wanted is also really full and there wasn't space. Grant and I stayed anyway, figuring that the extra exposure to the language would be good, especially if we're going to have to transfer to a different group. Now we have to email one professor to see if she has space, and if not there's one last group we can hope for. Still, that'll be next week's concern, and at least the different groups are at the same time so our schedule won't change, just the classroom. He and I went and took care of some other administrative stuff we still needed to do, and bought sandwiches on our way back to the house (ham pizza panini om nom nom!).
Dinner tonight was chicken and some cooked vegetables that were really delicious. It was a little awkward, though; Xavier decided that the topic for the dinner conversation would be gender equality, in his continuing efforts to get people to speak up in French. No-one wanted to say anything, though. Valeria and Luzé and I spoke some, but a lot of people didn't say anything. I'm not sure if it was the topic or Xavier's intimidating insistence that kept them quiet. After dinner and dishes we came back upstairs. Everyone else went out, since they don't have classes on Friday and their weekend is already started. Since I tested into a higher level on the CUEFEE test, though, my written and oral classes are bright and early at 9am over at Fromont. I'm not looking forward to it.
Bonne nuit, tout le monde. Dormez-vous bien!
Sunday, January 24, 2010
New Places, New People
Thursday night was cool; we did end up going out and met up with Kate, who's another American girl from the CUEFEE, and with Romain and Alban and their friends. The other girls left first; Sierra and Mamie have now gone out with their two boys a few times, so they were planning on finding them. Aaron and Joel and I met up with them at our favourite bar: Le Puits Sait Tous (The Well Knows All). We didn't stay very long, though, before coming home.
Friday we pretty much just hung around the house, since none of us had anything planned. By the evening we had decided that we should go somewhere this weekend, so we made plans to go to the Château d'Amboise, which is just a brief train ride away.
We woke up early and managed to get out of the house by 10:25, on our way to the train station. In addition to buying my ticket, I went ahead and bought a "Carte 12-25," which is basically a train card you can get if you're between 12 and 25 years old. If you have one, you get huge discounts on most train tickets. With the card, I only paid 4 Euro for the tickets to Amboise, which would otherwise cost 7 Euro. On larger trips, like to Paris, you can save almost half the cost of a ticket.
After about 20 minutes on the train, we got to Amboise. It's a larger town, so we had to work our way through it to find the castle. We had planned to find somewhere to eat, since the castle is closed over lunch. When we crossed the bridge we found a little pizzeria called "Le Salamandre" (which is the emblem of the King François I). We all split little pizzas; mine had artichokes and green peppers and little sausages and was really good. Then for dessert I had strawberry ice cream. We kind of had a hard time figuring out how to pay, since we couldn't get the attention of the waitress, but we finally just put the money on the table and left.
When we crossed the other side of the bridge, we realised that we didn't really know how to get to the castle. It's basically just stuck in the middle of the city, with houses literally crowded up and around it. Fortunately it's France, so there were handy-dandy signs pointing out "Château" and we just followed those. We were walking along through the beautiful little streets and came to an open space where there were lots of little tourist-trap shops selling souvenir stuff. Then we looked to our left, and lo and behold, a château! There was a big long ramp leading up to a gate, but it looked closed, so we walked around the walls trying to find the entrance. We also found a bathroom, which was good for Mamie and I who hadn't gone at the restaurant. It was kind of sketch, though, and several of the stalls didn't have any toilet paper. Finally, we came across a sign that said "Entrance" and was pointing back the way we had come. We, obviously, felt brilliant.
We went back and went up the steps to the gate, but it was still closed. The sign said we had 20 minutes before they opened again, so we hung out and waited. Valeria had brought a huge blue umbrella in case it rained the way it did at Chenonceau, but it was just grey, not raining. So we took a bunch of pictures throughout the day with the umbrella, in order to not have wasted the effort. Eventually, they came back and opened the gate, so we could go in and buy our tickets.
The first thing we did was walk over to the wall overlooking the city and take lots of pictures. We went over to the little chapel, which is where Leonardo di Vinci is buried, and took more pictures there. It was really pretty, both inside and outside, and I became enamoured with the gargoyles. Then we went over to a little lookout point and ran into a couple of girls (we thought they were Italian) who took some group pictures for us. Finally we went over to the actual castle part, which is actually the royal apartments. It was really beautiful, and had a lot of cool stuff inside. I once again was a complete heraldry geek, so the room where *everything* was covered with fleur-de-lis and ermines made me very happy. We also got to go up the tower and see the entire city from on high. Then we went out and walked through the beautiful gardens and took even more pictures. We ran into the "Italian" girls again, and they took a couple more pictures of our group. It turns out that they're from Argentina; we talked to them a little bit. Then we finished wandering through the rest of the castle (I found more gargoyles) and the gift shop, where everything was super expensive.
After we left, we still had a couple hours before our train would leave. We wandered around looking for a little coffee shop or boulangerie where we could hang out for a bit, and ended up going into a bar. Unfortunately they weren't serving food anymore, since it was the afternoon, so we just got Cokes and Oranginas and stayed there for a while. Mamie told us a scary story about a girl who went missing in Mexico and then later her friends saw her sitting in the back of a car and called the police. It turns out she'd been killed and they were trying to use her body to transport drugs across the border. We were all really freaked out, and we've resolved never to let anyone go missing ever (not that we would have anyway, but still). Finally we headed back to the train station and waited a bit longer for our train, and came back to Tours.
That night we had some kind of beef wrapped in something else for dinner, with little potatoes and rice. I don't really know what it was, but it was delicious. Xavier's friend Daniel came to dinner again, and they talked politics for a while. None of us knew what they were talking about, which was a little awkward. After dinner, we girls decided to go out again. Romain and Alban were bringing some friends, so there would be more people to talk to and Valeria and I wouldn't be left out. Sierra did my eyeshadow and Valeria did my hair, so it looked completely different and really cute. We went to a couple bars but they were really crowded, and finally we found a spot in the back of one, called L'épée royale (The Royal Sword). We hung out for a bit, waiting for the boys, and finally when the bar closed we waited in Place Plumereau. Finally they showed up, and I met Aurélien and Théodore (who goes by Ted). We went to a bar where there's a dancing floor in the back and had a really good time. We didn't come back until 5:30am, and were unfortunately really loud outside before we came back in. Jacqueline poked her head out to tell us to come inside, and we were ridiculously embarrassed. We thought about not going to brunch, since we were so worried about what she'd say.
This morning I slept like a rock; Valeria woke me up when she came in to ask if I was coming to brunch, so I had to hurry and put on clothes and brush my hair. We had some kind of baked egg thing, which was kind of strangely spiced but good. Sierra, Aaron, and Grant went to Chenonceau since they'd missed it, and the rest of us just basically lounged around and talked to Luzé for a while. I'm super hungry, so now we're just waiting for dinner. I hope it's soon!
Friday we pretty much just hung around the house, since none of us had anything planned. By the evening we had decided that we should go somewhere this weekend, so we made plans to go to the Château d'Amboise, which is just a brief train ride away.
We woke up early and managed to get out of the house by 10:25, on our way to the train station. In addition to buying my ticket, I went ahead and bought a "Carte 12-25," which is basically a train card you can get if you're between 12 and 25 years old. If you have one, you get huge discounts on most train tickets. With the card, I only paid 4 Euro for the tickets to Amboise, which would otherwise cost 7 Euro. On larger trips, like to Paris, you can save almost half the cost of a ticket.
After about 20 minutes on the train, we got to Amboise. It's a larger town, so we had to work our way through it to find the castle. We had planned to find somewhere to eat, since the castle is closed over lunch. When we crossed the bridge we found a little pizzeria called "Le Salamandre" (which is the emblem of the King François I). We all split little pizzas; mine had artichokes and green peppers and little sausages and was really good. Then for dessert I had strawberry ice cream. We kind of had a hard time figuring out how to pay, since we couldn't get the attention of the waitress, but we finally just put the money on the table and left.
When we crossed the other side of the bridge, we realised that we didn't really know how to get to the castle. It's basically just stuck in the middle of the city, with houses literally crowded up and around it. Fortunately it's France, so there were handy-dandy signs pointing out "Château" and we just followed those. We were walking along through the beautiful little streets and came to an open space where there were lots of little tourist-trap shops selling souvenir stuff. Then we looked to our left, and lo and behold, a château! There was a big long ramp leading up to a gate, but it looked closed, so we walked around the walls trying to find the entrance. We also found a bathroom, which was good for Mamie and I who hadn't gone at the restaurant. It was kind of sketch, though, and several of the stalls didn't have any toilet paper. Finally, we came across a sign that said "Entrance" and was pointing back the way we had come. We, obviously, felt brilliant.
We went back and went up the steps to the gate, but it was still closed. The sign said we had 20 minutes before they opened again, so we hung out and waited. Valeria had brought a huge blue umbrella in case it rained the way it did at Chenonceau, but it was just grey, not raining. So we took a bunch of pictures throughout the day with the umbrella, in order to not have wasted the effort. Eventually, they came back and opened the gate, so we could go in and buy our tickets.
The first thing we did was walk over to the wall overlooking the city and take lots of pictures. We went over to the little chapel, which is where Leonardo di Vinci is buried, and took more pictures there. It was really pretty, both inside and outside, and I became enamoured with the gargoyles. Then we went over to a little lookout point and ran into a couple of girls (we thought they were Italian) who took some group pictures for us. Finally we went over to the actual castle part, which is actually the royal apartments. It was really beautiful, and had a lot of cool stuff inside. I once again was a complete heraldry geek, so the room where *everything* was covered with fleur-de-lis and ermines made me very happy. We also got to go up the tower and see the entire city from on high. Then we went out and walked through the beautiful gardens and took even more pictures. We ran into the "Italian" girls again, and they took a couple more pictures of our group. It turns out that they're from Argentina; we talked to them a little bit. Then we finished wandering through the rest of the castle (I found more gargoyles) and the gift shop, where everything was super expensive.
After we left, we still had a couple hours before our train would leave. We wandered around looking for a little coffee shop or boulangerie where we could hang out for a bit, and ended up going into a bar. Unfortunately they weren't serving food anymore, since it was the afternoon, so we just got Cokes and Oranginas and stayed there for a while. Mamie told us a scary story about a girl who went missing in Mexico and then later her friends saw her sitting in the back of a car and called the police. It turns out she'd been killed and they were trying to use her body to transport drugs across the border. We were all really freaked out, and we've resolved never to let anyone go missing ever (not that we would have anyway, but still). Finally we headed back to the train station and waited a bit longer for our train, and came back to Tours.
That night we had some kind of beef wrapped in something else for dinner, with little potatoes and rice. I don't really know what it was, but it was delicious. Xavier's friend Daniel came to dinner again, and they talked politics for a while. None of us knew what they were talking about, which was a little awkward. After dinner, we girls decided to go out again. Romain and Alban were bringing some friends, so there would be more people to talk to and Valeria and I wouldn't be left out. Sierra did my eyeshadow and Valeria did my hair, so it looked completely different and really cute. We went to a couple bars but they were really crowded, and finally we found a spot in the back of one, called L'épée royale (The Royal Sword). We hung out for a bit, waiting for the boys, and finally when the bar closed we waited in Place Plumereau. Finally they showed up, and I met Aurélien and Théodore (who goes by Ted). We went to a bar where there's a dancing floor in the back and had a really good time. We didn't come back until 5:30am, and were unfortunately really loud outside before we came back in. Jacqueline poked her head out to tell us to come inside, and we were ridiculously embarrassed. We thought about not going to brunch, since we were so worried about what she'd say.
This morning I slept like a rock; Valeria woke me up when she came in to ask if I was coming to brunch, so I had to hurry and put on clothes and brush my hair. We had some kind of baked egg thing, which was kind of strangely spiced but good. Sierra, Aaron, and Grant went to Chenonceau since they'd missed it, and the rest of us just basically lounged around and talked to Luzé for a while. I'm super hungry, so now we're just waiting for dinner. I hope it's soon!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Trains, Plains, and Chrysanthemums
Yesterday was the first day of my translation class, which I was really looking forward to! Turns out half our group is going to take it; Grant, Joel, Aaron and I all walked over to Rue des Tanneurs together. When we got to the room, we went in and specifically sat down in different parts of the room, hoping to mingle with the French. Unfortunately; a couple of them kept looking in, and they assumed that we were part of a different class and didn't come in. Finally Grant went and opened the door and let the teacher in; her name is Martine Pelletier, and she came to Moorhead in October and met most of the Concordia students. (I had the flu at the time, so I didn't meet her myself.) Then the rest of the students flooded in after her; the class looked like it had 30-some students. The class itself went well; she had the anglophones spread out in groups with the French students, and we started trying to translate a news article about the earthquake in Haiti from English into French. I'm looking forward to that class next week, especially with how little homework they give you here.
