A Rally in Nantes??

We had our second weekend in Nantes and it all keeps getting better! After finishing our first week of classes, we were SO excited for the weekend. Friday afternoon we went on a tour of the historic part of the city with IES. They hired tour guides—who knew Nantes had tour guides—to show us around. It was pretty neat seeing the older parts of the city and learning the history. I had no idea Nantes was even around in the Middle Ages, much less that there are still parts of the wall that used to surround the city. It was one of the coldest days that we’ve had yet, so after about an hour and a half of doing the tour we had to stop and go find a warm café to get some hot chocolate. That night I met up with some friends of mine from IES. We went to dinner and then were walking around the bar area trying to find one to walk in when it started SNOWING! Our friend from Michigan started freaking out she was so excited. Claire and I, being from South Carolina, just wanted to find a bar quickly. We ended up finding the neatest bar. It was called l’Art Scene. It was very artsy, but still pretty cool. And there was a band and everything!

            Saturday we went into town and ate lunch at what we call “the Panera of France.” It’s a restaurant that’s not too expensive and has a ton of sandwiches, salads, and desserts. We walked by Leo’s, our favorite gelato place, and Leo was working so we had to walk in. We of course had to buy some gelato—buy some time with Leo. I think we sat for like 2 hours. But Leo’s is on La Place Royal, kind of like the center of the town with this gorgeous fountain. They have tables outside with heaters so it’s fun to sit there and see everything going on. There was even a march/demonstration/rally this Saturday! We were so surprised to see one in Nantes, France. We thought maybe one would be in Paris, but not Nantes. But sure enough there was. All of a sudden a huge group of people came into La Place Royal. There was a band and all the band members were wearing bright pink. The group carried this boat with a huge flag on it and were chanting “Liberé la Gaza, liberé la Palestine,” which means free Gaze, free Palestine. It wasn’t violent or anything, but the police showed up to monitor it. They screamed a lot of things in French into the megaphone. Not only was it in French, but it was also really muffled so we couldn’t understand any of it. It was really neat to see though, especially because one of our classes is “France and the US in the Middle East since 1945” and we were just talking about those areas in class Thursday. Saturday night Claire and I decided to try to save some money and just buy some of our favorite foods at the grocery store and eat dinner in her room. It was actually so much fun and we had one of the best meals ever! We bought bread and olive oil with pesto, salt and vinegar chips, Claire had some cheese, and then some wine. I was also able to meet Claire’s host family. They are so cute! There were four kids though so her homestay is a lot louder than mine! After eating our dinner and getting dressed at Claire’s homestay, we went back down to the bar district and ended up at L’Art Scene again. It was so much fun and we met some fun French people.

            I’m going to Paris next weekend to meet up with some of my friends from Wofford who are in Barcelona and Madrid this semester. I am so excited to see them and Paris!!! I’ll try to post some pictures soon too!

            Classes started this week and they are SO different from American classes, especially classes at Wofford. The professors come in and lecture and leave. They assign usually a text book and about three other books to read, but that’s all they say about them. So we have no clue what material will be on the midterm and final. The syllabi are also just a list of topics we’re going to cover in the class. All of this is so different from classes at Wofford where the syllabi list out what we will cover daily in class along with the corresponding chapters in the books. It also gives you the dates of the midterms and finals at the beginning of the semester. I think this semester in France will be a lot less stressful day to day, but the weeks of midterms and finals will be pretty stressful, as always. My favorite class so far is France and the U.S. in the Middle East since 1945. It’s a history class but I love it because it’s such new material to me. I’ve always learned about U.S. or Western European history, so it’s really interesting to learn about the Middle East—especially with everything going on in the world today.

