St Malo and Mt. St. Michel

This past week at Conversation Club we were talking about American TV shows. The French only watch American shows and hate their French ones. They LOVE Greys Anatomy and How I Met Your Mother. One girl in the Conversation Club met Patrick Dempsy once! It was so crazy and we told her that practically every girl in America would be jealous of her. Her parents live in Lyon and there is a big car race there. Patrick Dempsy was there for the race and she said she saw him and ran up to him and started telling him how much she loved him and the show. She said he was really nice and talked to her for a minute, then gave her the pen he had in his pocket (kind of random, and she asked us if this was a normal gift to give in American haha) and then HE KISSED HER ON THE CHEEK! She said she walked away and then fainted hahaha

            Wednesday night France played Brazil in soccer so we went to a bar to watch the game with some of our friends. It was so much fun being watching the French people watch the game. And then France won 1-0!! It was a huge upset!    

            This weekend we visited St. Malo, a town on the northern coast of France, and Mont St. Michel. St. Malo was a really neat town. It has a wall that surrounds it to block the city from the wind coming off the ocean. You can walk around the top of the wall and look out over the English Channel or over the town. We of course had to go out on the beach and touch the English Channel. It looks a lot like the Atlantic but the water is a little greener. The beach didn’t have as many shells as the South Carolina beaches do but it was still really pretty. We heard it was going to rain that day, but the weather was absolutely gorgeous!! It was pretty warm and the sun was out. But we had our rainboots so we decided to walk into the water since it was the English Channel. It was so much fun! Afterwards we ate lunch at this really cute crêperie. Everything was pink and white, and we were able to sit outside in the sunshine.

            After lunch we went to Mont St. Michel. It was absolutely incredible! It is an abbey that was built in 700 on the top of this island in the English Channel. It has an absolutely breath taking view and then the abbey itself is so amazing! It is so hard to imagine that it was built in 700 when they didn’t have any of the technology or anything that we have today. The abbey was also used as a prison during the French Revolution so it was interesting to see how they converted parts of it into prison cells. We even saw one of the 30 people who live in the abbey. While we were in the main church part of the abbey, a nun walked out one random side door. One of our friends was joking about ringing the bell because the string was just sitting right there and she came over and told him not to or everyone would be confused because they only ring the bell at sunset. She was actually really nice and joked with us about it. The tide was low so we were even able to walk down onto the beach and look up at the abbey. It was absolutely incredible!!

Weekend in Paris!

            This past weekend I went to Paris with a big group of girls from Wofford and one of our friends from Nantes. It was truly one of the best weekends of my life. It’s going to be hard to put into words how amazing it was to be in PARIS with such great friends.

            On the train from Nantes to Paris I was very excited to say the least, but I had no idea how happy I would be when I finally saw friends from home. Charlotte and Amy, two of my friends from Wofford who are studying in Barcelona this semester, got to Paris Thursday and were waiting for me, Claire, Meredith, and our new friend Emma at the metro stop by our hotel. I cannot explain how excited we were when we saw them! It was such a crazy feeling and after lots of screams and hugs we decided to go be very French and eat a crêpe. We checked into the hotel and waited on Sara and Lizzy, my Wofford friends who are in Madrid, to get to the hotel. Claire and I went outside to meet them because the hotel was kind of hard to find. When we finally saw Sara and Lizzy crossing the street we literally started screaming! We were just as happy to see them as we were to see Charlotte and Amy and couldn’t stop smiling.

            Friday night we tried to go to a fondue restaurant we had heard about but it was too crowded. Our big group of 8 ended up splitting up because there was no way all 8 of us were going to fit in one restaurant on a Friday night. Sara, Charlotte, Claire, Emma and I ended up finding this AMAZING Italian restaurant. Claire and I split possibly the best pasta we have ever eaten. After dinner we walked around and found this bar. We ended up making friends with this couple from England, Miki and Ed. They were HILARIOUS! As we were sitting in the bar talking with them, a man playing the bagpipes walked in with a group of other Scottish men in kilts. They started playing songs for us and even played songs that we requested! It was so much fun!

