France

Let's just get one thing clear: if it were up to me, I wouldn't be coming back. Unfortunately, it's not up to just me, but my commitments to other things like a senior thesis, two jobs, and possibly two majors to finish. But if that didn't exist, if I could just get past all that, I would have signed myself up long ago for semester two in Nantes. Just fyi.

Now I have to say that when I was picking between Paris and Nantes, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by Nantes. I felt like the only things it had to offer were this dumb "Machines de l'île" thing with a walking elephant that seemed to be all anyone associated with Nantes, as well as the Jardin des Plantes and the LU factory. It's hard to compare the two: upon looking at a photo of the Jardin des Plantes, my first impression was, "You call that a garden? Look at Versailles!" and unlike Paris, it didn't have anything well known; it didn't have the bustling big-city feel: the nightlife and the markets and the general buzz that goes along with a city like Paris. I was so wrong. The two are virtually incomparable. As I've said before, I've fallen in love with Nantes. I think this has probably been one of the strongest lessons I've learned thus far: any preconceived notion I've had has been proved wrong. And most importantly, it has been proved wrong by myself. It’s all the little things, the things I can’t possibly explain, that have created the most significant impact. It’s going from being a single, white, educated, English-speaking woman in America (aka as common and boring as you can get) to being the foreign FLE student/tourist in France. It’s learning that people who take photos in public are not always tourists, and that it’s neither shameful nor embarrassing to be one of those. It’s that foreigners are not unintelligent; they just lack the capability to express themselves in ways understandable by the rest of us. It’s learning to express the compassion, hospitality, and understanding for others that have been shown towards me. And no picture, no description, no blog post or journal entry of any kind can express what it's like to actually be here. Since I've been here, I've been annoyed with myself and my own personality more times than I can count, but that's also part of it. In an odd sort of resentment (because who likes to be proven wrong?) I find it amazing, weird, and just kind of cool that I have fallen in love with everything I judged Nantes for, which was mostly the fact that it didn't look nearly as good on paper as Paris did. Quite honestly, I chose it solely for the French-only part. That, in and of itself, was a wonderful decision. I thought my family didn't speak English at all, and when I learned that they did, I was a little offended that they had never told me. (And they know it well: my host dad read a Shakespeare passage from "Much Ado about Nothing" today, and the only word he didn't know was "hath." I felt stupid to say, "Yeah, I don't know that either." It's not translatable!) And now, I realize that this is the best thing. When people hear you speaking English at a restaurant, they might try English on you once, but all you have to do is say, "En Français, s'il vous plaît" and that's it. No pushing, no superiority. Fortunately there's few enough Americans that we're still something of a novelty, so they're neither annoyed by us nor at a loss for what to do. So anyway, to be absolutely delighted by everything around me, everything that looked rather unimpressive on paper, that's what I've learned here: being wrong is the best.

And in an ironic twist, the one factor, the only determining factor by which I chose Nantes (its French-only policy at IES and lack of spoken English) has proven to be my absolute biggest enemy. It is a daily battle I’ve fought, and it is the worst. In an earlier post, you might remember, I wrote about going on an English hiatus: that lasted all of a few hours. I regret not taking the grammar class I tested into (and out of, as it was optional for me), and I struggle daily with forcing myself to speak French with my friends. While conversations may start in French, the few missing French vocabulary words replaced by English ones turn into an avalanche of phrases, and soon sentences, leaving the French to the background noise of other conversations, real conversations, bubbling away in the comfort of fluency.

So for me, it’s difficult. It’s difficult to come here and to want to write, draw, photograph, walk, cook, eat, learn, and explore. To discover that I’m in love with so many things about this country and simultaneously hear people bemoan various idiosyncrasies of the culture. It’s difficult to learn that I don’t have a niche into which I can fit; that my interests are far-flung and varied. That I feel pressured to decide whether I’m a Biology person, yet I prefer writing and am passionate about French. And moreover, it’s difficult to not be able to stay; to make plans to return for graduate school. To promise myself that I will make it back. To hope that I remember how at ease, how comfortable, how happy I am here. And above all, to hear how often life can get in the way.

It’s not easy to live here, to constantly confront and adjust and change, but it is worth it. It is worth it. Today, I was frustrated. It wasn’t one thing in particular. It wasn’t homesickness (will that ever hit, I wonder?), and it wasn’t school. It was an annoyance with my own inability to not overanalyze a situation, to not plan ahead, to simply be able to march downstairs and say that I’m heading out for lunch without trying to guess who is on the other three levels of the house and whether I will reach the bottom only to find that no one is there and go back up to my room to get paper to write a note announcing my whereabouts to the family. It was feeling like I am regressing in my French speaking skills: while I hear it and comprehend it, I am lacking the conversational time to actually put everything into practice. It is that lack of time, something I am quickly running out of. It’s fueled by a worry that, although I am not worrying about traveling, about seeing the sights and checking things off my grand list of things to do before I die, is an inability to not get every bit out of this experience. The appreciation, that’s there. I’ve noticed the sunrises, the sunsets; I’ve seen a couple embracing in Place Royale, only to part in opposite directions and witness, from my place on the edge of the fountain, each partner stealing looks back at the other until they’re out of each other's sight. It’s hard to believe it’s real, sometimes. It seems too perfect, too happy, too ideal. But at the same time, I feel like I’m perched on the outside of this French life, that I’ve made no progress...that I have no French friends...that my dreams of becoming fluent were too far-fetched to be realized, especially not in my paltry four-month stay. That right when I am starting to settle in and feel comfortable in my surroundings enough to actually focus on my speaking, I will be jerked out of it, back to where I’m from. Back to where I belong, I’m sometimes tempted to say, but that feeling is fading, too.