            Every Tuesday our program hosts a “Conversation Club” for IES students and French students to come talk for 45 minutes in French and 45 minutes in English. It was so much fun and we met some really nice French people. My group met this really funny guy and girl and they told us about some places to go on the weekends and stuff. They came with our group to a fancy French crêperie Thursday night and promised to come back to “Conversation Club” next week. The crêperie was absolutely amazing! We had a dinner crepe and a dessert crêpe. We thought the dinner ones were delicious, but then the dessert ones came. I got a chocolate one and it was truly the most amazing thing I have eaten. I don’t even know how to describe but it was spectacular. I also tried my friend’s caramel one—incredible too. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

            So of course France is very different from the United States, especially South Carolina. But here are some of the weirder differences we have noticed and didn’t expect:

They don’t have top sheets. They use a bottom fitted sheet and a comforter and that’s it. When they change the sheets they change the comforter too.

There are no box springs. They have a mattress that sits on a wooden board on the bed frame.

The paper is grid paper—they don’t have any paper with straight lines, it’s ALL grid paper. And it’s longer than the paper in the U.S. It’s 21x29.7cm so it’s about an inch longer.

They eat REALLY fast and use their knife to like fold their food onto the fork. When they get to the dinner table they put their hands on the table instead of in their laps. And they always have bread but just put it on the table beside their glass—like they don’t have bread plates and they don’t put their bread on their plate, they just leave it on the table.  

The women always wear the exact same outfit for two or three days in a row.

Boys do not hold the doors for girls or even let them go in first. And NOBODY smiles when you pass them on the street—even young children.

And then there are of course the differences we expected like no ice (we went to a French fast food restaurant the other day and they literally put ONE cube of ice in our diet cokes,) the French never drink water and when they do the glass is so small it’s like a sip, they don’t worry about personal space like Americans do so they don’t mind at all standing right beside you while waiting on the tram even though there is plenty of other room, and they eat a TON of bread (at every single meal—breakfast, lunch and dinner) but are all still skinny.  

            We’re so excited it’s the weekend and this week flew by with classes. Hopefully we’ll have some fun stories from this weekend J

Orientation is over!

            Our week of orientation is over and we are starting classes tomorrow—ah! Orientation went well, but we are all ready to get on a schedule with classes. After having only spent a week in Nantes, I already know the city better. It is much easier to get around on the buses and trams. We even went down to the south part of town the other day to go to the mall. It was HUGE and had a million stores. We went to go to the Wal-Mart of Nantes, the Carfour. It had everything, including cheap straighteners. We ended up buying a lot more than we needed to, but it was fun to see everything they had. On our way to the Carfour we found the CUTEST little gelato/crepe café. We decided to go and get some of the gelato and all fell in love with the man who was working. His name is Leo and we are going to go back every day that Leo is working—he doesn’t know it yet but he’s going to be our new best friend!

            This was our first weekend out in Nantes and it was a lot of fun! There is one main area with a bunch of bars, pubs, and restaurants so we spent both Friday and Saturday night there. There were literally probably 20 sushi restaurants in this one are, a ton of pizzerias, and of course a lot of crêperies.  Friday afternoon after we finished classes, Claire, Emma, and I decided to toast having completed our first week in Nantes with a little wine in the park by our school. It was so much fun and a great way to start off our weekend. After the park, walked around trying to find some fun places to go Friday night. We found a little bar that’s called “Laisser le bon temps rouler” which means “Let the Good times Roll.” We HAD to walk in there and it ended up being a really cool little bar. We think we might just go there every Friday afternoon. Our first night out we went to a really good Italian restaurant. Then we went to an Irish pub where we met some other American students, and one English student. It was so much fun talking to the English guy, especially about Prince William and Kate’s wedding. He wasn’t as excited about it as we were though. It’s kind of frustrating right now though because the buses and trams stop at midnight on Friday nights. We are going to figure out how to walk back to our homestays this week so we can do it on Friday nights too. Saturday we went back to the same area and ate at a French restaurant. It was delicious! Then we started walking around but ended up back at the Irish Pub. The pub just has a really fun atmosphere. The trams stay open until 2:30 on Saturdays, so Saturday night was a lot of fun!