            Saturday we woke up and all had different plans. Charlotte, Claire, Sara, Emma, and I all wanted to go sightseeing. We went to the Notre Dame first. It was of course incredible and as soon as we got there the bells started ringing. It was amazing! We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then went to the Arc de Triomphe. This is my favorite place in Paris because from the top of it you look down the Champs Elysee at the Louvre, and you can also see Sacre Coeur and the Eiffel Tower. It is such an incredible view of Paris and it was so neat being able to see all of this with some of my best friends! After the Arc de Triomphe we walked over to the Eiffel Tower. It was absolutely incredible and we had the best time watching all the other tourists taking pictures and stuff. One girl was literally having a photo shoot—it was hilarious! After the Eiffel Tower we went to a little bar/restaurant and got French beers and French fries—they were delicious!!

            We went back and got dressed and then went back to Refuge du Fondue. We split our group into two smaller groups and we were finally all able to get in. It was the coolest restaurant ever! For 17 euros each we got a little appetizer plate, a meat fondue, a cheese fondue, and got to drink wine out of baby bottles all night! It was so much fun!! The restaurant had two long tables and the waiter would literally pull you inside and you had to walk over the tables to sit down. The food was really good, the atmosphere was so much fun, and we had the best time drinking French wine out of baby bottles—I mean when else can you do that??

            After dinner Meredith, Emma, Lizzy, and Amy wanted to go find a club because Meredith had just turned 21. Sara, Charlotte, Claire and I decided to go to the Eiffel Tower. We stopped at a grocery store on the way and picked up a bottle of champagne—we were being so French—and went and sat on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. I can’t put into words what an incredible experience it was to sit at the Eiffel Tower with three of my best friends. It was amazing and truly something I will never forget. The Eiffel Tower is lit up at night and looks gorgeous. Then every hour it sparkles—I don’t know how else to describe it but that it sparkles haha It was so neat being there and seeing that with Sara, Charlotte, and Claire. We all realized how lucky we were to be able to have this experience and spend a night “hanging out” at the Eiffel Tower!!

            I cried Sunday when we had to say goodbye to them. To say the least the train ride back to Nantes was very long. But after such an incredible weekend, we were all excited for all the weekends yet to come this semester. We’re already planning our next trip to see each other!

Pigeon for supper??

            Wednesday my host mom’s parents and aunt and uncle came to visit because there was this huge classical musical festival in Nantes this weekend. They were very nice and the uncle was actually a chef. So I was pretty excited to see what kind of food he would make. Wednesday night was a little bit of a disappointment because it was just salmon—but for the first time since I’ve been in France they served lemons to put lemon juice on the fish. It was amazing to be able to add a little more flavor to the salmon. They also had this really good potato dish with basil and onions in it. It was so good! So after a good meal Wednesday I was looking forward to another good one Thursday. Well, when they called us all to the dinner table I realized that the kids were eating before the adults. So I sat down at the table with my host brother who is 12 and the other French medical student they are hosting. I saw something that looked like mini chickens but wasn’t sure what it was. Then my host mom started bringing our dinner to the table. I was pretty sure she said it was rabbit and pigeon, but they speak so fast that I was sure she couldn’t have said pigeon and that I had heard her wrong. After she served us I looked up at the other student and she looked more afraid than I did. The 12 year old is usually pretty tired at dinner and just eats and leaves the table. So I knew if I could just wait a few minutes I could ask the other student what we were eating. Sure enough, when the boy left the table the other student looked up at me and we both just burst out laughing. I asked her and she told me that I had heard right and that it was rabbit and pigeon. Neither of us could eat the pigeon but politely ate some of the rabbit. The rabbit was interesting because it had an orange-citrusy dressing on it. I don’t really think of citrus dressings going on meat, but maybe that’s normal. I asked the French student if it was normal to eat pigeon in France and she assured me that it wasn’t and she had never eaten it before. Thankfully we were not eating with the whole family because we were both able to bypass the pigeon and then filled up on dessert. It was definitely an interesting meal!

            It has been so great getting to know the French student that my host family is hosting too. She seems really nice. She doesn’t speak any English and I don’t always understand her French, but it’s still been fun getting to know her. We kind of “bonded” the other night over how shocked we are about the bad attitude the little boy seems to always have. He’s kind of just a pill, but the parents let him get away with it. She even explained to me a few times that he’s made like really rude comments to her and the host parents have never said anything to him. So it made me feel better that she thought his attitude and how the parents treat him was weird too. But then again, he is 12 years old, probably going through those awkward years and having to share his house with 2 strange girls haha

            I’m going to Paris this weekend with some friends from school and CANNOT wait to see them! I know it’s going to be an amazing weekend!

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!