After our class, Grant and Joel and I went to Monoprix and made sandwiches again for lunch. Mathias invited us to come watch him at his Judo class, but we were already eating. I think it'd be really fun to go next week, though, and I can post pictures on facebook! Once we'd eaten and washed dishes, I went and napped a bit, having nothing else to do that day. Almost everyone had either classes or choir until late, so it was just Aaron, Luzé, Jacqueline, Mathias and I for dinner, which was chicken and broccoli.
This morning we had to get up early-ish, since we had to go to the CUEFEE building on Rue des Fromonts for our placement test. We're pretty much all taking four CUEFEE classes, but there are three levels of classes you can take based on your skill in French. The test was at 1:30, but it's a half-hour walk from our house. When we got there we met up with another girl from the States named Kate. The test itself took 3 hours, which was ridiculous. There was a listening section and a reading section, and then a break. And then there was a short grammar section and two short essays. It really wasn't very hard, but there were a couple of tricky questions. We get our results next week, when we find out what classes we can take.
After the test, we walked up to Rue des Tanneurs to try out the school cafeteria, which is supposed to be both really good and really cheap. Unfortunately, it was long closed, so we ended up going back to Delhi's again. Those guys must think we don't ever go anywhere else! I got a croque poulet, which was a kind of baked cheese and chicken sandwich thingy. It's really really good. After stuffing our faces, we came back to the house. Dinner was way too soon for us, after having such a late lunch, but we rallied enough to eat anyway. We had salmon on toast with sauce, and then the actual dinner was ravioli again, with caramel flan for dessert. Tonight I think we're going out with some girls from the CUEFEE and some people the choir kids met there. Should be fun!
After our class, Grant and Joel and I went to Monoprix and made sandwiches again for lunch. Mathias invited us to come watch him at his Judo class, but we were already eating. I think it'd be really fun to go next week, though, and I can post pictures on facebook! Once we'd eaten and washed dishes, I went and napped a bit, having nothing else to do that day. Almost everyone had either classes or choir until late, so it was just Aaron, Luzé, Jacqueline, Mathias and I for dinner, which was chicken and broccoli.
This morning we had to get up early-ish, since we had to go to the CUEFEE building on Rue des Fromonts for our placement test. We're pretty much all taking four CUEFEE classes, but there are three levels of classes you can take based on your skill in French. The test was at 1:30, but it's a half-hour walk from our house. When we got there we met up with another girl from the States named Kate. The test itself took 3 hours, which was ridiculous. There was a listening section and a reading section, and then a break. And then there was a short grammar section and two short essays. It really wasn't very hard, but there were a couple of tricky questions. We get our results next week, when we find out what classes we can take.
After the test, we walked up to Rue des Tanneurs to try out the school cafeteria, which is supposed to be both really good and really cheap. Unfortunately, it was long closed, so we ended up going back to Delhi's again. Those guys must think we don't ever go anywhere else! I got a croque poulet, which was a kind of baked cheese and chicken sandwich thingy. It's really really good. After stuffing our faces, we came back to the house. Dinner was way too soon for us, after having such a late lunch, but we rallied enough to eat anyway. We had salmon on toast with sauce, and then the actual dinner was ravioli again, with caramel flan for dessert. Tonight I think we're going out with some girls from the CUEFEE and some people the choir kids met there. Should be fun!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
It's All Greek To Me
The sushi we had on Sunday night was absolutely fantastic! The Dhommées also had their friend Daniel over, and he had brought homemade tiramisu for dessert, which was amazing. I was so incredibly happy with that dinner.
Yesterday I had my first class, which was "Reinforced initiation to Greek" at 1pm. I got up, got ready, and had breakfast, and then walked the 20 minutes or so to the building at Rue des Tanneurs. I found the class without a problem. There was another girl waiting, so I started talking to her a little and found out that her name was Corinne. She's a French student from Mauritania or something; it was some DOM-TOM (one of the French-run overseas territories). She was really nice, and was telling me about the class. They had apparently started last fall, and were already on Chapter 10, which kind of worried me, but she offered to give me photocopies of everything I'd missed for Wednesday and kind of help me with the class, so I was hopeful. The teacher came in several minutes late, and told us that there had been a mix-up in the administration and that we had been told the wrong classroom. There were only six of us, so we followed her to the other classroom and sat down. The first sign I had that this would be hard was when she started talking and I wasn't sure what she wanted us to do. Apparently we were to write our names, emails, and level on a piece of paper, in addition to how much Greek we had taken so far and what our expectations were for the class. Then she had us open our books (I didn't have one, obviously, but Corinne let me glance at hers) and start on that lesson. I became increasingly worried when she started writing on the board in Greek, doing various conjugations of something into various declensions, and I had no idea what she was talking about. After about 10 minutes of increasing terror and feeling absolutely lost, I raised my hand and said that I was probably in the wrong class, since I'd never taken Greek at all before and didn't even know the alphabet. She agreed with me, seeming surprised, and I said I would have to talk to Carine Berberi, the person who had signed me up for classes.
That was when I fled, and went back home. I felt awful, of course, since my first class had basically turned out to be an abject failure. Fortunately the others had planned on going out anyway, and I came with since I had a couple more postcards that I haven't quite gotten mailed out yet. I was also worried, since there seemed to be a very real possibility that my Italian class that evening would also be in the middle of the semester, in which case I would have to relive the morning's experience. We were all hungry after doing some errands, so we went to the Delhi café again, since we'd liked it and it was so cheap. This time we got to sit in the front, which was much nicer. I got a burger and a giant plateful of fries and a pile of lettuce. The burger was delicious (cooked pretty rare, which you can't usually get in restaurants, but which I actually prefer), although they put a little hashbrown round in it, which was kind of weird. The other thing that was funny was that in the US you would never think to eat a pile of just lettuce as a salad, but that's basically what it was.
After eating we came back to the house and bought more postcards on the way (I have a whole second round of people to send them to; I've just been slow since they're expensive when you add postage). Grant and I had to leave almost immediately once we'd gotten back, since our Italian class started at 6pm. We're taking it together and usually we're planning on going to the sessions on Thursday, since they're at the building on Rue des Tanneurs, which is closer. But this week we have the CUEFEE test on Thursday, so we would have missed the class. The Monday session is at Rue des Fromeurs (or something like that, I don't really remember the name). That's where the CUEFEE classes are all held, and is a half-hour walk from Le Nonante.
When we got there, a couple groups of people were standing around, and some of them seemed to speak English. We didn't really know where our class was, since the way Carine had written it on our sheet looked like FR ss (FR standing for Fromeurs, the site of the building). I ended up asking one of the people there, who turned out to also be an American, and she realised better than we did that it said FR 11; it was just that the handwriting made it look like a lowercase cursive s. So Grant and I found the classroom just fine after that, and went in and waited. We were worried, and so had decided to talk to the teacher before class started, to make sure that it was absolutely a class for beginners and not halfway through a longer class. She asked the students, and we were reassured that the class was for Débutants Débutants, absolute Beginning Beginners.
When the class actually started, it turned out to be a ridiculous amount of fun. The teacher kind of jumped around a lot; she ended up teaching us five different verbs with their present indicative conjugations, how to say "My name is," your nationality, and where you're from, and then towards the end she taught us the alphabet and the numbers from 0 to 10. Of course, it wasn't nearly in that order; like I say, she jumped around a lot. Grant and I were really excited after we left, and we spent the whole long walk back to Le Nonante repeating the letters and numbers and spelling out our names in Italian. I'm really looking forward to having that class again next week.
Grant and I had gotten back late for dinner, but Jacqueline had saved some for us. We had salad and hard-boiled eggs, then strips of roasted duck with a big pile of cooked vegetables, and applesauce for dessert. It was all really delicious, especially since we were so hungry after our long walk home. We hung out for a while, and a few people went to the café for ice cream. I didn't really want to keep spending money, so I stayed home and ended up playing some Dungeons & Dragons through AIM with a friend from back in the States. I have to keep in practice, after all, if I'm going to start up again when I come back!
This morning we all got up early-ish and headed to Rue des Tanneurs since we had a meeting with Carine to go over classes again. I had set up the meeting through email, since we still haven't figured out exactly how things are going to transfer back to Concordia when we go back. Dr. Rawson told us that we need 200 hours of classes this semester to equal four Concordia class' worth. But Martine and the people at the Université told us that we need 20 class credits, and whenever we say anything about class hours they just repeat that the French system doesn't work that way and tell us that class hours mean nothing. It's basically all a big mess, and nobody seems to know what we should do with it.
Since Mamie and Valeria still didn't have any classes set up and haven't heard anything about the art classes they wanted, they were going to come with me. And when Grant emailed Carine about meeting with her to pick some other classes himself, she told him to come with us too. So I was assuming the four of us were going to go. I was a little surprised when it turned out that all seven of us were going to go all together; apparently everyone had something they needed to talk to her about. We got there a little early and met with her. I managed to find a Greek class that is (like my Italian class) for absolute beginners, to replace the class that didn't work out so well. Half the group had missed breakfast, so they went to that same restaurant to eat lunch while I stayed with Valeria and Mamie while they discussed their issues. After they finished talking to her, the three of us girls went to talk to Caroline and got some paperwork we needed to figure out our Université email addresses. Since they were gone for lunch, we wandered around Old Tours for a while and went into Saint Martin's Basilica. We sat in the little crypt for a while, and it was nice and peaceful. We were able to get the paperwork we needed upon our return to Tanneurs, and that was cool.
For lunch, we three bought ham and a baguette at Monoprix, and made sandwiches at home. It was really good, and we had chips and pop with it. Now we're basically hanging out and napping before dinner, which will be another surprise!
Yesterday I had my first class, which was "Reinforced initiation to Greek" at 1pm. I got up, got ready, and had breakfast, and then walked the 20 minutes or so to the building at Rue des Tanneurs. I found the class without a problem. There was another girl waiting, so I started talking to her a little and found out that her name was Corinne. She's a French student from Mauritania or something; it was some DOM-TOM (one of the French-run overseas territories). She was really nice, and was telling me about the class. They had apparently started last fall, and were already on Chapter 10, which kind of worried me, but she offered to give me photocopies of everything I'd missed for Wednesday and kind of help me with the class, so I was hopeful. The teacher came in several minutes late, and told us that there had been a mix-up in the administration and that we had been told the wrong classroom. There were only six of us, so we followed her to the other classroom and sat down. The first sign I had that this would be hard was when she started talking and I wasn't sure what she wanted us to do. Apparently we were to write our names, emails, and level on a piece of paper, in addition to how much Greek we had taken so far and what our expectations were for the class. Then she had us open our books (I didn't have one, obviously, but Corinne let me glance at hers) and start on that lesson. I became increasingly worried when she started writing on the board in Greek, doing various conjugations of something into various declensions, and I had no idea what she was talking about. After about 10 minutes of increasing terror and feeling absolutely lost, I raised my hand and said that I was probably in the wrong class, since I'd never taken Greek at all before and didn't even know the alphabet. She agreed with me, seeming surprised, and I said I would have to talk to Carine Berberi, the person who had signed me up for classes.
That was when I fled, and went back home. I felt awful, of course, since my first class had basically turned out to be an abject failure. Fortunately the others had planned on going out anyway, and I came with since I had a couple more postcards that I haven't quite gotten mailed out yet. I was also worried, since there seemed to be a very real possibility that my Italian class that evening would also be in the middle of the semester, in which case I would have to relive the morning's experience. We were all hungry after doing some errands, so we went to the Delhi café again, since we'd liked it and it was so cheap. This time we got to sit in the front, which was much nicer. I got a burger and a giant plateful of fries and a pile of lettuce. The burger was delicious (cooked pretty rare, which you can't usually get in restaurants, but which I actually prefer), although they put a little hashbrown round in it, which was kind of weird. The other thing that was funny was that in the US you would never think to eat a pile of just lettuce as a salad, but that's basically what it was.