So the frustration starts in the morning. It’s exacerbated by missing the bus, assuaged by a café crème with Maddy, and then forgotten about while mulling over books at a market behind the Place de la Bourse. And then it all comes up again while commiserating with Lauren. I’m not the only one to feel this way, which is the single most comforting thing: we have the same romanticized expectations, the same childish frustrations. Our quick trip to the FNAC turned into a two-hour-plus conversation, with most useful piece of advice: “Tell your host parents that it’s too bad you can’t talk as much.” Armed with that, I walked back home, ready to start some conversation on whatever I knew enough to discuss. I greeted my host mom with an energetic, “Ça va bien, et vous?” which, after being accustomed to my “oh, ça va…” I think surprised her more than anything. The enthusiasm was short-lived: instead of staying downstairs for conversation before dinner, I rehashed my difficulties with my mom via Skype, resolving rather undeterminedly to continue trying. And then by some series of miraculous events, my host parents and I managed to have a quiet, uninterrupted dinner… dining as just the three of us for the first time since I’ve been here. And during dinner, my host dad asked me a question was so eerily specific to how I had been feeling all day that I actually laughed when he asked me... so we discussed none other than the topic of the day: my frustration, my progress with learning French, and my need for conversation. They helped me figure out ways in which I can ameliorate my fluency (and in true French form, they suggested I memorize poems) and more importantly, they now know. I left that dinner feeling about twenty times better than I had before. Not because any particular clarity or inspiration has come from it, but because it was not just a conversation about the weather or the kids or vacation, but one through which they are helping me in the best way possible.

The whole thing is a twisted jumble, a complicated web of love story and frustration and comfort and change, and I feel a little self-conscious putting it all out there. I’m not really a feelings person. Yet somehow, most noticeably today, I’ve been able to find refuge in three families: my one at home, most removed from my life here, but who know me more than anyone, my host family, whom I know the least but by whom I feel more welcomed than I thought possible, and my friends here, who neither know me the best nor the least, but are a constant and necessary source of laughter, craziness, and wisdom to help the transition to living in another country. People ask me if I’ve adjusted here, and what do I say? The food and culture are wonderful, but the inability to adequately articulate my opinions is my only true culture shock. And, in the sweet irony of studying abroad, that is the one thing that I lack the ability to express.

Weekends

My weekends are never planned ahead, but always crazy; there's always something to do. I love this. I love not being abroad to just go out all the time. (Sorry to disappoint, but I really didn't come all this way to get drunk at night. Alcohol is not exactly a novelty in France.) So when people assume I stay out late and come home at 4am because that's what the Europeans do, my answer is that I don't, 1. because the night bus ends at 12:30am on Friday and 2:30am on Saturday, 2. Because drinks, even beer, are between 3 and 5 E ($4.50-7.50) here, and 3. Because I don't like sneaking up 3 flights of creaky over 100-year-old stairs and waking up the other 7 people in my family. Yeah, I realize this makes me sound pretty lame, and I'm okay with that. I will be coming back here on my own terms as soon as possible, and if I really want to go out and stay out late, I can do it while traveling or stay at a friend's. And even if I wanted to sleep in, it is impossible when you live with someone like my four-year-old host sister who wakes up at 7am every morning. (My host dad frequently says to her, "Doucement, ma cherie. On n'est pas sourde." (Quietly, darling. We're not deaf.) Or anytime she leaves the table, he goes, "Oh! This is what silence is like!", so much so that our dinner guest tonight said, "Well, it's pretty much impossible to be louder than Bérénice.")


So, as for a completely enthralling account of my past two weekends, here goes.


Last Friday, the four of us celebrated our first grève experience with a French-influenced American breakfast for dinner. Clare's host mom was gone for the week, and having the simple luxury of cooking ourselves a meal and not eating either 1. in a crowded IES kitchen between classes or 2. at a precise hour with my family every evening was so incredibly relaxing. We improvised a menu, turned up some music, crowded the kitchen, and all helped out stirring/chopping/cleaning over one small electric range at once. Our dinner consisted of an egg scramble with Emmental cheese, mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes, sautéed potatoes and onions, and fruit salad. For dessert, we had real American pancakes (Aunt Jemima mix has never tasted so good!) with Nutella and fresh walnuts from a neighboring tree. We cooked up a little spiced cider and rum to warm our spirits... The house didn't have heat, so we were bundled, but the hot spiked cider and the smell of spices and sautéed mushrooms and onions and being with my three closest friends completely made up for it. It was perfect. The other three of us made the midnight tram home, completely full and exhausted.


Saturday, I woke up early to discover that my family was going chestnut picking in the French countryside. After a huge lunch and some more trampoline with my host siblings, we crawled into the monospace (minivan) and 25 minutes later, we were straight out of a Cyrillus catalog (kind of a French version of J.Crew). Two other families met up with us, and I counted at least eleven kids running around, all under the age of 12, which made it kind of feel like a field trip, but when else could I say that I gathered chataignes (chestnuts) in the countryside? I can't describe it, really; it's hard to explain how impeccably all French children dress. All French PEOPLE dress, for that matter. Thankfully I've just succumbed to the fact that it's totally normal to be jealous of a 7-year-old's cute outfit; they just breathe this kind of effortless fashion. (It doesn't hurt that they all have somehow cracked the genetic code, so everyone is ridiculously good-looking.) So multiply that by twelve children wearing blouses, cords, and knit sweaters, in a forest full of fall-colored trees, and there you go. If only I had brought my camera. We ended up gathering 10 kilos (22 lbs) of chestnuts, which made 12 jars of chestnut purée, 4 loaves of chocolate-chestnut cake (that is my absolute favorite thing here), and still had plenty leftover. Saturday night, I went out for Indian food (SO good) and then we ran into some other friends, wandered into this jazz club/bar that wasn't playing jazz (but was playing really good music) and just chatted. When it was time to leave, we realized we had been there for three hours, and then called it a night. Since it was freezing outside, it was the best way to spend the evening: curled up in a corner, sipping drinks and chatting.


