The past few days have been busy cramming for both my big tests: the oral exams at the University of Nantes. I had Psychologie Cognitive yesterday afternoon, and Pharmacologie today. Quite honestly, I will never totally be prepared for the French. Just when I think I have think I've got everything under control, something pops up. Things like "Surprise, your pharmaco test is in 3.5 days!" Or "Guess what, you're going to wake up and have a bad cold all this week!" Or "You're looking for room 114? Well there's two room 114's here. I only know where (the wrong) one is. Sorry!" And just when I think I have made it the whole semester without getting hit on by Frenchmen (aside from several drunken comments, no confrontations had been made)... I don't quite make it. And then I laughed all the way home.
Wednesday I continued my
pâtissérie tour of Nantes with a chou à la crème au praline from
Debotté (kind of like the picture below, but no chocolate and nuts instead. I realized later it's basically a cream puff. But a cream puff
à la Française, therefore better. And in a matter of weeks, I will no longer have my excuse of being in France to indulge every culinary whim, so I am continuing to live it up.) Thankfully, Clare and I walked back from the
gare to get to our class at the
médiathèque, so we walked off maybe a few bites...
I spent all of Wednesday night studying Psychology and being annoyed that I still had to wake up sick with a cold at 6:30am for Pharmacology, just in case Thursday's material was on Friday's oral. Better safe than sorry, right? After that lovely three hours (which I actually do enjoy, because it's more clinical than science classes at Santa Clara), I spent another hour and a half on psychologie in the Bibliothèque Universitaire (library) and grabbed lunch. Half an hour before my test, I met with the IES students who I was taking the oral with. On the way into the building, we saw two of our three professors outside on their smoke break. While they were smoking, we were cramming for another 20 minutes, and then we filed into the room for our exam.
We ended up doing a tirage au sort, or drawing names, to see which professor would administer an oral exam/interview which student. I got our most recent professor (who taught us Cognitive Neuropsychology) and before I continue, let me describe him: a tall, skinny man who looks like he's in his mid-40's at the oldest, and he always wears black skinny jeans, a gray military coat, a black striped scarf, and black fingerless gloves. He has a shaggy haircut with a sideswept kind of lock in the front with a big streak of gray. Basically, you can tell he misses his punk rock glory days of the 80s. Even more confusing, he's very smart and was very on top of it in communicating with us, but doesn't seem very academic. (This is France. You can't pinpoint ANYTHING or précise une idée to save your life.) So I sit down, expecting several questions about his course. Given a structured setting, I was ready to rattle off anything. But then, given that this is France, he goes, "So what questions do you have for me?" Me?? You're the teacher! You're the one administering this test! So I shake my head and do that, "Um, no, can we get this started?" look. And he goes, "Okay, well were you confused by anything in the course?" "Non." (awkward silence.) "You understood everything?" "Oui." (awkward silence. Was this a pre-exam interview, or what? Did he want me to just rattle off everything I learned?) So then, not being one for awkward staring contests with a professor I had for three weeks, I finally conceded and said, "La mémoire." (memory) And he said, "What about it?" And, as I already understood it, I made up something. The following ten minutes were basically glorified office hours: he drew up a sketch of le modularité de la mémoire and we discussed localized brain traumas and everything was great. I was still kind of waiting for a test. Then he asks me what I study in the US. I say Biology. He asks me what I want to do. I say perhaps become a doctor. He tells me about how his daughter is older than me and in the fac de médecine and studying Endocrinology. Cool. Then he asks me where I'm from. I say Seattle. The other professor walks in because the other students have finished. M. Jagot says he'll be done in two minutes, then turns to me and says, "Ahh... Nirvana!" "Ah oui, ils viennent de Seattle." (Yes, they're from Seattle.) "Et, euh, Kurt Cobain!" "Ah oui, lui aussi."(Oh yeah, him too.) And then he goes, "Well, bon, I think you did well. You seem to understand things. Bonne rentrée!"
Then he told us we got A's. And that was the end of exam 1.