After eating we came back to the house and bought more postcards on the way (I have a whole second round of people to send them to; I've just been slow since they're expensive when you add postage). Grant and I had to leave almost immediately once we'd gotten back, since our Italian class started at 6pm. We're taking it together and usually we're planning on going to the sessions on Thursday, since they're at the building on Rue des Tanneurs, which is closer. But this week we have the CUEFEE test on Thursday, so we would have missed the class. The Monday session is at Rue des Fromeurs (or something like that, I don't really remember the name). That's where the CUEFEE classes are all held, and is a half-hour walk from Le Nonante.
When we got there, a couple groups of people were standing around, and some of them seemed to speak English. We didn't really know where our class was, since the way Carine had written it on our sheet looked like FR ss (FR standing for Fromeurs, the site of the building). I ended up asking one of the people there, who turned out to also be an American, and she realised better than we did that it said FR 11; it was just that the handwriting made it look like a lowercase cursive s. So Grant and I found the classroom just fine after that, and went in and waited. We were worried, and so had decided to talk to the teacher before class started, to make sure that it was absolutely a class for beginners and not halfway through a longer class. She asked the students, and we were reassured that the class was for Débutants Débutants, absolute Beginning Beginners.
When the class actually started, it turned out to be a ridiculous amount of fun. The teacher kind of jumped around a lot; she ended up teaching us five different verbs with their present indicative conjugations, how to say "My name is," your nationality, and where you're from, and then towards the end she taught us the alphabet and the numbers from 0 to 10. Of course, it wasn't nearly in that order; like I say, she jumped around a lot. Grant and I were really excited after we left, and we spent the whole long walk back to Le Nonante repeating the letters and numbers and spelling out our names in Italian. I'm really looking forward to having that class again next week.
Grant and I had gotten back late for dinner, but Jacqueline had saved some for us. We had salad and hard-boiled eggs, then strips of roasted duck with a big pile of cooked vegetables, and applesauce for dessert. It was all really delicious, especially since we were so hungry after our long walk home. We hung out for a while, and a few people went to the café for ice cream. I didn't really want to keep spending money, so I stayed home and ended up playing some Dungeons & Dragons through AIM with a friend from back in the States. I have to keep in practice, after all, if I'm going to start up again when I come back!
This morning we all got up early-ish and headed to Rue des Tanneurs since we had a meeting with Carine to go over classes again. I had set up the meeting through email, since we still haven't figured out exactly how things are going to transfer back to Concordia when we go back. Dr. Rawson told us that we need 200 hours of classes this semester to equal four Concordia class' worth. But Martine and the people at the Université told us that we need 20 class credits, and whenever we say anything about class hours they just repeat that the French system doesn't work that way and tell us that class hours mean nothing. It's basically all a big mess, and nobody seems to know what we should do with it.
Since Mamie and Valeria still didn't have any classes set up and haven't heard anything about the art classes they wanted, they were going to come with me. And when Grant emailed Carine about meeting with her to pick some other classes himself, she told him to come with us too. So I was assuming the four of us were going to go. I was a little surprised when it turned out that all seven of us were going to go all together; apparently everyone had something they needed to talk to her about. We got there a little early and met with her. I managed to find a Greek class that is (like my Italian class) for absolute beginners, to replace the class that didn't work out so well. Half the group had missed breakfast, so they went to that same restaurant to eat lunch while I stayed with Valeria and Mamie while they discussed their issues. After they finished talking to her, the three of us girls went to talk to Caroline and got some paperwork we needed to figure out our Université email addresses. Since they were gone for lunch, we wandered around Old Tours for a while and went into Saint Martin's Basilica. We sat in the little crypt for a while, and it was nice and peaceful. We were able to get the paperwork we needed upon our return to Tanneurs, and that was cool.
For lunch, we three bought ham and a baguette at Monoprix, and made sandwiches at home. It was really good, and we had chips and pop with it. Now we're basically hanging out and napping before dinner, which will be another surprise!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Chenonceau !!
Yesterday, Valeria, Mamie, Joel, and I went to the Château de Chenonceau for a day trip, before classes start and because we've been bored as hell sitting around the house all day.
The train left at 10:08am, so we got up early and went into town for pain au chocolat for breakfast before we left. If you've never had it, pain au chocolat is amazing. It's basically like a square croissant pastry, but they put two stripes of chocolate in the middle, so it's chocolaty and flaky and delicious. Then we went and got our tickets, which were pretty cheap, since the château is only a 20-minute train ride away.
When we got there, it was kind of weird, because we didn't know really where to go. There was basically just a little train stop (it looked just like a bus stop; there weren't really anything in terms of maps or anything like that) right to the side of a cute little village. Fortunately, when we went towards the village we saw the sign pointing the way! There was a little gift shop where you could buy the entrance tickets, so we bought them and went in!
There's a long drive between the gift shop and the actual château, so we walked for a while, and then finally saw it! The actual château itself is built mostly over the river Cher, so it's kind of a like a combination bridge/castle. We walked around through the four different levels, and saw the kitchens, the gallery, the library, and the bedrooms of various kings and queens.
Chenonceau is kind of known as a woman's castle, since it was frequently given as a gift to various women by the kings or lords who owned it. The most famous historical story about Chenonceau is that it belonged to the crown when Henri II was king. He, feeling generous, gifted it to his favourite mistress, Diane de Poitiers (which, you can imagine, didn't please his wife, Catherine de Medici, at all). Diane owned the castle for a long while, and did a lot to improve and expand it, making it beautiful and comfortable. After Henri died, however, Catherine expelled Diane and took over the castle herself, remodeling it again and making it her place. There are several other notable stories associated with the castle, too, including the fact that during WWII it was one of the few crossing points over the Loire between Nazi-controlled France and Vichy France, so a lot of people escaped through it. It was also used as a hospital during the war, so it saved a lot of people directly, too!
It was a lot of fun to just walk around the castle. A lot of it was obviously built for people my size; there were lots of tiny doors and hallways, which was fun for me. It's a lot smaller than you'd think, for an actual castle, especially if you've ever seen Versailles or any of the other larger châteaux. But I thought it was really cute. Once we had seen everything in the château itself, we went out to the grounds. The whole day was kind of cold and wet and rainy, and only two of us had brought umbrellas, so we didn't really want to wander around too much. But we went through the Garden of Diane de Poitiers, and got some really pretty pictures of the château and the river. There was also a house (probably originally intended to be for the gardeners and servants) that I absolutely fell in love with and really want to live in.
After the garden, I insisted we see the Maze on our way out. It's a hedge maze, with diverging paths and dead ends and things, which was fun. For me, it was tall enough that I couldn't see the right path, but Joel could see the right way to take fairly easily. It was kind of sad; I would've liked to wander more, but it was pretty cold and everyone's toes were freezing. So we took a bunch more pictures, and walked back to the little gift shop. When we got there, we looked around and warmed up a bit. I bought a little necklace that had the maze on it, and says "Château de Chenonceau" on the back. It's not like I'm a little obsessed, or anything. :P
We had basically decided that we'd seen everything we were going to see, so we went back to the train station. At that point, we still had an hour or so before the train was supposed to get there (from my brief looking at the sign), so we went into the town to find a restaurant or something. A lot of them were still closed, since it's probably the off-season for the châteaux, but we found a little bakery/pastry shop, where we got ham-and-butter sandwiches on baguettes and Orangina. We thought we still had some time, and the desserts she had looked incredible, so we also stayed for dessert. Mamie and I shared a little wildberry tart, which was absolutely delicious.
Unfortunately, because we'd stayed for dessert, the train was passing by just as we walked down the street towards the station. We started running, but we didn't realise that there was a second platform to access trains going in the other direction. The trains only stop for about 30 seconds before taking off again, so by the time we had run up to the platform, it was already leaving. That meant that we'd have to wait almost 3 hours for the next train. We basically just sat in the gift shop for Chenonceau, because at least there it was dry, and heated.
We *did* manage to catch the next train, which was a very good thing. All in all, the trip was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful to go out and see things and have fun. When we got back, we told the others about the trip, and settled in until dinner, which was really really good. We had chicken with mushroom sauce and rice, and Jacqueline had some Chinese spring rolls left over from brunch which were also delicious.
Today's been a lazy day, since some (though not all) of us are starting classes tomorrow. I have my first class, Beginning Greek, at 1pm. I went out for a walk along the river a while ago, which was gorgeous. It was late afternoon, and the sun was shining, and the wind was blowing. I went across the Loire River on a bridge that I don't think I was technically supposed to cross by foot, but I did it anyway. Then walked up the other side of the river, where there's a bunch of little walking paths. There were a lot of older couples and people walking their dogs around; I kind of followed where they were going and found the walking bridge across the river (which is what I should have gone over to start with). I took it back, then walked up to the City Library to check their hours, since I only brought two books with me. Then I walked back through the little streets and window-shopped, and saw the Cathedral. I want to go in one of these days, but I think I'll save it for a day that's not a Sunday.
Tonight, we're apparently having sushi for dinner, which is really exciting! (Some people don't like it, and they'll apparently be having something else, but I dunno what.) Then I would say I should go to bed early, since I have class tomorrow, but it's not until 1pm, so whatever. :D
The train left at 10:08am, so we got up early and went into town for pain au chocolat for breakfast before we left. If you've never had it, pain au chocolat is amazing. It's basically like a square croissant pastry, but they put two stripes of chocolate in the middle, so it's chocolaty and flaky and delicious. Then we went and got our tickets, which were pretty cheap, since the château is only a 20-minute train ride away.
When we got there, it was kind of weird, because we didn't know really where to go. There was basically just a little train stop (it looked just like a bus stop; there weren't really anything in terms of maps or anything like that) right to the side of a cute little village. Fortunately, when we went towards the village we saw the sign pointing the way! There was a little gift shop where you could buy the entrance tickets, so we bought them and went in!
There's a long drive between the gift shop and the actual château, so we walked for a while, and then finally saw it! The actual château itself is built mostly over the river Cher, so it's kind of a like a combination bridge/castle. We walked around through the four different levels, and saw the kitchens, the gallery, the library, and the bedrooms of various kings and queens.
Chenonceau is kind of known as a woman's castle, since it was frequently given as a gift to various women by the kings or lords who owned it. The most famous historical story about Chenonceau is that it belonged to the crown when Henri II was king. He, feeling generous, gifted it to his favourite mistress, Diane de Poitiers (which, you can imagine, didn't please his wife, Catherine de Medici, at all). Diane owned the castle for a long while, and did a lot to improve and expand it, making it beautiful and comfortable. After Henri died, however, Catherine expelled Diane and took over the castle herself, remodeling it again and making it her place. There are several other notable stories associated with the castle, too, including the fact that during WWII it was one of the few crossing points over the Loire between Nazi-controlled France and Vichy France, so a lot of people escaped through it. It was also used as a hospital during the war, so it saved a lot of people directly, too!
It was a lot of fun to just walk around the castle. A lot of it was obviously built for people my size; there were lots of tiny doors and hallways, which was fun for me. It's a lot smaller than you'd think, for an actual castle, especially if you've ever seen Versailles or any of the other larger châteaux. But I thought it was really cute. Once we had seen everything in the château itself, we went out to the grounds. The whole day was kind of cold and wet and rainy, and only two of us had brought umbrellas, so we didn't really want to wander around too much. But we went through the Garden of Diane de Poitiers, and got some really pretty pictures of the château and the river. There was also a house (probably originally intended to be for the gardeners and servants) that I absolutely fell in love with and really want to live in.
After the garden, I insisted we see the Maze on our way out. It's a hedge maze, with diverging paths and dead ends and things, which was fun. For me, it was tall enough that I couldn't see the right path, but Joel could see the right way to take fairly easily. It was kind of sad; I would've liked to wander more, but it was pretty cold and everyone's toes were freezing. So we took a bunch more pictures, and walked back to the little gift shop. When we got there, we looked around and warmed up a bit. I bought a little necklace that had the maze on it, and says "Château de Chenonceau" on the back. It's not like I'm a little obsessed, or anything. :P
We had basically decided that we'd seen everything we were going to see, so we went back to the train station. At that point, we still had an hour or so before the train was supposed to get there (from my brief looking at the sign), so we went into the town to find a restaurant or something. A lot of them were still closed, since it's probably the off-season for the châteaux, but we found a little bakery/pastry shop, where we got ham-and-butter sandwiches on baguettes and Orangina. We thought we still had some time, and the desserts she had looked incredible, so we also stayed for dessert. Mamie and I shared a little wildberry tart, which was absolutely delicious.