Sunday, nous avons tous fait de la grasse matinée (my whole family and I slept in), and after another incredibly slow day studying and reading and a déjeuner de fromage (lunch of pumpkin soup and five or six kinds of specialty cheeses with bread and red wine), I went to mass with my family at cathédrale Saint Nicolas (which is the third one I pass on my way to school every day) and it was nice to see the inside of something that has become part of my daily commute. The mass was very short (fortunately, because I forgot that stone cathédrales have no heating whatsoever and was therefore FREEZING) but we got home, built a fire in our fireplace that now works (my host dad fixed it like a champ... thank God, because I wasn't looking forward to waiting until November for heat), and ended up sitting around the coffee table in the salon, eating a dinner of gaufres (waffles) with powdered sugar and roasting chestnuts on an open fire. I capped off the evening with an espresso with my host parents, a little more studying, and headed to bed. What a wonderful weekend.


So anyway, we went to the Machines de l'île with a group of a few IES students on Friday. It was amazing. Unfortunately, a minor camera issue deleted all the pictures I took on Friday (about 70 of them). I thought my camera was broken for good, though, so that's a small price to pay. Since I don't have any pictures of it, I'll just try my best to explain: the île de Nantes is where all the chantiers (shipbuilders) have worked for a long time (since Triangular Trade, whenever that was), so there's huge workshops/hangars that could fit ships. Obviously the shipbuilding trade has diminished since then, but fortunately the craftsmanship hasn't faded. A group of probably 50-100 chantiers work day and night to create these machines out of wood and iron and motors, and their most recent accomplishment is this huge elephant (over 10 meters tall, I'm guessing) that you can get into and it walks around. Its ears flap, it blinks, and it can spray water out of its trunk. It really doesn't sound very cool, but it was. We got the tour of the "museum", which was really just where they put the finished pieces of their next project, which is a 20 meter (65 foot) high carousel with three stories, each level representing a different part of the ocean floor. Perfect, considering the fact that Nantes is the birthplace of Jules Verne, who wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I will have to steal photos from someone, because my description is not doing it justice at all! 

After a quick trip home, Maddy, Clare, Thea, and I reconvened to go to a Bioethics conference at the faculté de médecine (med school) at 7:30, and Clare's host mom was on the four-person discussion panel like a VIP. I know, I know, this really doesn't sound like a fun Friday night, but it was. It was ridiculous to be in a HUGE amphithéatre like that (there were about 1000 people there) in a medical school classroom, with plenty of med school students taking notes around us. Bioethics is right up my alley, and it was nice to go with my friends who are also interested in it, plus there was the huge challenge of sitting through an hour-and-a-half long philosophical discussion, all (obviously) in French. I was disappointed with the lack of actual specific issues (it was nothing like my Ethics of Medicine class), but the guy who was speaking, Axel Kahn, spoke on the subject of Bioethics to the Pope at the Vatican, so I figure he's pretty legit. After the conférence, we hit up a crêperie in Bouffay for a delicious and relatively inexpensive dinner. For 10 E, three of us split a bottle of cidre, I got a mushroom, onion, and cheese galette, then we got dessert crêpes, then we finished with espressos. It was great. We ran into a few friends and Thea's marraine (French mentor-friend) and went to a bar for drinks. Despite the odd American disco music, it was a cozy atmosphere, and I finally discovered, to my relief, that I was wrong about saying I hate beer. Granted, my bière was so blanche that it tasted almost like wine, but at least I liked it!


Saturday, I spent a lazy morning doing the usual: breakfast around 9:45am, playing with whatever young sibling wants to play in my room (there is always one) and showering and getting ready. It makes for a lazy morning. Lauren and I met up for lunch in town, then Maddy and I went to the museum at the château des Ducs, which was a nice warm, dry refuge from the rain outside. It was actually really interesting learning the history of Nantes. That's another thing: I've always hated history. I've found it boring, dry, and pretty unrelatable. But that's totally different when you walk by these places every day; places that have been around for over 200 years. And what's more, you're not there to see the history-- it just sort of comes to you. Being told that things happened along a timeline is one thing, but being able to see different architecture styles and coats of arms and relics when I generally go about my day is quite another. You can see the evidence of WWII bombings because all of a sudden the styles will go from 18th-century to 1950s and 1960s. You can go to a museum and see the papers of slave traders because Nantes was the main port for the Triangular Trade. So yeah, I once hated history, and I hate to admit it, but I actually like it now.


I came home from the museum and was blown away by how gorgeous it was. Literally, the perfect fall day. Gray, drizzly, and chilly in the morning, then blue sky and sunny in the afternoon. Here are some pics from the musée and my walk home:

Nantes in the 1700s. I love this one.

Don't know what this is, but these types of things are on the château and everywhere.

A LU cookie tower thing. It was probably 5 feet tall.

I absolutely LOVE all of these posters... I didn't even post half of them.

Love the colors in this one.

An astronomical thing. (Obviously, I learned a LOT at the museum... I just liked the light and shadows.)

Slave Trade: boring to read about in AP World, ridiculously real when it occurred on the same streets on which I walk to class.

 Click to enlarge, because it also lists the number of slave men (negera) and women (negresses) and their prices.

The beautiful fall stormy day at the château des ducs. (I think that spire in the back might be St. Clément, the cathédrale in my neighborhood (after which it is named), but I'm not totally sure)

Life goal: to own one of these posters in my house.