So all of Thursday night was devoted to rewriting my 30 pages of pharmacologie notes. I spent a good 5 hours reviewing, rewriting, researching things in English, and just trying to get a grasp on anything. I was that tired, miserable, your-host-mom-has-to-bring-you-a-box-of-tissues-because-you-keep-getting-up, I'd-sit-by-the-fire-but-I've-already-got-a-fever kind of sick, so I was out cold by 11:30pm. Friday morning, I reviewed all but 5 pages of my notes over breakfast (my host dad brought fresh dried fruit from Morocco, as he got back last night) and finally headed to the fac. My exam was at 10:30, but I arrived at 10-- again, especially when it comes to a ridiculous class like that, better safe than sorry. I was armed with "Salle 114: TP (lab) de Physiologie" and made the trek. I found one salle 114, but it didn't look like a lab, so I figured that couldn't be it. I walked back down the two flights of stairs in my boots, wool sweater, scarf, and coat (because it was 3 degrees C when I left) and wouldn't you know, but the amphis are actually in the sous-sol, or basement and across from a building that looked like it had labs. And it did have labs! In fact, it had a ton of labs. It had the TP de Physiologie Naturelle, and it had a small staircase leading up to a landing with four doors. And wouldn't you know, but they were salles 110, 112, 113, and 115. So I walked back down one flight of stairs, to the other building, and back up the other three flights, to the reception desk to ask for salle 114. She told me to go to the end of the hallway, two flights down, and it'd be on my left. I did that, and that got me absolutely nowhere. Not even to the wrong salle 114. So I went all the way back up the two flights and asked the same lady specifically for the TP Physiologie salle 114, not whatever the other one is. And her response: "Oh! Je n'ai aucune idée!" (Oh, I have no idea!) Well, merci bien madame la réceptionniste, but you are NO HELP WHATSOEVER. So at this point, I have 5 minutes before my oral exam, five pages left to review, and no freaking clue where I am. I go back to the stupid area of salles every-number-but-114, and (as expected), find nothing. On the verge of exhaustion and tears, I do what has become foolproof to my exploration of Nantes: "Well, there's a staircase I haven't been down, and I've been down all the others at least four times, so what the heck. I'm going for it." I literally think the hand of God was guiding me, because I was 5 minutes late to my exam at this point, and I had just walked into an industrial-looking 2-story atrium with a gigantic cylinder of corrugated metal containing who knows what, and at the end of the hall, I saw the Erasmus student from Mexico with whom I was taking the test, sitting on the floor in a bright red coat, studying. Thank GOD. After a few minutes of cramming, I decided that if I got to pick my own subject, I could master about 2 or 3 of the 5 sections, so I felt better.
The test was about as odd as you can imagine: my professor leads us to a Biology lab, motions us to two stools at a lab bench, sits across the aisle from us, and says, "Okay, now I'm going to test you two together. I'll ask a question and whoever knows the answer will just have to answer first." I'm sorry, since when did final exams become sudden-death Jeopardy competitions? And why did my unmedicated head cold have to make this so much harder? The first few questions, besides being on literally week 3 material, were okay. Since I was obviously the weaker link, Mme Gauthier turns to me and says, "Okay, explain metabotropic receptors." And I literally just looked at her and said, "Je n'en sais rien." (I don't know anything.) So she said, "Okay, ionotropic?" And I managed to bumble my way through a few responses and apply it to something we had studied within the last TWO months because all of the content she asked us about was previous quiz material, aka it was completely pointless for me to attend classes and study all material since October 29. It turned out okay in the end, because the Mexican student Ana admitted that she knew more because she was taking the coordinating discussion and labs that I wasn't in, giving her (and literally every other student in my 250 person class) double the study time for our course material.
I celebrated the end of my fac classes by--what else?-- treating myself to some delicious food! Because I love walking around my city too much to give it up even though I'm sick, I compromised and only walked half the distance to Marché Talensac to check out some famous inexpensive crêpes my host family had raved about... and they did not disappoint! The marché was humming with activity, and it was so wonderful to see all the owners and agriculteurs chatting between their stalls. When I ordered my beurre-sucre-citron (butter-sugar-lemon) crêpe, the woman didn't have any lemons left, so she called over to a man in a nearby vegetable stand. The two were obviously very good friends; she asked him if she could borrow a lemon, and he calls back, "Oui, chef!" (which translates literally to "Yes, captain!" but it's more like "You got it!" or "Yes ma'am!") and brought it over for my crêpe. I got it à emporter (to go), so she folded it up in tin foil so I could do a little shopping at a stall I recognized my host family frequents. For my walk back to IES, I opened my triangular aluminum cadeau to a steaming hot crêpe. And for being sick and walking in the cold weather (minus the pur beurre--pure butter-- they use and advertise with pride), I think a piping hot combo of sugar, butter, and lemon was exactly what the doctor ordered.
After a little resting at home, I headed back out to my favorite kind of holiday celebration: a makeshift one! First Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and now I got to have my first Hanoukka in France! Maddy's host family was in Paris for the weekend, so she invited a few of us over (everyone brought wine, except me, who brought some less-than-traditional crême brûlée). There were three of us Americans, a German girl, and a French girl, all sitting around the kitchen island eating latkes with applesauce (YUM), pasta, and sautéed mushrooms and onions, chatting (in French, of course) for a good few hours. Not only did I have latkes, but I finally had real Riesling wine from Germany (which is their specialty, and delicious) and muscadet, Nantes' regional (sweet) wine that I had been wanting to try. For the first night of Hanukkah, we lit two old birthday candles we found, listened to the Hanukkah prayer (Maddy is that right?) and ended the night with none other than Inglorious Basterds. It was a journée de gourmandise (comme tous les jours), mais c'était parfait! (day of eating a lot of good food (like all days), but it was perfect!)