Unfortunately, because we'd stayed for dessert, the train was passing by just as we walked down the street towards the station. We started running, but we didn't realise that there was a second platform to access trains going in the other direction. The trains only stop for about 30 seconds before taking off again, so by the time we had run up to the platform, it was already leaving. That meant that we'd have to wait almost 3 hours for the next train. We basically just sat in the gift shop for Chenonceau, because at least there it was dry, and heated.
We *did* manage to catch the next train, which was a very good thing. All in all, the trip was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful to go out and see things and have fun. When we got back, we told the others about the trip, and settled in until dinner, which was really really good. We had chicken with mushroom sauce and rice, and Jacqueline had some Chinese spring rolls left over from brunch which were also delicious.
Today's been a lazy day, since some (though not all) of us are starting classes tomorrow. I have my first class, Beginning Greek, at 1pm. I went out for a walk along the river a while ago, which was gorgeous. It was late afternoon, and the sun was shining, and the wind was blowing. I went across the Loire River on a bridge that I don't think I was technically supposed to cross by foot, but I did it anyway. Then walked up the other side of the river, where there's a bunch of little walking paths. There were a lot of older couples and people walking their dogs around; I kind of followed where they were going and found the walking bridge across the river (which is what I should have gone over to start with). I took it back, then walked up to the City Library to check their hours, since I only brought two books with me. Then I walked back through the little streets and window-shopped, and saw the Cathedral. I want to go in one of these days, but I think I'll save it for a day that's not a Sunday.
Tonight, we're apparently having sushi for dinner, which is really exciting! (Some people don't like it, and they'll apparently be having something else, but I dunno what.) Then I would say I should go to bed early, since I have class tomorrow, but it's not until 1pm, so whatever. :D
Friday, January 15, 2010
Classes and Frustrations
So yesterday, like I said, we had our meeting for registration. The meeting was at 11, but Fréderic (who works with Caroline, and was supposed to talk to us on the first day, but he was ill) had sent an email saying that they had found the little books of offered courses that we needed to look at to choose what we were going to take. So we went to that office to look at the little books again, which wasn't really all that helpful. I think I'm the only one who found one of the classes I wanted, and only after Caroline showed me. Then we had to find the office where we were having the meeting, with another woman named Carine Berberi. We ended up in the wrong place, but fortunately the people in that office called her and we got set up in her office. She tried to go through and figure out what each person was taking, but there were a lot of problems.
First off, there are apparently two institutions where we can take classes. There's the actual Université de François Rabelais, which is where we'd take regular college classes on any subject, but taught in French with actual French students. And then there's also the CUEFEE, which stands for the Centre Universitaire d'Enseignement du Français aux Etudiants Etrangers (the University Center for the Teaching of French to Foreign Students) and that is where we would take classes in learning French itself, depending on our level. They pronounce it Kwehf, and it's apparently what Dr. Rawson told us was the Franco-American Institute. We can take classes at either, but there are certain qualifiers involved in studying at the CUEFEE, like the 40 Euro fee that no-one told us about. Also the CUEFEE doesn't start until after we take the placement test next week, so we can't even think about what classes we'd theoretically take.
Carine works for the Université, so she was only giving us information about those specific classes. But, at this point those aren't even all figured out. Valeria and Mamie were told they could take specific art classes, but we found out that those are apparently not usually offered to exchange students and no-one has yet figured out where, when, or if that's going to be possible. Grant got a bunch of classes, but doesn't really know if he's going to take them, and Joel is apparently taking some of the same classes, but I have no idea. Aaron and Sierra seem fine, which is lucky for them. They had emailed their department people and apparently done this already. I managed to get three classes at the Université: beginning Greek, beginning Italian, and a French-English translation course. Hopefully I'll also take two classes at the CUEFEE (if you take any classes there at all, they require two obligatory ones, so that's the plan). I have absolutely no idea whether I'll be able to transfer all five of those home, due to credit hour issues, but we'll see.
After we talked to Carine, everyone was ridiculously frustrated, to the point where we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We had to go back to talk to Frédéric about the CUEFEE stuff (like when the test was, and where the test was, and when the classes start) because apparently he's in charge of that. Who knew? But they were on lunch break or something, because we couldn't get in the office. So we decided to go and get our own lunch, and calm down a bit.
The other girls had found a nice little restaurant where you could get a big sandwich, a plateful of fries, and a drink for 4.5 Euro. We went there, and they ended up having to seat us in the back, which was a kind of little gaming room. It was a lot nicer after the people playing pool and fuzzball left; before that I was getting really annoyed at the girl who kept hitting the back of my chair. The food was really good, though, and it was worth the bit of a walk. Rejuvenated and calmed, we went to talk to Frédéric and got the information we needed. (Unfortunately, the test is at the same time as my first Italian class, which is something I'm going to have to figure out.)
Then we went back to the house and hung out for the evening. Dinner was sort of strange; cucumbers in a slightly acidic creamy sauce and what was apparently shepherd's pie. It seemed more like a cream sauce with bits of ham and what might have been potatoes, I wasn't really sure. After dinner, we had decided we needed to get out of the house and have fun, or the stupid Université would drive us crazy. So we all got ready and went to a bar in the Place Plumereau. It was one of the same places we'd gone the other night, since we'd really liked it. While we were there, we met some cute French guys named Roman, Alban, and Thomas. We wanted to go dancing with them, since they knew where there were some discothèques in the area. The boys decided to stay, instead, so the four of us girls went.
Unfortunately the club was really ridiculously crowded, and kind of expensive. It was 10 Euro just to get in, and wall-to-wall packed. They played a lot of techno, which I didn't really mind, but it could've been more fun. Thomas didn't dance at all, and Sierra and Mamie ended up dancing with the other two. Valeria and I quickly got tired of dancing by ourselves and weren't really enjoying the club, so we walked home. We stayed up just to make sure that everyone got home alright, and then went to bed.
This morning, we slept in really late. A couple hours ago Valeria and Mamie and I got up and went to Rue Bordeaux for paninis and something to drink. We've been trying to get in touch with Dr. Rawson about our problems with classes and stuff, so hopefully that'll happen today.
First off, there are apparently two institutions where we can take classes. There's the actual Université de François Rabelais, which is where we'd take regular college classes on any subject, but taught in French with actual French students. And then there's also the CUEFEE, which stands for the Centre Universitaire d'Enseignement du Français aux Etudiants Etrangers (the University Center for the Teaching of French to Foreign Students) and that is where we would take classes in learning French itself, depending on our level. They pronounce it Kwehf, and it's apparently what Dr. Rawson told us was the Franco-American Institute. We can take classes at either, but there are certain qualifiers involved in studying at the CUEFEE, like the 40 Euro fee that no-one told us about. Also the CUEFEE doesn't start until after we take the placement test next week, so we can't even think about what classes we'd theoretically take.
Carine works for the Université, so she was only giving us information about those specific classes. But, at this point those aren't even all figured out. Valeria and Mamie were told they could take specific art classes, but we found out that those are apparently not usually offered to exchange students and no-one has yet figured out where, when, or if that's going to be possible. Grant got a bunch of classes, but doesn't really know if he's going to take them, and Joel is apparently taking some of the same classes, but I have no idea. Aaron and Sierra seem fine, which is lucky for them. They had emailed their department people and apparently done this already. I managed to get three classes at the Université: beginning Greek, beginning Italian, and a French-English translation course. Hopefully I'll also take two classes at the CUEFEE (if you take any classes there at all, they require two obligatory ones, so that's the plan). I have absolutely no idea whether I'll be able to transfer all five of those home, due to credit hour issues, but we'll see.
After we talked to Carine, everyone was ridiculously frustrated, to the point where we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We had to go back to talk to Frédéric about the CUEFEE stuff (like when the test was, and where the test was, and when the classes start) because apparently he's in charge of that. Who knew? But they were on lunch break or something, because we couldn't get in the office. So we decided to go and get our own lunch, and calm down a bit.
The other girls had found a nice little restaurant where you could get a big sandwich, a plateful of fries, and a drink for 4.5 Euro. We went there, and they ended up having to seat us in the back, which was a kind of little gaming room. It was a lot nicer after the people playing pool and fuzzball left; before that I was getting really annoyed at the girl who kept hitting the back of my chair. The food was really good, though, and it was worth the bit of a walk. Rejuvenated and calmed, we went to talk to Frédéric and got the information we needed. (Unfortunately, the test is at the same time as my first Italian class, which is something I'm going to have to figure out.)
Then we went back to the house and hung out for the evening. Dinner was sort of strange; cucumbers in a slightly acidic creamy sauce and what was apparently shepherd's pie. It seemed more like a cream sauce with bits of ham and what might have been potatoes, I wasn't really sure. After dinner, we had decided we needed to get out of the house and have fun, or the stupid Université would drive us crazy. So we all got ready and went to a bar in the Place Plumereau. It was one of the same places we'd gone the other night, since we'd really liked it. While we were there, we met some cute French guys named Roman, Alban, and Thomas. We wanted to go dancing with them, since they knew where there were some discothèques in the area. The boys decided to stay, instead, so the four of us girls went.
Unfortunately the club was really ridiculously crowded, and kind of expensive. It was 10 Euro just to get in, and wall-to-wall packed. They played a lot of techno, which I didn't really mind, but it could've been more fun. Thomas didn't dance at all, and Sierra and Mamie ended up dancing with the other two. Valeria and I quickly got tired of dancing by ourselves and weren't really enjoying the club, so we walked home. We stayed up just to make sure that everyone got home alright, and then went to bed.
This morning, we slept in really late. A couple hours ago Valeria and Mamie and I got up and went to Rue Bordeaux for paninis and something to drink. We've been trying to get in touch with Dr. Rawson about our problems with classes and stuff, so hopefully that'll happen today.
Catching Up
So Tuesday we did not, in fact, get classes. We went to the Université for our meeting with Caroline, and she took us on a tour of the building on the Rue des Tanneurs, which is the Department of Letters and Languages. That's where most of us have most of our classes, theoretically, if we have classes yet. She also showed us books of classes related to various majors, which wasn't really helpful because we didn't know what we were looking for or how to find it. But she wrote down what we told her about what classes we wanted, and we were given the impression that she would figure them out for us and email us with her findings. That or we would just wait until our other meeting on Thursday. So we were all pretty upset that we had gotten almost nothing accomplished. On our way back to the house it was snowing pretty hard, and the cobblestones were really slick, and it was altogether miserable. We finally got back to the house, holed up, and were just glad to get off the streets. That night we had ravioli for dinner, which was really good. We didn't do much that evening besides hang out and worry about classes.
The next day, Wednesday, was absolutely gorgeous. We had thought about going to the Musée des Beaux Arts, which is an art museum that's really nearby the house. But by the time everyone was awake and ready to go, we had kind of lost the urge. We decided that since the Musée is free every first Sunday of the month, we'd just wait until February and visit the Musée then. The second we went outside, though, we saw that it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We took a bunch of pictures of how beautiful things were. There's a marché that sets up on the Boulevard Heurteloup a couple times a week, and it happened to be there that day. There were several stalls of flower-sellers, so we got Jacqueline a bouquet from all of us. Then we went up Rue Nationale, which is where most of the shopping is in Tours, and wandered in and out of stores. On our way back to the house, we went into a couple antique stores that we pass by fairly often. One of them had a lot of old books, and I found one called "Celebration of silence" (in French, of course). The beginning of it explains sort of the value of silence and how rare it is, and then the rest of the book is full of blank pages. I thought it was pretty cool, and it was only 3 Euro, so I bought it. Dinner that night was roasted chicken and green beans. Mathias sort of threw a tantrum in the middle of it, which was really awkward. Xavier had to talk to him about it, but they both seemed pretty upset. Then after dinner I asked Mathias if he was done with his water so I could take it to the kitchen, and Xavier gave me a short lecture about how I'm an adult, and I should treat Mathias like a child. It was weird. I also sliced my finger open on my razor when I reached into my showering basket in the bathroom. It bled a lot, but isn't anything serious. Now it's healing up just fine.
Yesterday was Thursday, and we finally had our meeting to (supposedly) sign up for our classes. I'll leave that to a whole post on its own, though, since it was pretty eventful and frustrating.