The original making of LU cookies.

Painted tile posters (about 4 feet tall). Beautiful.

Love this one, too.

On my walk home. I pass this every day on my way to school, too.

PS See how much it cleared up?  This was about 30 min after the stormy picture. Nantes weather changes so quickly, which I love.

Beautiful trees on the esplanade, between the cathédrale (Saint Pierre et Saint Paul, the main one) and the château.

... and then my camera died.

I got home Saturday evening to find out that my host dad's brother was in town for the accueil du nouvel évêque (welcoming of the new bishop) which meant another three hour mass to go to. I'm actually liking going to mass with my family, because it's something I can do with them, and also because it's interesting to see their version of the same religion. It's funny how churches in America are so community-based, with the post-mass coffee and donuts in the Parish Hall, making sure everyone is warm and comfortable, and that the songs are lively and catchy. In France, it's the opposite. You're in a cold cathedrale, kneeling on the stone floor at some parts (there are no kneelers here), and the songs are half in Latin. You do it this way because it's ALWAYS been done this way, so why change it? That's the French attitude for a lot of things, and I agree. So for me, it's another culture difference that I'm curious to explore, and I'm trying to progress a little in my French church vocabulary. Unfortunately all I really know is "La paix du Christ" and "Amen" and a few bits and pieces of the Our Father. Which isn't so great when somehow our whole motley crew gets seated IN THE CHOIR (Yes, in the center back of the church. Yes, this was being filmed because it was a big deal. Yes, I'm the only member of my family who doesn't sing.) and there are microphones all around us. Fortunately, I can mouth words as well as anyone. Unfortunately, the attention span of a four-year-old around 4pm is not suitable for a three-hour mass, which made for a little mid-mass drama when a microphone stand went down onto the lady in front of me in the middle of a song.


And fortunately, a visiting relative made for longer meals and more conversation. We covered the typical topics-- the perils of Facebook, the Church's opinion on bioethics, and the general promiscuity of various kings of France (for which the young ears needed to be covered)-- and our lunch on Sunday stretched nearly four hours. Two rounds of apéritifs (which consists of food and drink-- I'd say hors d'oeuvres, but I have not once heard that term here), then some soupe au citrouillon (pumpkin soup), then a seafood lunch of langoustine (a cross between lobster and crawfish), clams, full prawns (heads and all), and lots of small twirly shells (sorry, I have no idea about that one) and we finished with pommes au four, compote aux prunes, and gâteau chocolat-chataigne (oven-baked apples, plum compote, and chocolate-chestnut cake). So, I have learned the necessity of the après-déjeuner café (post-lunch coffee). It's not to pep you up on caffeine; it's not even for the taste (that's why it's in a shot)-- it's simply to ward off those food comas from settling in when you do things like go to three-hour masses in dimly-lit cathédrales right after lunch. Needless to say, I regretted not taking a café after lunch, but fortunately our front-and-center position and my struggle to follow along kept me very alert throughout the whole thing.


Sunday night brought more reading around the fireplace. However, everyone is on les vacances de Toussaint this week; my siblings have a week and a half off from school for it (lucky!), so I was the only one reading for my French lit class when they were all reading bande-dessinées (comic books), which are very popular, and moreover, very intelligent. They have all sorts of witty remarks and insults with various historical or regional references-- exactly the French sense of humor. 


So there are my past two weekends. This upcoming one is a little more special, as I have Friday and Monday off (and no class on Tuesday like usual) for Toussaint, so I'm heading to London and Oxford to visit my close friend and old roommate, Anna. I am beyond excited for this-- I haven't seen her since last March, and now I get to spend a whole 5 days with her in Angleterre (England)! I have lots of ideas and no plans at the same time, which is what I've found works absolutely the best. I'll have a couple books, my iPod, and my journal to occupy myself for the 4 modes of transportation I'll be taking on Friday, and then I will be there!! I have heard nothing but good things about London from everyone I've talked to, and believe it will be worth all the crazy hassle Maddy and I went through to get our tickets.


The weekend after that, Whitney (a friend with whom I took my only year of French at SCU) is coming from Paris to visit me on Friday for a full day of exploration. The next day, I'm going on an IES-sponsored (aka pre-paid for) trip to see the Châteaux of the Loire Valley. Though I came into the program with the attitude "you've seen one château, you've seen them all", I'm warming up to our château here, and I've heard these are absolutely stunning.


The weekend after that, I will be staying in Nantes, but the weekend after that, November 20-22 (or rather, 19-23, as I am stretching it out a bit thanks to my schedule) I am heading to Lausanne and Gruyère in Switzerland. The following weekend, I'm going to an FC Nantes match de foot (soccer game) and staying in Nantes. As for December, I think I'll stay here (or in France at least), but I really don't want to think about it, because that means I'm going home soon after. And I really can't manage to think about leaving quite yet.


This morning at breakfast, on the topic of birthdays, ages, and lengths of time, my 10-year-old host brother said to me, "Je veux reculer à Septembre; comme ça, tu peux rester là plus longtemps." (I want to go back to September; that way, you can stay for longer.) 
Me too, Ambroise. Me too.

