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!
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