The next day, Wednesday, was absolutely gorgeous. We had thought about going to the Musée des Beaux Arts, which is an art museum that's really nearby the house. But by the time everyone was awake and ready to go, we had kind of lost the urge. We decided that since the Musée is free every first Sunday of the month, we'd just wait until February and visit the Musée then. The second we went outside, though, we saw that it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We took a bunch of pictures of how beautiful things were. There's a marché that sets up on the Boulevard Heurteloup a couple times a week, and it happened to be there that day. There were several stalls of flower-sellers, so we got Jacqueline a bouquet from all of us. Then we went up Rue Nationale, which is where most of the shopping is in Tours, and wandered in and out of stores. On our way back to the house, we went into a couple antique stores that we pass by fairly often. One of them had a lot of old books, and I found one called "Celebration of silence" (in French, of course). The beginning of it explains sort of the value of silence and how rare it is, and then the rest of the book is full of blank pages. I thought it was pretty cool, and it was only 3 Euro, so I bought it. Dinner that night was roasted chicken and green beans. Mathias sort of threw a tantrum in the middle of it, which was really awkward. Xavier had to talk to him about it, but they both seemed pretty upset. Then after dinner I asked Mathias if he was done with his water so I could take it to the kitchen, and Xavier gave me a short lecture about how I'm an adult, and I should treat Mathias like a child. It was weird. I also sliced my finger open on my razor when I reached into my showering basket in the bathroom. It bled a lot, but isn't anything serious. Now it's healing up just fine.
Yesterday was Thursday, and we finally had our meeting to (supposedly) sign up for our classes. I'll leave that to a whole post on its own, though, since it was pretty eventful and frustrating.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
OMG New Phone!!
So yesterday morning we were supposed to get up early, since we had errands to accomplish and wanted to still be back by 2pm when Sierra's suitcase was supposed to be delivered. It was lost by her airline, so she's had to deal with being here without any clothes or most of the things she packed. We all woke up early to shower, but then her suitcase arrived anyway, so we didn't have to worry! We took our time eating breakfast, and headed out!
First we went down the Boulevard Heurteloup, which is one of the main arteries in Tours, and visited La Poste (the post office). We all had some immigration paperwork to mail in to the government, and then Valeria and I had post cards to mail as well. It was a lot cheaper than we thought, though; we were worried that it'd be a whole Euro to mail each post card and it was only about half that. Then we walked up the Rue Nationale to the Orange phone store.
Apparently Orange is the best company to go with in France, at least if you only want to do a pay-as-you-go temporary thing. The poor guy must've felt a little overwhelmed when 6 of us descended upon him, all wanting new phones. We explained what we wanted and got phones for fairly cheap; they were only 29 Euro. I was pretty ridiculously excited to get the phone; I finally will be able to tell the time when I'm out and about! We went home and spent a while exchanging our numbers and playing with the new toys, trying to figure them out. The one thing that is strange about doing pay-as-you-go in France is that they never give you your remaining phone time in minutes; they give it in Euros. I imagine that's because you can use that credit for surfing the web and sending texts as well as actual phone conversations, but it makes it really hard to know how much you have left.
After we spent a while playing, we got ready to go back outside to get lunch, shop and hang out. We ended up at Rue Bordeaux again; it's kind of becoming our default place to go. We got delicious panini sandwiches for lunch. Mine was tomato and mozzarella, and it was really good and hot! We then wandered around a bit. We went in Sephora, which is a perfume and make-up store that I'm pretty sure we have in the US. Sierra wanted to look at perfume, but she didn't end up finding anything she liked. The rest of us wandered around and tried all the testers. Then we went down the street farther, and into a little store called Dress Code's. They had clothes and shoes, and I found an adorable pair of boots that were on sale for 9 Euro! I was really excited; the only shoes I brought with me are ballet flats and my high-heel boots, which are cold and heels respectively. Now I have warmer feet! I also went to a tabac (which is a place where they sell drinks and cigarettes and lotto tickets and other little things- they're everywhere in France) and bought some more minutes for my phone.
After a brief stop at a little grocery store to get snacks to have back in our rooms, we went home again. I tried to figure out how to reload my phone, and I think I did it right. We hung out and tried to find classes on the Université website, which has proved to be almost impossible. Apparently you pretty much have to just email the head of the department and they can send you the classes you're interested in. Dinner last night was a little strange; first lentils in some kind of slightly acidic sauce with a bit of lettuce, and then endives wrapped in ham with hard-boiled eggs. It was okay, but strange; I couldn't identify a lot of it myself. For dessert we had chocolate pudding, which was good.
After dinner Luzé had said she would take us to a café in town where they have a sort of cultural exchange evening thing. Basically a lot of students (especially exchange students) will come, and people will speak lots of different languages at different tables. You're supposed to just go and join in a conversation somewhere, so you can meet new people and talk. It apparently fills up really quickly, though; we left the house at about 9pm and it was way too packed when we got there. We ended up having to sit downstairs since there wasn't any room, and so we mostly just talked to each other. It was fun though; I got the first actual Diabolo grenadine I've had since July 2006, and it made me ridiculously happy. (A Diabolo's basically a combination of limonade and grenadine syrup, kind of like a Shirley Temple. My host mother in the south introduced me to them, and they're fantastic.)
Luzé introduced us to her friend Sarah, who is on an exchange from a little school in New York. She'd been here since September, which was cool. We also met another friend of Luzé's named Charlotte, who is from Belgium. She had only been here for about a week, like we have. I think she kind of struggled with the fact that we were speaking English, but she seemed pretty nice. It was really fun to meet new people and just hang out for an evening. When we walked back I was really tired, and ended up falling asleep.
This morning Valeria, Mamie, and Sierra went out because they wanted to go shopping and find somewhere to get identification photos taken. In France you apparently need passport photos for practically every single piece of official paperwork you do. I brought a few extras with me (I have seven; that should last me at least the first couple weeks of school!) so I decided to sleep in instead of joining them. I didn't wake up until 10; it's one of the few times so far I've been able to actually sleep for more than 6 hours at a time. I took a shower and ate breakfast downstairs, and now I'm waiting until 2ish, when we're going to the Université again to figure out our classes finally. Wish me luck!
First we went down the Boulevard Heurteloup, which is one of the main arteries in Tours, and visited La Poste (the post office). We all had some immigration paperwork to mail in to the government, and then Valeria and I had post cards to mail as well. It was a lot cheaper than we thought, though; we were worried that it'd be a whole Euro to mail each post card and it was only about half that. Then we walked up the Rue Nationale to the Orange phone store.
Apparently Orange is the best company to go with in France, at least if you only want to do a pay-as-you-go temporary thing. The poor guy must've felt a little overwhelmed when 6 of us descended upon him, all wanting new phones. We explained what we wanted and got phones for fairly cheap; they were only 29 Euro. I was pretty ridiculously excited to get the phone; I finally will be able to tell the time when I'm out and about! We went home and spent a while exchanging our numbers and playing with the new toys, trying to figure them out. The one thing that is strange about doing pay-as-you-go in France is that they never give you your remaining phone time in minutes; they give it in Euros. I imagine that's because you can use that credit for surfing the web and sending texts as well as actual phone conversations, but it makes it really hard to know how much you have left.
After we spent a while playing, we got ready to go back outside to get lunch, shop and hang out. We ended up at Rue Bordeaux again; it's kind of becoming our default place to go. We got delicious panini sandwiches for lunch. Mine was tomato and mozzarella, and it was really good and hot! We then wandered around a bit. We went in Sephora, which is a perfume and make-up store that I'm pretty sure we have in the US. Sierra wanted to look at perfume, but she didn't end up finding anything she liked. The rest of us wandered around and tried all the testers. Then we went down the street farther, and into a little store called Dress Code's. They had clothes and shoes, and I found an adorable pair of boots that were on sale for 9 Euro! I was really excited; the only shoes I brought with me are ballet flats and my high-heel boots, which are cold and heels respectively. Now I have warmer feet! I also went to a tabac (which is a place where they sell drinks and cigarettes and lotto tickets and other little things- they're everywhere in France) and bought some more minutes for my phone.
After a brief stop at a little grocery store to get snacks to have back in our rooms, we went home again. I tried to figure out how to reload my phone, and I think I did it right. We hung out and tried to find classes on the Université website, which has proved to be almost impossible. Apparently you pretty much have to just email the head of the department and they can send you the classes you're interested in. Dinner last night was a little strange; first lentils in some kind of slightly acidic sauce with a bit of lettuce, and then endives wrapped in ham with hard-boiled eggs. It was okay, but strange; I couldn't identify a lot of it myself. For dessert we had chocolate pudding, which was good.
After dinner Luzé had said she would take us to a café in town where they have a sort of cultural exchange evening thing. Basically a lot of students (especially exchange students) will come, and people will speak lots of different languages at different tables. You're supposed to just go and join in a conversation somewhere, so you can meet new people and talk. It apparently fills up really quickly, though; we left the house at about 9pm and it was way too packed when we got there. We ended up having to sit downstairs since there wasn't any room, and so we mostly just talked to each other. It was fun though; I got the first actual Diabolo grenadine I've had since July 2006, and it made me ridiculously happy. (A Diabolo's basically a combination of limonade and grenadine syrup, kind of like a Shirley Temple. My host mother in the south introduced me to them, and they're fantastic.)
Luzé introduced us to her friend Sarah, who is on an exchange from a little school in New York. She'd been here since September, which was cool. We also met another friend of Luzé's named Charlotte, who is from Belgium. She had only been here for about a week, like we have. I think she kind of struggled with the fact that we were speaking English, but she seemed pretty nice. It was really fun to meet new people and just hang out for an evening. When we walked back I was really tired, and ended up falling asleep.
This morning Valeria, Mamie, and Sierra went out because they wanted to go shopping and find somewhere to get identification photos taken. In France you apparently need passport photos for practically every single piece of official paperwork you do. I brought a few extras with me (I have seven; that should last me at least the first couple weeks of school!) so I decided to sleep in instead of joining them. I didn't wake up until 10; it's one of the few times so far I've been able to actually sleep for more than 6 hours at a time. I took a shower and ate breakfast downstairs, and now I'm waiting until 2ish, when we're going to the Université again to figure out our classes finally. Wish me luck!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Pizza du Lapin
So unfortunately we did not get cell phones yesterday. We hung out for a while in the house, then headed out into town. There were a lot of people out, probably because of the sales. In France, stores can only have sales during specific times of the year as mandated by the government. This means that things can be really expensive most of the time, but usually the sales end up going as far as 70% by the end of the period that they're allowed, and it's a lot of fun to go shopping then. We lucked out; the sales started the day Valeria, Joel, and I arrived, and go through the first of February. But since it was a Saturday during sales, everything was packed. We decided to go back to the cell phone place on Monday, when hopefully it'll be less crowded. Then we walked down to the Rue Bordeaux, which is a cute little pedestrian street with lots of shops and bakeries, and we got sandwiches to eat on our way back home. I learned that "crudités" (which generally means raw vegetables) apparently includes eggs, since there were eggs on my chicken and crudités sandwich. But that was okay; it still tasted really good.
When we got back, we hung out upstairs some more (it really sounds like we have no life, but there's not much to do). Mathias came and we played with him some; he absolutely adores taking pictures of himself on Valeria's computer. At one point, though, he was chasing Mamie out into the hallway (she was the criminal escaping from jail and he was the warden) and he tripped over the lamp cord and smacked into the ground. It was really worrying when it happened, but ended up being really hilarious after we found out that he was fine. He was even laughing about it, and watched the video over and over again. After a while we got really tired, though, and pretty much everyone went to take a nap. Valeria woke me when Fabiola was ringing the dinner bell. Apparently Valeria found it really annoying; I was too asleep to notice.
For dinner we had paella (is what I've discovered it's called), which is a Spanish dish of rice and seafood. There was octopus, shrimp, and mussels in it, and I thought it was wonderful. Those people who didn't like seafood had a different opinion, but they're crazy. For dessert we had pistachio ice cream with a little bread/cookie thing and a slice of peach, topped with what I think were candied almonds. It was really delicious, although I was a little skeptical since I'd never tried pistachio ice cream.