Average day

On any given day, there are a few things that constantly run through my mind:
-How much I love just being in France
-How much I love the food here
-How much I spend, in part due to the sorry state of the dollar
-How I have no time

Today has been no different. I arrived at IES this morning fully prepared and looking forward to writing about how much I love it here (how is that different from any other day?) I had a lazy breakfast consisting of tea, tartines, and some leftover gâteau au chocolat et chataignes (chocolate and chestnut cake) that my host mom made for dessert last night because I had told her just how much I loved the other one. I walked all the way to school because the bus passed my stop about 45 seconds before I got there, and because I secretely love walking to school, and ran into yet another mini-grève, though this one was about ten thousand times more tame than the previous. I was walking along the sidewalk near the mairie, and heard nothing but horns. At first I didn't know if it was just my music, but then I turned the corner and saw a parade of about 15-plus garbage trucks blocking one lane of traffic (on a two-lane street) and laying on their horns the entire time. They were going super slowly, forcing all traffic to detour around a block or two and keeping buses from continuing their routes. The combined sound of about 20 garbage truck horns is not something that can be ignored, so I unplugged my headphones and kept walking. The man in front of me, a scruffy man in his mid-40s, raised his fist and yelled in support to each and every truck driver that passed, which only facilitated more honking... and I couldn't help it. I just started laughing! In that way that is pure ridiculousness and craziness and so incredibly unpredictable all the time... I love it.

A block or two later, I passed "Le P'tit Bouillon", that brasserie/restaurant I mentioned earlier that always has the same attractive man writing the daily menu on the glass-enclosed blackboard outside the storefront. The board is about four feet tall and two feet wide, and it lists the day and date, the lunch and dinner prices, and the options for each course with the chef's specialities. I caught him while he was out there again yesterday... and there's something about that... some comfort I find in seeing the same man in the same spot at the same time, just going about his daily opening-up-shop chores, not knowing that I have noticed. So today, I passed and checked the blackboard, as usual, only to find that he had already written up today's menu. Today, however, was not like the other days; it wasn't just "Mardi, le 20 octobre", but instead, it was "Mardi!!!" And again, I couldn't keep from laughing. I wonder what that man has going on in his life that an ordinary Tuesday like today needed three exclamation marks. Was he in an equally lighthearted mood? Or maybe today was exactly that-- an ordinary Tuesday-- and he just wanted to spice it up a little. Either way, this man is slowly becoming my favorite.

With things like this, it's impossible NOT to love this city. Everything I do, everywhere I go, this whole city is so full of life. It's abundantly happy, ridiculously outspoken, and humbly comfortable in its own ancient ways. Every person here is a character-- one who refuses to be defined by their work or their family or their success, but instead by their attitude and the way they make their own statement on the rest of the world. I feel like while I'm here, how can I not be moved by this infectious joie de vivre, the convivality of la vie francaise?

So when there are times, like right now, when I'm cursing the $1.50 to 1E exchange rate and the inability to have enough foresight to research trains rather than flights and spend a couple hours really rooting around and triple-checking all aspects of my trip to London rather than doing what others are and not knowing that you can reserve train tickets for pickup and payment at a later date (because I was trying to save myself an $8 online charge and ended up waiting too long and the price went up a ton) and actually, despite all my efforts, wasting the equivalent of roughly $150 and 5 or more hours of travel time in planning my holiday weekend... that is when I have to remember that it's a lesson learned. I'm not saying I'm nonchalantly blowing off this wasted money-- believe me, I was irritated about it-- but I'm trying to take it in stride. Nothing can be changed without spending more money, so there's no point in getting angry, right? I keep telling myself that there's no rush to see every place, to visit every destination while I'm here this semester. I'll be back in hopefully two years, and everything will figure itself out..

Mal à la grève

When we arrived, we had been warned of the grèves or manifestations (protests/strikes) that the French are notorious for. I had heard stories of the public transportation system being on strike, therefore making everyone walk or bike however far they need to go (not great when you live on the outskirts of town like some IES students) or the university being on strike for whatever reason, which cancels classes for however long (up to 8 weeks last year, the IES director told us). While it seems like a huge inconvenience, it's life here. I was surprised that I had made it a month and a half without running into any real grèves; we saw a group of 20 people protesting something at Mont St. Michel, I had heard that the post office went on strike/ just stopped mail service for one day, and the one time I watched the news since I've been here, they reported on a huge milk strike (farmers dumped thousands of gallons of milk all over the streets in protest). By and large, I've been on the outside of these manifestations.

I took the bus into town on Friday afternoon to meet up with my friends for lunch at the RU. On my way there, via the usual route, I pass by the hôtel de ville/ mairie (mayor's office? I forget the English term) and there were about 20 old farmer men sitting outside with a banner, and a sandwich board across the street saying something about not building an airport because that's taking away the agriculture (I think it was about putting a runway where there currently are farms). It was my first real taste of grève, and I laughed to myself. Is this what I was warned about? A group of old farmer men that are just standing in the cold, not saying a word, but holding one big banner near the entrance gate? 

And then we hit it. Maddy, Lauren, and I needed to walk a couple blocks to get to the RU, and were a little shocked. The trams weren't running, and this was why: LES TRACTEURS.

So we had lunch as usual, and came out to chaos. While it felt a little Seattle WTO riot in 1999-esque, it was completely harmless (don't worry, Mom). 

_____

Some of the middle-aged agriculteurs that were striking (and this was also where they were picnicking with their boxed wine, which surprisingly does exist, even in France)

On that yellow truck is nothing but feathers (and some hay to keep them from blowing away)

Possibly my only taste of snow in Nantes, even if it is feather-snow (that is also a policeman watching from an apartment window)

Then they were blowing all the feathers in a wood-chipper like thing, which made it look even more like snow

A little burning hay fire between Maddy and me

Some shopping carts hanging from a tractor, which was to illustrate that the price of food will go up if the farmers don't get what they want (which is a bigger share of the food production prices I think)

Looks like grève-- made the entire city smell like smoke and be cloudy all day

Tractor traffic

A jeu de mots (wordplay): "On travaille plus, on ne gagne plus rien!?" which basically means, "We work more, we receive even less (or more than nothing)"

The only casualty from the grève (which was replaced the next day, I noticed)