Saturday was a lazy day that consisted of some studying, sitting by the fireplace, and the family lunch, which is one thing I'm going to miss the most. On the weekends, we eat lunch at 1pm (promptly), and it is always delicious-- this weekend it was some kind of white fish lightly breaded, spread with mustard and seared, served with cooked leeks and
carottes, with white wine and clementines and chocolate mousse for dessert. Weekend lunch is always followed by espresso and, this time, a little Lindt chocolate, with a solid hour reserved for "adult time" for us to chat and read the
hebdomadaires-- the weekly newspapers, tv guides, and magazines-- that arrive Saturday mornings. Saturday night was movie night, so seven of us curled up downstairs with two big blankets to watch another Louis de Funès comedy, Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob with some soup, fruit, and kettle corn for dessert.
Sunday was the much-awaited journée Américaine (American day) that all the kids were looking forward to. Honestly, I really wasn't missing the food all that much, because I knew I'd be going back to it much too soon, and at this point, eating American food would 1. make me feel sick and 2. take away three very French meals I could be eating before I leave. Why would I want to do that?? But nevertheless, the kids were all very excited for it. So Sunday morning, when I left my room (still sick) to go downstairs, I could still smell breakfast two floors up, and it brought back so much comfort... memories of those lazy weekend mornings, sitting at the island watching my mom make breakfast and talking about what the two of us had planned for the rest of the weekend. But this time, I came downstairs to six other family members animatedly chatting about one activity or another, coordinating times and figuring out when to do what. We had toast, eggs over-easy (my favorite), and "bacon" (aka Canadian Bacon). Lunch consisted of hotly-contested tomato soup (no one's favorite), croque monsieurs, french fries, Coke Zero, and chocolate cake. Quite possibly the oddest combination of American foods ever. Dinner was, to my surprise, pizza from the nearby pizza place called "Speed Rabbit". Given the oddities of potatoes, lardons, and barbecue sauce on my pizza, it was actually delicious.
Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning were reserved for two of my three finals at IES, which both went well... only a cause for celebration! Clare and I went out for lunch, sat on the steps near the Christmas market at Commerce and, eating with our gloves on, tried to pretend like it wasn't 30 degrees out. We had grand plans to walk over to the Musée de Beaux Arts to escape the cold and finally see all the more well-known and recent paintings that are elsewhere in the museum (that we didn't visit on our Art History excursions), so we walked the good 20 minutes in the freezing cold, only to arrive and find it CLOSED! Of course... tous les Mardi! Why did we not consider it?! So the next order of business was to find warmth-- and fast. Indoors? Yes, but we don't want to pay. Malls? Those don't exist in Nantes (with the exception of the indoor-outdoor Passage Pommeraye). Café? We just ate. So the instinct was none other than IKEA-- a good (heated!) 30 minute tram ride away on the outskirts of town. It's like a museum, right?
We walked around for a good 45 minutes, discovered that is actually attached to a mall, then came back. Next up on the agenda: afternoon thé (tea) at La Cigale, the famous belle-epoque (late 1800s/ early 1900s) restaurant on Place Graslin. After some fresh squeezed orange juice and fruit cake (some combination, huh?) we headed to IES for our last hurrah celebration, where we gorged ourselves on easily 15 or 20 finger foods per person. Delicious.
The last plan for the day was my little brothers' Christmas concert at the cathédrale, which was wonderful. It was absolutely freezing in the cathedral (because wouldn't you know, but the heat broke in it yesterday) but the boys sang so well. I felt like a proud mom watching them and their friends I've met and gotten to know over the past three months, and I loved that I got to share it with my friends, who have heard so much about my family and what they're like.
Just a small complaint about the cold: it is FREEZING here. Because I have to say, it being between 25 and 35 degrees all day is one thing, and that's bad enough. But it's tough to not have a car (aka instant heater to blast), a central heating system, or abundant amounts of appropriate clothing to layer. Instead, I woke up to frost crystallized on my bathroom window, so my 106-year-old house and I are having a love-hate relationship over the inefficiency of radiators to heat rooms, and I have spent my time either in front of the fireplace, curled up under the covers studying, or literally bent over laying on top of my radiator. Needless to say, I have a newfound appreciation for wool and cashmere, and it has nothing to do with luxury or aesthetic... it just works.