Afterward we thought we were going to go out again and try to find a discothèque so we could go dancing. We stayed up trying to figure out what we wanted to do, but apparently French clubs don't open until, like, 2am. So you either go to bed really early and wake up early to go, or you just stay up all night and hang out in the bars beforehand. By the time we could've possibly gone to a bar or something we decided we were just tired, and stayed home instead. Unfortunately, a couple people decided to stay up until 4am drinking and being loud anyway, which meant that pretty much no-one could sleep. Also one person in particular decided to go outside for a smoke, and ended up locking himself out. So he rang the doorbell frantically to be let in, and woke up everyone who had managed to go to sleep.
Finally I got to sleep around 5am, and so today I just slept in until almost noon. Valeria and I assumed that brunch would be around the same time, but it wasn't until almost 1:30, by which time we were really hungry. Mathias had come up and was hanging around with us, and we thought he'd said that we were having rabbit pizza (pizza du lapin) for brunch. We thought that was a little bizarre, but when the bell rang we all ran down to eat. It turned out that we were having pizza for brunch, but it wasn't rabbit pizza. The rabbit was for dinner, and they were just cooking it all day.
After brunch, people hung around more. Mamie and Valeria and I sort of napped in our room for a while. Then everyone got ready to go out for shopping and stuff. I've been kind of homesick and spending every minute of every day with the group was starting to wear on me, so I stayed here to have some time to myself. I'm discovering more and more that I really do need my alone time. It was nice to just stretch out, listen to music, and not have to know that six other people were moving around and breathing and making noise everywhere around me.
When everyone did come back after a while, I was much better able to deal with them, and it was once again nice to sit and talk. It is never soon enough for dinner, though, and the rabbit was absolutely delicious! It was rich and juicy and they had these really yummy little potatoes with it too. The only thing that was strange was that it had all these tiny bones that you had to watch out for. It was kind of like chicken, except that it was only dark meat, and I think that was why I liked it. Jacqueline also had a friend over for dinner, a woman that she'd apparently met in college. She was really friendly, and asked us a lot of questions and tried to start conversations. Everyone's still having a really hard time speaking up, whether out of general timidness, unease with the language, or what, I don't know. It's kind of sad.
After dinner we helped clean up, as usual, and we actually sat in the salon and tried to find a game to play. After one round of Spoons, we moved on to the Dhommées' stash of boardgames, and played one called Brainstorm! Basically one person has a card with a topic and a list of things related to that topic, and your team has to try to guess as many of the things on the card as possible. It was an okay game, but we got bored with it pretty quickly and headed back upstairs to bed. Tomorrow should actually be fairly busy; we have to get things done in the morning.
To bed!
When we got back, we hung out upstairs some more (it really sounds like we have no life, but there's not much to do). Mathias came and we played with him some; he absolutely adores taking pictures of himself on Valeria's computer. At one point, though, he was chasing Mamie out into the hallway (she was the criminal escaping from jail and he was the warden) and he tripped over the lamp cord and smacked into the ground. It was really worrying when it happened, but ended up being really hilarious after we found out that he was fine. He was even laughing about it, and watched the video over and over again. After a while we got really tired, though, and pretty much everyone went to take a nap. Valeria woke me when Fabiola was ringing the dinner bell. Apparently Valeria found it really annoying; I was too asleep to notice.
For dinner we had paella (is what I've discovered it's called), which is a Spanish dish of rice and seafood. There was octopus, shrimp, and mussels in it, and I thought it was wonderful. Those people who didn't like seafood had a different opinion, but they're crazy. For dessert we had pistachio ice cream with a little bread/cookie thing and a slice of peach, topped with what I think were candied almonds. It was really delicious, although I was a little skeptical since I'd never tried pistachio ice cream.
Afterward we thought we were going to go out again and try to find a discothèque so we could go dancing. We stayed up trying to figure out what we wanted to do, but apparently French clubs don't open until, like, 2am. So you either go to bed really early and wake up early to go, or you just stay up all night and hang out in the bars beforehand. By the time we could've possibly gone to a bar or something we decided we were just tired, and stayed home instead. Unfortunately, a couple people decided to stay up until 4am drinking and being loud anyway, which meant that pretty much no-one could sleep. Also one person in particular decided to go outside for a smoke, and ended up locking himself out. So he rang the doorbell frantically to be let in, and woke up everyone who had managed to go to sleep.
Finally I got to sleep around 5am, and so today I just slept in until almost noon. Valeria and I assumed that brunch would be around the same time, but it wasn't until almost 1:30, by which time we were really hungry. Mathias had come up and was hanging around with us, and we thought he'd said that we were having rabbit pizza (pizza du lapin) for brunch. We thought that was a little bizarre, but when the bell rang we all ran down to eat. It turned out that we were having pizza for brunch, but it wasn't rabbit pizza. The rabbit was for dinner, and they were just cooking it all day.
After brunch, people hung around more. Mamie and Valeria and I sort of napped in our room for a while. Then everyone got ready to go out for shopping and stuff. I've been kind of homesick and spending every minute of every day with the group was starting to wear on me, so I stayed here to have some time to myself. I'm discovering more and more that I really do need my alone time. It was nice to just stretch out, listen to music, and not have to know that six other people were moving around and breathing and making noise everywhere around me.
When everyone did come back after a while, I was much better able to deal with them, and it was once again nice to sit and talk. It is never soon enough for dinner, though, and the rabbit was absolutely delicious! It was rich and juicy and they had these really yummy little potatoes with it too. The only thing that was strange was that it had all these tiny bones that you had to watch out for. It was kind of like chicken, except that it was only dark meat, and I think that was why I liked it. Jacqueline also had a friend over for dinner, a woman that she'd apparently met in college. She was really friendly, and asked us a lot of questions and tried to start conversations. Everyone's still having a really hard time speaking up, whether out of general timidness, unease with the language, or what, I don't know. It's kind of sad.
After dinner we helped clean up, as usual, and we actually sat in the salon and tried to find a game to play. After one round of Spoons, we moved on to the Dhommées' stash of boardgames, and played one called Brainstorm! Basically one person has a card with a topic and a list of things related to that topic, and your team has to try to guess as many of the things on the card as possible. It was an okay game, but we got bored with it pretty quickly and headed back upstairs to bed. Tomorrow should actually be fairly busy; we have to get things done in the morning.
To bed!
Saturday, January 9, 2010
The First Weekend
This weekend feels kind of lame for a weekend, but only because we haven't done much this week to make sitting around be special.
Yesterday, we sat around for a while and eventually I finally warmed up. Then it was dinnertime, and we had ratatouille with baked egg on top, which was incredibly delicious. They seem to do casserole-type dishes pretty exclusively for dinner. I'm not sure if that's because it's easier for them since they have work and school all day, or just because it keeps the kitchen warmer if the stove's on. :P
That evening we all hung out more. Jacqueline and Xavier are going to think we hate them; we just sit in our rooms on our computers all day. Really it's just cold downstairs, and we have nothing to do. The boys kept talking about going out somewhere, but we didn't know what we'd do or where we'd go. Fortunately the French don't go out until really late, so by the time we decided to go it was fine. Aaron led the way, since he'd gone Google-searching earlier. We went to a couple bars and it was a lot of fun, and then we came back and had to be extremely quiet coming back up the stairs so we didn't wake up the rest of the house. I don't know how everyone else had the energy to stay up longer; I collapsed into bed and was dead to the world.
This morning I woke up early and took a shower. The showers aren't nearly as bad as I was expecting; our professor told us that they didn't have shower curtains and that it was impossible to shower without getting water everywhere. It's a little small, but there is a curtain and it's actually pretty comfortable. On weekends the Dhommées make us a larger brunch instead of breakfast, so everyone went downstairs to eat around 12:30. We had these kind of strange ham and cheese baked sandwiches with pineapple rings on top. They were good, but weird.
Today we have to get cell phones to use while we're here. Hopefully the store will be open; I don't know when we're going to leave, since pretty much everyone went back to sleep.
Yesterday, we sat around for a while and eventually I finally warmed up. Then it was dinnertime, and we had ratatouille with baked egg on top, which was incredibly delicious. They seem to do casserole-type dishes pretty exclusively for dinner. I'm not sure if that's because it's easier for them since they have work and school all day, or just because it keeps the kitchen warmer if the stove's on. :P
That evening we all hung out more. Jacqueline and Xavier are going to think we hate them; we just sit in our rooms on our computers all day. Really it's just cold downstairs, and we have nothing to do. The boys kept talking about going out somewhere, but we didn't know what we'd do or where we'd go. Fortunately the French don't go out until really late, so by the time we decided to go it was fine. Aaron led the way, since he'd gone Google-searching earlier. We went to a couple bars and it was a lot of fun, and then we came back and had to be extremely quiet coming back up the stairs so we didn't wake up the rest of the house. I don't know how everyone else had the energy to stay up longer; I collapsed into bed and was dead to the world.
This morning I woke up early and took a shower. The showers aren't nearly as bad as I was expecting; our professor told us that they didn't have shower curtains and that it was impossible to shower without getting water everywhere. It's a little small, but there is a curtain and it's actually pretty comfortable. On weekends the Dhommées make us a larger brunch instead of breakfast, so everyone went downstairs to eat around 12:30. We had these kind of strange ham and cheese baked sandwiches with pineapple rings on top. They were good, but weird.
Today we have to get cell phones to use while we're here. Hopefully the store will be open; I don't know when we're going to leave, since pretty much everyone went back to sleep.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Finally Warming Up
I feel bad complaining about how cold it is, since it's really only, like, 20 degrees. But after walking around outside for 2 hours, my feet were so cold it was painful!
Anyway, recaps. Yesterday we didn't really do much of anything. We were waiting for Sierra and Aaron to show up, and they were supposed to get here around noonish. So we thought that once they came, we could go out and look for cell phones and see the town and stuff. After waiting most of the day, though, we got bored and went for a short walk. Then we came back... and waited even longer. By evening we thought to look up their flights, and it said they wouldn't be arriving until today. So it was quite a surprise when suddenly they were here that evening! Like our original trio, they showed up just in time for dinner and then we hung around a little and went to bed.
This morning, we had to get up early because we had a meeting. The people from the Université wanted us to come by to get paperwork in order, so we had breakfast and left around 10ish. I knew where we were going, after Jacqueline's mini-tour yesterday, so I led the way. When we got there (after having to ask for directions at one point) they took us to a little meeting room and we had to fill out some paperwork. We have another meeting next Tuesday at 3pm, and by then we need to have mostly decided what classes we want to take. We've received all kinds of different reports about when classes actually start; right now our understanding is that regular classes start the 18th of January and the classes for French learners start the 25th. Since we'll be taking both kinds of classes, we need to know both dates.
Caroline was the woman who was helping us, and after everything was filled out she took us on another tour of Tours. We saw mostly just the same stuff as on Jacqueline's tour, but Caroline pointed out some stuff that she knew about that's specifically helpful for students. She left us in front of the Cathedral, and then we went back to the Prefecture to take care of our immigration paperwork. The office didn't open until 1, though, leaving us 20 minutes to stand outside the closed gate. We got sandwiches at a nearby patisserie (where they apparently sell the largest pastries in Tours) while we waited, and then talked to the lady for two seconds. She basically just said we had to mail the papers in to the office.
By the time we got home, my feet were so cold they'd gone past being numb and had started hurting. So I got into bed and have been sitting here for a while warming up. Now I'm not sure what (if anything) is planned for the rest of the day; there's been talk of watching a movie tonight, and we might go out tomorrow night now that everyone's here.
I miss you all (Hello, homesickness. I wondered where you were.) and I hope things are going well back home. <3
Anyway, recaps. Yesterday we didn't really do much of anything. We were waiting for Sierra and Aaron to show up, and they were supposed to get here around noonish. So we thought that once they came, we could go out and look for cell phones and see the town and stuff. After waiting most of the day, though, we got bored and went for a short walk. Then we came back... and waited even longer. By evening we thought to look up their flights, and it said they wouldn't be arriving until today. So it was quite a surprise when suddenly they were here that evening! Like our original trio, they showed up just in time for dinner and then we hung around a little and went to bed.
This morning, we had to get up early because we had a meeting. The people from the Université wanted us to come by to get paperwork in order, so we had breakfast and left around 10ish. I knew where we were going, after Jacqueline's mini-tour yesterday, so I led the way. When we got there (after having to ask for directions at one point) they took us to a little meeting room and we had to fill out some paperwork. We have another meeting next Tuesday at 3pm, and by then we need to have mostly decided what classes we want to take. We've received all kinds of different reports about when classes actually start; right now our understanding is that regular classes start the 18th of January and the classes for French learners start the 25th. Since we'll be taking both kinds of classes, we need to know both dates.