            Classes start this week and IES (the program I am in) is making all of us sign up for at least 1 class at the University of Nantes, and then we can drop it if we want to. I have signed up for a translation course where half the class will be French students and half will be Americans. The French students will translate our English and we will translate their French. It should definitely be pretty interesting. I am also taking an Art History class, a class on the European Union, a Religion of France, a France and the US in the Middle East, and a French grammar class. I will drop one of these classes though this week, IES just wants us to sign up for more so we can try them and figure out which ones we really want to take.

            It’s still definitely an adjustment getting used to everything over here—for lunch today my host family had cheese. They asked me the first night if there were any foods I didn’t like and I told them that cheese wasn’t exactly my favorite. They were shocked. But I told them that I wanted to try it because I want to like it. Well, I tried it today. The French have dessert after every meal! It’s usually like yogurt or fruit or something. But today it was cheese. I know one of the cheeses was goat cheese and I truly thought I was going to gag when I ate that one. The other cheese wasn’t nearly as bad as the goat cheese was but I of course have no idea what kind it was. I guess I’ll just keep trying them… But other than the cheese, my host family has cooked really good food! Fingers crossed it stays that way!

January 16, 2011

            Our group, of about 70 American college students spent the past 3 days in Tours, France and visiting some of the chateaus in the Loire River Valley. We began with a Medieval chateau, Loches. It was really cool, but since it was from the Middle Ages it wasn’t exactly what we all thought a chateau would be like. It was very simple with three huge rooms and then a fortress that was used to protect the city and was also a prison. The medieval prison was very neat to see though. After that we went to probably my favorite chateau, Chenonceau. It was absolutely gorgeous! It had a mote, and beautiful gardens. One of the gardens was designed to be a maze; it was so cool. The inside was still set up with furniture and everything so that was fun because we could really imagine what life was like. The kitchen was even still set up—with the knives that they used as well as plates, silverware, and even the old bread oven. We also learned that at this chateau, during WWII, half of it was occupied by the Germans and half wasn’t because the river that ran under part of the chateau also divided the two zones. They said that they used to sneak people through the chateau from the occupied to the free zones and that the Germans were ready at any moment to destroy the chateau but never did. The next day we went to Chateau Blois. It was gorgeous on the outside, but the inside was set up like a museum which was kind of a let down and not quite as interesting as Chenonceau. We also went to Chambord which was absolutely incredible!! It is HUGE!!!! It has over 300 rooms. It was overwhelming it was so big but definitely incredible!! And as we were leaving the sun was setting which was absolutely gorgeous. I’ll try to post pictures later.

            Tours was a really neat city. In the old town there was a main square that had all the bars and stuff so it was fun to walk around there at night and see everything and all the French people. I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re Americans because we definitely got some funny looks. But for the most part people were pretty nice.

            We’ve eaten a ton of seafood at the restaurants. I love seafood, but after two meals of it I wasn’t able to eat it anymore, which was hard because the French think you’re being rude if you don’t clear your plate. But all of it has been white fish with a yellow sauce on it that just seems to make it taste fishier. At every meal we have one glass of wine, of course a huge piece of French bread, a salad course, main course, and dessert course. One afternoon in Tours we had an authentic French meal. It started off with what looked like an egg roll, but when we bit into it, it seemed like chicken and vegetables were inside it. The second course was a salad, with cinnamon apples, foie gras, and some kind of meat. The meat looked really rare/like ham. It even tasted like country ham. The third course was a muffin made of potatoes and stuffed with meat on the inside. The meat looked and kind of tasted like Bar-B-Que. The fourth course was cheese and we were given two huge blocks of cheese. I tried both kinds of cheese. One was white and one was yellow. The yellow was a milder cheese according to the other people at the table and I definitely liked that one better. The fifth course was dessert and it was a chocolate muffin, raspberry sorbet, and crème brulee. The fifth course was of course our favorite! We found out later that apparently all of the meat in the meal was duck. It was all different parts of the duck and cooked differently…

            I finally arrived today at my host family’s house in Nantes. It is really nice and the family has been so nice! It is kind of awkward because I don’t always understand all of their French. But they have been so nice and have tried to slow down what they’re saying and help me to understand. They live in like a townhouse style house with 3 floors. I am on the second floor. My room has a single bed, desk, gorgeous armoire, and a sink. I share a bathroom with their 12 year old boy and an 18 year old French med school student who they are also hosting. It’s really not that bad of a situation at all. The only problem so far is that the shower in so tiny that I literally cannot turn around in it. But it has hot water so I can’t complain!