Not quite as impressive, but these little burning hay piles were in the crosswalks (and on the tram tracks, but it's not like the trams would have been running anyway)

_____

Apparently this was on the bad side of grèves; they're not usually this bad. But at the same time, I didn't find anything out-of-control about it. Yeah, the crosswalk sign had been bulldozed by a tractor, and there were fires, but the fires were just chunks of hay/straw burning on cement, not spreading fires. And yes, there were hanged dummies hanging from the tractors, and yes, they made a huge mess, but it really just felt like a parade for 40-year-old men: sirens and cannons instead of music, blowing hay and feathers instead of confetti, and smoke to create the ambience. Before the actual procession of tractors and ridiculousness started, we saw all the men just chatting it up/ eating the lunches they packed and drinking a little before the manif went into action. (Another difference: it was a fully orchestrated thing: they were bussed in on coaches, each area of the Loire-Atlantique département was represented, someone with a bullhorn was announcing the advance of each group, and the actual thing started at like 1pm and went until about 6pm-- it wasn't like "let's just show up and picket until the sun goes down.") 

I took a video of it like a TOTAL tourist (but even some French people were taking pictures, so I felt a little better) and hate posting it because I feel even more touristy, but I think it shows the militaristic feeling of the strike and why we we were reminded of the French Revolution as we were walking through it. The funniest part was really that I had no idea this was happening; we just ran into it, and it seems like the kind of thing you can't really miss. (PS. Sorry it's kind of long. He's saying "let's go, let's advance.")

Fall has arrived...

Quick highlights from this week:

- Having one of the best (and BIGGEST-- not even a Starbucks' "tall" size, but big enough and delicious) café crèmes ever for 1, 45E after class on Tuesday with Lauren.
- A dog named Dinky at the café. (Seriously. Dinky. Lauren's dog's name is Wanda, which makes me think all French people give their dogs weird names.) It was a maybe two-year-old yellow lab that cozied up to me, walked around with leaves dangling in its mouth, and would run up to anyone on a nearby moped. It satisfied my "I miss having a dog around" moments perfectly.

- Successfully giving an old woman directions to the Gare Maritime (though I had no idea where that was, so it was more like helping her read the bus map and help her realize she needed to take two buses and the tram to get there) and I remembered not to tutoye her (thank God).

- The weather (freezing cold but cloudless and sunny, like my favorite skiing weather) that somehow makes everything perfect and makes me feel like Fall is officially here.
- Deciding that routines are boring and choosing to take a different way home everyday. That means taking my bus an extra stop to get to IES, taking the tram instead of the bus, walking a different route... whatever. So worth it, because I already discovered a whole pocket of shops one block away from the way I usually walk.
- Wednesday, I took the tram with Clare. It was freeeezing out and we had to wait 7 minutes for the tram. I had been craving a pâtisserie and Clare had been dreading making herself another couscous dinner, so we stopped by a local boulangerie across the street and grabbed the necessary items. After the quick tram ride, I ate my pastry (that was prune something, because I forgot that pruneaux= prunes, and prunes = plums) while walking through the Jardin des Plantes in all of its fall color while listening to whatever random mix my four-year-old sister had set my iPod to. In a strange way, Jack Johnson was just right for the 40-degree weather and my relaxing walk home with my hands stuffed in my pea coat.
- Thursday, I bought a "maxi-pain" (which I know doesn't sound appetizing, but it just means a gigantic pain au chocolat) at a boulangerie on my walk to the tram. I would say that I felt very French, but the French don't eat on the go (except sometimes lunch, but they just sit down wherever they are for that) so neither did I... I waited three and a half hours...
- Lauren just-so-happened to get out of poli sci early so we met up at the pôle étudiant (student center) café and I finally ate my maxi pain au choc and she got coffee, then we had our usual student lunch at the RU, followed by a walk down to the Erdre river and a café crème before class. Nothing beats three hours of eating and conversation!
- Running into none other than Caroline Pappas outside of my Psychologie Cognitive class. I knew she was in Nantes, but it was crazy that she was waiting to go into the lecture hall I was coming out of! Had I not had only 30 minutes to wait for the tram, take it across town, walk to IES, and make it to my Business midterm on time (like every hellish Thursday), we would have chatted a little more, but we do have a standing lunch date that I am looking forward to!
- Beginning to recognize people. While Nantes is the sixth largest city in France, it's remarkably small-feeling: I can run into people like Caroline at the University (and Lauren happened to run into a girl she met last night, too.) Today I also walked behind a mom and daughter while heading to IES from the fac. Two and a half hours later, when I was leaving IES, I crossed paths with them again. I'm sure they have no idea who I am, but I like recognizing people and becoming just a little more familiar with my city.

Lowlights:
- Having a house with insulation, heating, and windows dating to 1903. This is also a highlight (because I think my house is gorgeous), but it's not so fun when the chimney man BREAKS YOUR FIREPLACE and says it won't get fixed until mid-November and it is in the 30's at night already. I also don't know how radiators work and have yet to figure out if my home's heat has actually been turned on. I don't think so. (And I'm not just saying that for emphasis; I actually don't know. The subject of the lack of heat in my house has been a daily dinner conversation, but for the moment I am loving my down comforter and hating getting out of the shower to essentially an unheated attic. Brrr.)
- Being too timid/afraid of being too touristique to take photos every opportunity I get. I want to take photos of everything here, though, because it is too beautiful to forget!

- I'm halfway done with being here. That is by far the worst one.


Nothing much planned for this weekend besides doing some shopping, hanging around Nantes, and having a good old-fashioned American breakfast-for-dinner chez Clare demain soir (at Clare's house tomorrow night).