Caroline was the woman who was helping us, and after everything was filled out she took us on another tour of Tours. We saw mostly just the same stuff as on Jacqueline's tour, but Caroline pointed out some stuff that she knew about that's specifically helpful for students. She left us in front of the Cathedral, and then we went back to the Prefecture to take care of our immigration paperwork. The office didn't open until 1, though, leaving us 20 minutes to stand outside the closed gate. We got sandwiches at a nearby patisserie (where they apparently sell the largest pastries in Tours) while we waited, and then talked to the lady for two seconds. She basically just said we had to mail the papers in to the office.
By the time we got home, my feet were so cold they'd gone past being numb and had started hurting. So I got into bed and have been sitting here for a while warming up. Now I'm not sure what (if anything) is planned for the rest of the day; there's been talk of watching a movie tonight, and we might go out tomorrow night now that everyone's here.
I miss you all (Hello, homesickness. I wondered where you were.) and I hope things are going well back home. <3
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Evening Silliness
It seems like I update this constantly; that'll probably drop off once we start classes, which is apparently next week, and not on the 18th like we thought. Still, I figure it's better to update more frequently, while everything's still fresh in my mind.
After my last post I did take a nap for a bit, partially because I was sleepy and partially because I didn't have much else to do. Later, Mamie came up and sat with Valeria and I, and we could still hear Mathias playing. Amanda, another Concordia student, was here for the summer, and she sent him a pair of little robot toys, which he came and showed us. He played in here for a while, which was adorable! We (or at least us girls) have all fallen in love with him.
When Xavier called us down for dinner, we had to wake up Joel (who had slept all day and hadn't even woken up for breakfast!) and Grant (who had been napping). Dinner was fun. Apparently January 6th is the Fête des Rois (Feast of Kings), which is a Catholic holiday that we don't celebrate in the U.S. After a delicious dinner of pasta and chicken with mushrooms in sauce, we had pieces of galette, which is a kind of pastry-cake. Inside each galette is a little figurine, and whoever gets the figurine in their piece is named the King or Queen for the day! We had two galettes, so Mathias and Lucé ended up both being the King and Queen.
After dinner we cleaned up, as usual, although it's more and more difficult to move around the more people show up. Then we went upstairs and now everyone is piled in our room to hang out. I think I might have to kick them out soon so I can go to bed early, that way I'll hopefully not be tired tomorrow!
After my last post I did take a nap for a bit, partially because I was sleepy and partially because I didn't have much else to do. Later, Mamie came up and sat with Valeria and I, and we could still hear Mathias playing. Amanda, another Concordia student, was here for the summer, and she sent him a pair of little robot toys, which he came and showed us. He played in here for a while, which was adorable! We (or at least us girls) have all fallen in love with him.
When Xavier called us down for dinner, we had to wake up Joel (who had slept all day and hadn't even woken up for breakfast!) and Grant (who had been napping). Dinner was fun. Apparently January 6th is the Fête des Rois (Feast of Kings), which is a Catholic holiday that we don't celebrate in the U.S. After a delicious dinner of pasta and chicken with mushrooms in sauce, we had pieces of galette, which is a kind of pastry-cake. Inside each galette is a little figurine, and whoever gets the figurine in their piece is named the King or Queen for the day! We had two galettes, so Mathias and Lucé ended up both being the King and Queen.
After dinner we cleaned up, as usual, although it's more and more difficult to move around the more people show up. Then we went upstairs and now everyone is piled in our room to hang out. I think I might have to kick them out soon so I can go to bed early, that way I'll hopefully not be tired tomorrow!
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
Last night after we went shopping we pretty much just hung out in our room. Valeria, Joel, and I napped, and then in the evening we went downstairs and hung out and talked to people in the salon. There's another girl here named Flabiola, who's from Peru, and right before dinner Lucé returned from Belgium. Lucé is Canadian, but born in Mexico, and she'd already been staying here. Mathias did his puzzle that Valeria had brought, and we watched some of Charmed, which was really strange because it was dubbed into French.
Then we had dinner, which was interesting with everyone at the table. I'm not really sure how we're going to fit twelve people in that dining room, but I'm sure we'll manage. Xavier had made a chocolate cake for dessert, which was fantastic. Everyone was talking about the fact that it was supposed to snow last night, and they were all freaking out. It reminded me of Seattle, where the possibility of snow was the top headline on the news. We helped clean up, and went back upstairs. Mamie and Grant were supposed to come in last night, but their plane was delayed, so we didn't know when they would be here. I finally got to take a shower (yay, buying shampoo!), and even caught Gramma on the phone and talked to her briefly. Around midnight, Joel came to our room and we just kind of talked about internet fads and things.
I had a really hard time going to sleep, for some reason. I think it was because I'd napped longer than I intended. I finally got to sleep around 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, but I woke up completely at 4:30, and then woke up a couple other times through the night. This morning I woke up around 9:00, but Valeria and I were both really tired. We were getting dressed and thinking about going downstairs, when the doorbell rang! Valeria and I both looked at each other in confusion for a second, and then she burst out with "Grant and Mamie!" and ran downstairs. I followed after, and sure enough it was them, arrived bright and early in the morning. With them had also come the snow; there was thin blanket of white over everything; maybe an inch, probably not even that much.
Poor Jacqueline and Mathias must have thought we were crazy; they came after us a bit later, still dressed in their pajamas. That was good, though, because neither of us knew where the new arrivals were supposed to go. Turns out Grant and Aaron are sleeping on the third floor as well, and Mamie is on the second. All of the bedrooms have specific names, which is adorable. Valeria and I are in Les Marguerites, Grant and Aaron are in Les Pigeonniers, and Mamie and Sierra are in La petite Marie. Joel's by himself, so his room doesn't have a name that I know of. Flabiola is also on the third floor, on the other side of the water closet. I have no idea where Lucé's room is.
After Grant and Mamie had gotten settled a little bit, and we had talked and shared stories, we all went downstairs for breakfast. Mathias didn't have school today (apparently French kids don't on Wednesdays) and Jacqueline was home from work, so she told us that she could take us on a little tour of Tours. We finished, cleared the table, got ready, and headed out into winter!
She took us a different way than we had gone yesterday, through the little streets and older parts of Tours. We went by the Musée des Beaux Arts, and the Cathédral de Tours, and then went through what is apparently the antiques district to get to the Théâtre Municipale, or the City Theatre. After that we headed more towards the Rue Nationale, which is full of stores and boutiques, and that led us straight to the Loire river. That whole part of the city was bombarded during WWII, so it's all been rebuilt and is fairly modern. Tours is apparently a city in three parts, divided by the Cher river and the Loire. Le Nonante and everything we've seen so far is in Tours-Centre, the middle part of the city. We took some pictures, and Jacqueline took a picture of the four of us, where I look pretty much translucent.
After the river, we turned and went through another older district, built in the 13th century (or something like that; I didn't quite catch what Jacqueline told me). It was amazing; I think I could spend entire days just taking pictures of the architecture in this city. We found a Monoprix, which is a supermarché where I was able to buy some slippers to wear inside the house. The staircase is old and kind of slippery; Joel fell down most of the bottom flight yesterday, so we've all been treading with trepidation since then. Hopefully with the slippers it won't be so treacherous.
We walked back to the house, and Jacqueline was helping me orient myself. I think I pretty much understand Tours-Centre, at least, and with a map I shouldn't have any problems at all. I might restrict more ranging to when it's not so wet out, though; my socks and the bottoms of my pants are soaked, and my feet were half-frozen by the time we got back to the house.
Since then, we've been hanging out still. We can hear Mathias playing in the house; he is so ridiculously adorable. Mamie gave him a little hamster toy that scoots around, and we can hear him playing with it. I really kind of want a nap, but I know it'll just make me tired again tomorrow. Such a conundrum. :P
Then we had dinner, which was interesting with everyone at the table. I'm not really sure how we're going to fit twelve people in that dining room, but I'm sure we'll manage. Xavier had made a chocolate cake for dessert, which was fantastic. Everyone was talking about the fact that it was supposed to snow last night, and they were all freaking out. It reminded me of Seattle, where the possibility of snow was the top headline on the news. We helped clean up, and went back upstairs. Mamie and Grant were supposed to come in last night, but their plane was delayed, so we didn't know when they would be here. I finally got to take a shower (yay, buying shampoo!), and even caught Gramma on the phone and talked to her briefly. Around midnight, Joel came to our room and we just kind of talked about internet fads and things.
I had a really hard time going to sleep, for some reason. I think it was because I'd napped longer than I intended. I finally got to sleep around 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, but I woke up completely at 4:30, and then woke up a couple other times through the night. This morning I woke up around 9:00, but Valeria and I were both really tired. We were getting dressed and thinking about going downstairs, when the doorbell rang! Valeria and I both looked at each other in confusion for a second, and then she burst out with "Grant and Mamie!" and ran downstairs. I followed after, and sure enough it was them, arrived bright and early in the morning. With them had also come the snow; there was thin blanket of white over everything; maybe an inch, probably not even that much.
Poor Jacqueline and Mathias must have thought we were crazy; they came after us a bit later, still dressed in their pajamas. That was good, though, because neither of us knew where the new arrivals were supposed to go. Turns out Grant and Aaron are sleeping on the third floor as well, and Mamie is on the second. All of the bedrooms have specific names, which is adorable. Valeria and I are in Les Marguerites, Grant and Aaron are in Les Pigeonniers, and Mamie and Sierra are in La petite Marie. Joel's by himself, so his room doesn't have a name that I know of. Flabiola is also on the third floor, on the other side of the water closet. I have no idea where Lucé's room is.
After Grant and Mamie had gotten settled a little bit, and we had talked and shared stories, we all went downstairs for breakfast. Mathias didn't have school today (apparently French kids don't on Wednesdays) and Jacqueline was home from work, so she told us that she could take us on a little tour of Tours. We finished, cleared the table, got ready, and headed out into winter!
She took us a different way than we had gone yesterday, through the little streets and older parts of Tours. We went by the Musée des Beaux Arts, and the Cathédral de Tours, and then went through what is apparently the antiques district to get to the Théâtre Municipale, or the City Theatre. After that we headed more towards the Rue Nationale, which is full of stores and boutiques, and that led us straight to the Loire river. That whole part of the city was bombarded during WWII, so it's all been rebuilt and is fairly modern. Tours is apparently a city in three parts, divided by the Cher river and the Loire. Le Nonante and everything we've seen so far is in Tours-Centre, the middle part of the city. We took some pictures, and Jacqueline took a picture of the four of us, where I look pretty much translucent.
After the river, we turned and went through another older district, built in the 13th century (or something like that; I didn't quite catch what Jacqueline told me). It was amazing; I think I could spend entire days just taking pictures of the architecture in this city. We found a Monoprix, which is a supermarché where I was able to buy some slippers to wear inside the house. The staircase is old and kind of slippery; Joel fell down most of the bottom flight yesterday, so we've all been treading with trepidation since then. Hopefully with the slippers it won't be so treacherous.
We walked back to the house, and Jacqueline was helping me orient myself. I think I pretty much understand Tours-Centre, at least, and with a map I shouldn't have any problems at all. I might restrict more ranging to when it's not so wet out, though; my socks and the bottoms of my pants are soaked, and my feet were half-frozen by the time we got back to the house.
Since then, we've been hanging out still. We can hear Mathias playing in the house; he is so ridiculously adorable. Mamie gave him a little hamster toy that scoots around, and we can hear him playing with it. I really kind of want a nap, but I know it'll just make me tired again tomorrow. Such a conundrum. :P
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
These shoes were not made for walking.
They were made for standing in one place during choir concerts. But whatever, I've worn them all over Tours now. This morning I didn't wake up until 10am, and Valeria and I went down after a bit for a late breakfast of chocolate cereal.
Madame Dhommée used to have a cook and housekeeper to take care of the house, but since Xavier and Jacqueline are living with us, we're just supposed to take care of dishes and stuff like that ourselves. So after washing dishes we hung out for a bit, and then Valeria, Joel, and I went out to see if we could find a supermarché (supermarket) to buy shampoo and soap and other such necessities. Xavier told us to go by the train station, so we set off!