            It is definitely hard getting adjusted to such a different life, but each day things get better and better. The language is hard because they speak so much quicker, but hopefully with time that will become easier. Nantes is a much bigger city than I expected, much more “metropolitan.” This week we have all these intensive French conversation and grammar classes. Hopefully they will help us all with our French so we can talk with our host families better. Miss you all so much!!! I’ll try to post more later!

Jan 13, 2011

I was born during a hurricane, went to college during a huge storm and had to evacuate during move in day because of a tornado warning, and so it is only fitting that the day I leave to go abroad, South Carolina gets more snow than it has gotten in probably the past 5 years and my flight was cancelled. But sometimes things work out for the best, because my friend Claire and I were rescheduled for a flight out the next day that was a direct flight from Charlotte to Paris.

            Saying goodbye to our parents was definitely very difficult and we both tearfully accepted the “complimentary tissues” from the security man as we went through security. We made our way to the gate and before we knew it we were picking up our bags in Paris (thank heavens they didn’t get lost!) Our plan was to then go catch the Air France Bus to a train station that was closer in town, Montparnasse. But what we didn’t plan for was us having to carry our two huge suitcases (I mean we were packing for 4 months) and carry-on bags across the airport to get to the bus terminal. We finally made our way to the buses, caught the correct bus, and had arrived at Montparnasse. Once again, we were faced with a “what next” situation. After lugging our suitcases down a flight of stairs, and unsuccessfully trying to buy a ticket from the machines, we finally found our way to the ticket counter. The whole reason we caught the bus to go to Montparnasse to meet up with our group in Tours, France, instead of leaving from the train station at Charles DeGaulle airport was so we would not have to switch trains. Welp, the only train going to Tours required us to switch trains and only gave us 7 minutes to do it. After waiting in the train station for about an hour, our train’s gate was finally posted. They do not post the train’s gate number until 20 minutes before the train is suppose to leave. We quickly ran, with all of our luggage, to our train gate, and with the help of one man telling us how to swipe our tickets, another man telling us which car we were assigned to, and yet two other men helping us hoist our luggage onto the train, we triumphantly made it to the train. Being as prepared as we always are (haha), we were waiting at the train’s door to get off the train to race to our next train that was leaving 7 minutes later. Once again, with the help of two other nice men, we made it off the train, but had no idea what to do next. We literally threw our luggage down a flight of stairs and ran after it. Only to realize, once we were one flight down, that we needed to go up again. But this time, we took the elevator. When we arrived at the train, the doors were shut. Being the smart girls we are, we banged on the door. Thankfully they opened the doors and we literally squeezed in. We ended up sitting on our suitcases for the 5 minute train ride from St. Peirre to Tours.

            We thought we had finally made it, only to realize that cabs only go to one side of the train station, and we were on the wrong side. We walked around the entire train station and finally made it into a cab and were on our way to the hotel. To say the least, the hotel was not our ideal vacation spot. We decided we deserved a great glass of French wine, and stopped and enjoyed our 1 euro glass of wine. After spending about 3 euro each, we finally met our group at the hotel. The wine gave us a second wind and everyone seemed pretty normal as we met them for the first time. We ate dinner with the group at the hotel—it was fish, we think. It had a sauce on it that just made it taste fishier. But since it was our first meal since the Charlotte airport, we thought it was edible. We were zombies at dinner, barely caring on conversation as our new friends tried, unsuccessfully, to speak to us in French. We called it a night and decided to rest up for the next couple of days.