A plus! 
(Pronounced "ah ploose." It's short for "a plus tard" which means "until later"... just thought I'd clarify so no one thinks I mean A+, which I didn't even realize at first.)


---------
A couple funny stories:
- We are beginning to forget English. Yesterday at the musée, we knew what "sablier" was, but had to ask around and point to the picture in the painting for the English term. After a group of probably 5 or 6 of us kept saying, "You know, that thing that measures time... a timekeeper...", one other student finally said, "Oh. An hourglass??" Duh. Also, today, it took me about three tries before I remembered the English word "solution"; "resolution", "fixing", and "solving a problem" were as close as I could get. It could just be fatigue, of course, but after six hours of class in French, you can't blame me for inability to think in English!
- The first time we went to the Musée de Beaux Arts, my professor brought us into one room to show us some very early (13th century perhaps) paintings with gold on wood that often used to be in cathédrales. Before we moved to the room that held the art we'd be studying, she referenced something in a hallway behind her, simply saying, "Oh, and those are some of Monet's. But we're not here to see that." (!!) As in, "Oh, yeah, those are just some sketches because they needed to fill up the space." Sometimes I wonder how it's possible for French people to think like this. Is that normal??
- Last Thursday, I arrived to my Psychologie Cognitive class a little hopped up on my espresso shot. I arrived on time, but no professor had shown up, so I busied myself going through other notes while waiting. When the projector went on, I looked up, as my professor didn't normally use the projector, and a new man started to introduce himself, the class, and the bibliographie (reading list) as he mentioned this was Psychologie Différentielle. (!) Classes of different disciplines often start different weeks at the fac, and I had heard of some people at IES taking one that starts in November, so I was thinking that's what this was. I had no syllabus to check, no schedule to look at. My first thought was, "Well, whatever this is, I certainly hope it ends before 4:00 so I can run back to IES in time for Commerce (my business class)!" After I copied down the full bibliography of five recommended textbooks for the class, I realized that my Psychologie class was listed with three professors-- and this one was simply number two. After my horrible going-to-the-wrong-class incident, I have become oddly desensitized to the humiliation. It's progress.

Weekly Recap

The past week has been more of the same: living life as it happens in Nantes. Some people I've talked with in the US have said things like, "Well, you're abroad, so your life MUST be very interesting." And while that is sometimes the case, because I can do things like hop on a train to wine country or Paris or take a weekend trip to London, the weekly life, the day-to-day stuff, is still the usual. I wake up, I get ready, I go to class, I try not to do work, I come home and eat dinner with my family, and I go to bed. It's the little things that make it so profound, but those don't always come across as interesting-- not in a quick reply. It's life in GENERAL-- the simple fact of living in a different country with five million different adjustments and out of that, creating my day-to-day routine-- that, in and of itself, is great. So I like my "boring" life. I still appreciate all the little things, I still love walking to the tram at 7:30 every Thursday morning and smelling the boulangeries baking their morning supply of bread, or taking the bus to IES around 11am Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, and always managing to pass the same (good-looking) man while he's changing the daily specialities on the glass-enclosed blackboard outside his café.


Highlights:
- I actually do like my 1-oz. shots of coffee, and they're only 0, 80E at the RU on campus, as opposed to 3E downtown
- Those espresso shots work WONDERS to prevent that food coma from settling in during my afternoon  Psychology class
- Eating dinner with Lauren's Aunt and Uncle at Le Saludier on Thursday night-- a 2.5- 3 hour meal that was probably the best meal I've had yet.
- Getting pains au chocolat with Maddy after class, and sitting on the fountain at Place Royale to catch up for two hours-- and conversing in French for an hour of it
- Eating Moroccan bread and pastries for breakfast this morning because my host dad got back from Maroc last night (and then him apologizing for the bread because he bought it yesterday so it wasn't fresh... right). We had something called cornes de gazelle (gazelle horns) that were delicious, plus I found out that he brought my host mom a ton of fresh moroccan spices (yum)
--And he was so excited about it, he brought the plastic grocery bag to me when I was in the kitchen and said, "Stick your head in this." Of course, I looked at him like he was crazy, then I realized what he meant, so I stuck my head into it and smelled about a kilo of moroccan spice heaven.
- My friends accepting my love of food which has gotten to be downright ridiculous.


I also published a post below that I wrote on Wednesday but didn't publish until now because I didn't really know what to do with it. It put me into a weird sort of unsettled funk, which I didn't have time for on Thursday (as I was gone from my house from 7:30am Thursday morning until 12:45am Friday morning, with 6 hours of class, a three-hour dinner, and errands in between) but on Friday, as I don't have any classes and therefore nothing to do, it just sort of hit me. This wasn't helped by two of my friends going out of town for the weekend and therefore spending 4 hours studying Pharmacology by myself at IES (because I found out I have a midterm in that class in two weeks) so it was just weird. With the cloudy weather and rainstorm (and exhaustion from my busy day the day before), it just made me want to crawl into bed and take a nap-- which isn't possible in a house full of seven people, four of whom are under the age of 10. So I toughed it out for a crazy/loud family dinner, then watched Project Runway and caught up on Grey's and spent the night in. While I would have loved to go out with my friends who were still in town, I think I really needed that.


After some more studying in the morning and playing with my four-year-old host sister in the afternoon, I met up with Clare at the château des ducs in the 70-degree sunshine. We went to go see "The Informant" last night, after which we got pizza in Bouffay and met up with Lauren (who had just gotten back from a little jaunt to the Loire Valley) for some glace. Perfect evening!


As for this coming week, I've got a midterm in my business class on Thursday (which is the last hour of my 6-hour marathon of classes on Thursdays, so let's hope I'm not burned out) and will be polishing up my plans to head to London and Oxford to see Anna during my fall break for five days. Next weekend, the group of the four of us are all staying in Nantes, so we're hoping to get a reservation to tour the Cointreau distillery in nearby Angers for the day if possible. This afternoon, we're heading to my little brothers' choir concert at the Conservatoire, and I've got a book to read for one of my classes before we go.