It's a bit colder here than I had expected, although not nearly so cold as Moorhead. We wore gloves and coats and scarves, but the train station is only a 10 to 20 minute walk away. Once there, however, we couldn't find the supermarché at all. We saw the little briocherie that Xavier had told us to look for, and a whole street of little shops and stuff. But no sign of a basic store.
We looked at the map, and found a marché marked a little ways from the train station, so we headed there. It looked like the market wasn't being held that day, though, and we pretty much figured out that the marché is an open-air market where you buy food and art and handmade stuff, and the supermarché is where you buy toiletries. There was a fairly large street that went from the open marché back to Rue Mirabeau and Le Nonante, so we followed that back up.
After a bit of a pause to warm up our frozen extremities, we asked again, and Xavier repeated that the supermarché was right next to the train station. Once more, we set out. This time, we found what we think he was referring to, but the store was closed and the grates were down over the doors. It was right next to the briocherie, so we got brioche. If you've never had it, it's fabulous. Shaped kind of like a muffin, but more like pastry, the brioche basically made my day.
We wandered down the little shopping district again, and found a 2 Euro store (roughly equivalent to a dollar store) where we could buy some things. I had to ask at a pharmacie to find an ATM, since the store didn't accept bank cards. Then we headed back to Le Nonante to hang out some more. I get the feeling these days before class starts are going to be really relaxed, which I'm definitely cool with.
Madame Dhommée used to have a cook and housekeeper to take care of the house, but since Xavier and Jacqueline are living with us, we're just supposed to take care of dishes and stuff like that ourselves. So after washing dishes we hung out for a bit, and then Valeria, Joel, and I went out to see if we could find a supermarché (supermarket) to buy shampoo and soap and other such necessities. Xavier told us to go by the train station, so we set off!
It's a bit colder here than I had expected, although not nearly so cold as Moorhead. We wore gloves and coats and scarves, but the train station is only a 10 to 20 minute walk away. Once there, however, we couldn't find the supermarché at all. We saw the little briocherie that Xavier had told us to look for, and a whole street of little shops and stuff. But no sign of a basic store.
We looked at the map, and found a marché marked a little ways from the train station, so we headed there. It looked like the market wasn't being held that day, though, and we pretty much figured out that the marché is an open-air market where you buy food and art and handmade stuff, and the supermarché is where you buy toiletries. There was a fairly large street that went from the open marché back to Rue Mirabeau and Le Nonante, so we followed that back up.
After a bit of a pause to warm up our frozen extremities, we asked again, and Xavier repeated that the supermarché was right next to the train station. Once more, we set out. This time, we found what we think he was referring to, but the store was closed and the grates were down over the doors. It was right next to the briocherie, so we got brioche. If you've never had it, it's fabulous. Shaped kind of like a muffin, but more like pastry, the brioche basically made my day.
We wandered down the little shopping district again, and found a 2 Euro store (roughly equivalent to a dollar store) where we could buy some things. I had to ask at a pharmacie to find an ATM, since the store didn't accept bank cards. Then we headed back to Le Nonante to hang out some more. I get the feeling these days before class starts are going to be really relaxed, which I'm definitely cool with.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Sitting In My Bedroom, Finally!
I made it! Yes, folks, I am now secure in the little bedroom where I will be living for the next five months! It's really exciting.
The flight out was nothing special. Aunt Roxy got me to Sea-Tac and saw me off, and I went through security without any problems. I'd never flown Icelandair before. The guy sitting next to me was very pleasant; he'd been born in Wisconsin, lived in Australia for 10 years and so got dual citizenship, and had now lived in Stockholm, Sweden for 3 1/2 years. They don't serve complimentary food, so I had eaten before I left and bought a sandwich and orange juice to take with me. Of course, I got so absorbed in my book on the flight that I didn't think to eat or sleep until I was done, at which point there was only 1 1/2 left in the flight. I tried to take a nap anyway, but that was when an old guy in the row behind me and across the aisle fainted, and there was quite a crowd trying to make sure he was okay. The paramedics took him as soon as we landed, so I'm just wishing him all the best.
The annoying thing about the flight was that I didn't know I'd have to go through another (EU-sanctioned) security check when I got to Reykjavik. It was full-on; metal detector, shoes off, laptops out, no liquids. They even made you take all your electronics out of the bags to scan more closely. I didn't have a problem with the scanning, I just wish I'd known; then maybe I would've drank my orange juice and not had it taken away! After going through, they stamped my passport and I wandered through the deserted 6am Keflavik airport, trying to find my flight, which was an hour delayed and at a different gate than my boarding pass said. Nearly missed the boarding call, but got on the flight okay and was off again. This time I slept most of the way to France, although I was awake when we came across the Channel to see the coastline come up beneath us. I once again forgot to eat my sandwich (which they did not confiscate), making it a good 9 or 10 hours since I'd eaten.
Wandered through the labyrinth that is Charles de Gaulle, found my baggage, and by a stroke of good fortune had no problems at all meeting up with Valeria. She and I had decided to take the train together, to ease any problems aside with strength in numbers. We ended up sitting in the Charles de Gaulle/Roissy train station for two hours, which wasn't unpleasant except you had to pay for the bathrooms and there was no heat. Boarding the warm train was wonderful, although we ended up in separate cars. I mostly dozed on the way to our connection in St. Pierre des Corps, being too nervous about missing the stop to actually sleep. I *did* finally remember my sandwich, and felt much less dizzy after eating it.
When I departed the train in St. Pierre des Corps, Valeria had picked up another fellow traveler; Joel was arriving the same day. Our now trio made the connecting five minute train hop, and came out into the splendorous darkness of our first day (evening) in Tours. I proved my skills as a nimble navigator and we walked the rest of the way to Le Nonante, where we'll be staying.
Jacqueline answered the door, after a slightly nervous moment where we thought maybe no-one would. She's the daughter-in-law of the woman who used to own Le Nonante. Unfortunately that lady, Madame Genevieve Dhommée, died a few weeks ago. Jacqueline and Madame Dhommée's son Xavier have decided to run the place now, and moved in for the purpose. We were shown our bedrooms and told about the rules (always lock the door when you leave, don't tie up the phone lines, turn all the lights out if you're the last one awake). I'm sharing a room with Valeria, which isn't necessarily ideal, but not because I don't like Valeria; only because I'd rather be alone. If it comes to roommates, though, Valeria and I seem to get along pretty well. She's really nice, and we had fun being camwhore tourists on the way out.
The bedroom itself is adorable. The walls are some kind of burlap-y fabric, and there are several landscapes on the walls, in addition to a copy of Café la Nuit. It's small, but in a cozy way, and the house has the particularly personable kind of smell and feel and character that only comes with age. Also, the beds are very squishy. I sat down on mine and I swear I sank in a foot.
When Xavier and Mathias got home (Mathias is their seven-year-old boy), Xavier repeated much of what Jacqueline had said and we had dinner. The meal was good, although I'm really noticing the flaws in my French. This semester is exactly what I need to get myself turned around right again. After dinner we helped wash up and set the table for breakfast (a cool little time-saving chore). Then we went upstairs and put our stuff away and started to settle. I tried to put pictures on facebook, but it was being annoying. I'll try again before I go to bed.
Tomorrow, my mission is to take pictures of the house and some of the surrounding area and possibly go exploring a little. Grant and Mamie get in tomorrow night, which should be lots of fun. Grant always makes everyone feel more at ease, and at this point in the semester, when we're all still a little shy and not quite at home, that should be just the thing.
One day down, five wonderful months to go!
The flight out was nothing special. Aunt Roxy got me to Sea-Tac and saw me off, and I went through security without any problems. I'd never flown Icelandair before. The guy sitting next to me was very pleasant; he'd been born in Wisconsin, lived in Australia for 10 years and so got dual citizenship, and had now lived in Stockholm, Sweden for 3 1/2 years. They don't serve complimentary food, so I had eaten before I left and bought a sandwich and orange juice to take with me. Of course, I got so absorbed in my book on the flight that I didn't think to eat or sleep until I was done, at which point there was only 1 1/2 left in the flight. I tried to take a nap anyway, but that was when an old guy in the row behind me and across the aisle fainted, and there was quite a crowd trying to make sure he was okay. The paramedics took him as soon as we landed, so I'm just wishing him all the best.
The annoying thing about the flight was that I didn't know I'd have to go through another (EU-sanctioned) security check when I got to Reykjavik. It was full-on; metal detector, shoes off, laptops out, no liquids. They even made you take all your electronics out of the bags to scan more closely. I didn't have a problem with the scanning, I just wish I'd known; then maybe I would've drank my orange juice and not had it taken away! After going through, they stamped my passport and I wandered through the deserted 6am Keflavik airport, trying to find my flight, which was an hour delayed and at a different gate than my boarding pass said. Nearly missed the boarding call, but got on the flight okay and was off again. This time I slept most of the way to France, although I was awake when we came across the Channel to see the coastline come up beneath us. I once again forgot to eat my sandwich (which they did not confiscate), making it a good 9 or 10 hours since I'd eaten.
Wandered through the labyrinth that is Charles de Gaulle, found my baggage, and by a stroke of good fortune had no problems at all meeting up with Valeria. She and I had decided to take the train together, to ease any problems aside with strength in numbers. We ended up sitting in the Charles de Gaulle/Roissy train station for two hours, which wasn't unpleasant except you had to pay for the bathrooms and there was no heat. Boarding the warm train was wonderful, although we ended up in separate cars. I mostly dozed on the way to our connection in St. Pierre des Corps, being too nervous about missing the stop to actually sleep. I *did* finally remember my sandwich, and felt much less dizzy after eating it.
When I departed the train in St. Pierre des Corps, Valeria had picked up another fellow traveler; Joel was arriving the same day. Our now trio made the connecting five minute train hop, and came out into the splendorous darkness of our first day (evening) in Tours. I proved my skills as a nimble navigator and we walked the rest of the way to Le Nonante, where we'll be staying.
Jacqueline answered the door, after a slightly nervous moment where we thought maybe no-one would. She's the daughter-in-law of the woman who used to own Le Nonante. Unfortunately that lady, Madame Genevieve Dhommée, died a few weeks ago. Jacqueline and Madame Dhommée's son Xavier have decided to run the place now, and moved in for the purpose. We were shown our bedrooms and told about the rules (always lock the door when you leave, don't tie up the phone lines, turn all the lights out if you're the last one awake). I'm sharing a room with Valeria, which isn't necessarily ideal, but not because I don't like Valeria; only because I'd rather be alone. If it comes to roommates, though, Valeria and I seem to get along pretty well. She's really nice, and we had fun being camwhore tourists on the way out.
The bedroom itself is adorable. The walls are some kind of burlap-y fabric, and there are several landscapes on the walls, in addition to a copy of Café la Nuit. It's small, but in a cozy way, and the house has the particularly personable kind of smell and feel and character that only comes with age. Also, the beds are very squishy. I sat down on mine and I swear I sank in a foot.
When Xavier and Mathias got home (Mathias is their seven-year-old boy), Xavier repeated much of what Jacqueline had said and we had dinner. The meal was good, although I'm really noticing the flaws in my French. This semester is exactly what I need to get myself turned around right again. After dinner we helped wash up and set the table for breakfast (a cool little time-saving chore). Then we went upstairs and put our stuff away and started to settle. I tried to put pictures on facebook, but it was being annoying. I'll try again before I go to bed.
Tomorrow, my mission is to take pictures of the house and some of the surrounding area and possibly go exploring a little. Grant and Mamie get in tomorrow night, which should be lots of fun. Grant always makes everyone feel more at ease, and at this point in the semester, when we're all still a little shy and not quite at home, that should be just the thing.
One day down, five wonderful months to go!
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Ready To Leave
So here I sit, in my Aunt Roxanne's apartment in Seattle, just about ready to take off for a whole semester! I have packed bags, lists of Important Information, and a passport with a visa. I think I'm pretty set!
I'll be leaving from Sea-Tac Airport through Iceland to Charles de Gaulle, and then taking the train to Tours. If you want to keep up with my semester abroad, tune in! And I'll try and update when I can.
I'll be leaving from Sea-Tac Airport through Iceland to Charles de Gaulle, and then taking the train to Tours. If you want to keep up with my semester abroad, tune in! And I'll try and update when I can.
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