A bientôt!

Seattle

The past month, in my Ecrivains Français et Peuples Etrangers (French Writers and Foreign Nations) class, we have been focusing on French writers and their regards of the US from the 18th century to the present. Today we concluded the unit with an excerpt from a book published in 2006 by Bernard-Henri Lévy. The title of this passage: "Seattle mon amour." I wish I could say that this brought me back; that it encapsulated in one title exactly how I'm feeling at the start of Fall, just when Nantes is beginning to get gray, rainy, and a little more Seattle-like. But it didn't, so read on.


The author starts out with saying that the most beautiful thing in Seattle was the arrival. He describes the docks as "fragile and sunlit", the "mist of summer that mysteriously stops at the edge of the waterfront", and goes on to illustrate Frank Blethel as a man who (seemingly single-handedly) combats the Hearst empire with the family-owned Seattle Times. Lévy described a visit to Redmond as a "décor of pines, lawns, and little lakes, this city within a city that is the home of Microsoft", as well as a visit to Boeing, where I learned all sorts of random airplane vocabulary like "fuselage" in French. 


"Bref, j'ai tout aimé de Seattle." ("In short, I loved everything about Seattle.")


I don't know why, but this 5-page passage just bothered me. It did! I wish I could find some other words. I read it on Monday, when I didn't know how I was feeling about settling back into Nantes after Bordeaux, and felt odd. I read it Tuesday, and felt nothing again. Today, I gave it a third try before class, translating a few more words to see if that'd help, and I really had a hard time disguising my annoyance with this dumb excerpt. The author bounced between describing the Seattle waterfront, Redmond, Renton, 1st Avenue in downtown, and then coming over the pass and seeing the Space Needle, and all I wanted to say was, "That's not it! That's not my Seattle you're describing; that's another city. And it's not even logical road trip to boot!"


After analyzing it in class, my professor told us that this was in the stylistic form of a love letter. The anaphora of repeating "I like (this), I like (that)" and the way in which he just went on about the skyscrapers and the Space Needle. Of course, I didn't even get this impression because I was too distracted. I just couldn't see it. Lévy was describing Microsoft, Boeing, and the shipping industry, not my hometown. He didn't mention the sunsets over Lake Washington that are breathtaking when the clouds finally part, the excitement of Seafair, or the humor that every winter, without fail, the whole city goes paralyzed during the first snow. He didn't mention the fact that hundreds of thousands of people live there, and they somehow find it within them to love Seattle despite the months and months of gray and rain to appreciate the crisp Fall mornings and the clear Spring afternoons. The cherry trees, the blooming flowers, the fact that you can get a mocha with cinnamon on top and actually walk down the street while drinking it (unheard of here). Only once --once!-- in the whole article did Lévy mention the citizens, and that was expressing his surprise that "this town, almost Canadian and already Asian, this Chinese town, this town that has known in a long history, the anti-Asian racial riots in U.S. history" can once again welcome Asians into their metropolis. That was it! 


I was hoping writing down this rant would help me to figure out where I stand, and it hasn't. Not completely, not yet. I understand the falling in love with a city, as I could go on and on about how much I love Nantes. I get that. But isn't it the people? Isn't it the fact that somehow, enough people got together and realized that there's something special about this place, just as they do with every other city? I guess I'm contradicting myself, as you can "love France and not the French" as so many people do, but it's more than that. Reading his excerpt didn't make me proud to be from Seattle; it didn't make me miss it. He didn't highlight a single thing that there is in Seattle that we don't have here. My only thought was, "You just don't get it", which made me think: I'm not homesick. When I got an email that said, "... and probably missing home a little..." I literally chuckled. It's not that I don't like home; I do. However, I feel a strange sort of detachment from it. I noticed Bellevue was changing before I left, and I didn't like it. Too big, too flashy, too materialistic. And after reading something like this, it didn't help. That's my history and my hometown, and it's tough when people see it for industry and skyscrapers and successes like Microsoft and Boeing. I know Bellevue is my home, and I think of it fondly, but it's changed so much already that what's the point of missing it when what I return to isn't the home from which I left?

If rejecting America part of the "adjusting to life in France" roller coaster that IES forewarned us about, then that's good. I'm almost worried I haven't been feeling homesick since I arrived, but I think that's due in large part to my family. Fortunately, my family has been far-flung enough for me to be used to the chaos of four people in four different cities, and fortunately, my amazing parents support me enough to say, "It's okay if we don't talk until December because you're exploring your life in Europe." Of course, there are things I miss about Seattle, like omelets, tater tots, and getting more than 2 ounces of coffee at a time. It's not homesick like heartsick: an achingly long, I-really-just-need-that-to-see-that-to-make-me-happy but a quick, "Yeah... yep, that sounds good" kind of thing. And for each thing I miss, there are five I've discovered. Blood sausage? Check. Walking absolutely everywhere? Check. Drinking tea from a cereal bowl every morning? Check. Quince bars and fig jam? Check, check. (...) This isn't supposed to be any sort of preface to something like, "So with that said, I'm quitting school and staying in France", as much as I'd like that to be the reality. It doesn't mean much at all; it's just me and my thoughts on being here. While I'm here, I'm just constantly struck by the universality of it all. Globalization, yeah, but the fact that people have lived here and have never in their lives eaten tater tots, or even driven in an SUV (today, I saw my very first pickup truck since I've arrived five weeks ago) and they're quite fine without it all. They find pleasures elsewhere, and so can/will/do I.