Sorry for the total lack of posts; this past week has been absolutely CRAZY, but I’m enjoying learning so much. It’s been very necessary, and most importantly, has really facilitated my ability to learn to love being here.
Here’s a typical day from this past week: get up at 7:30, shower at 8, downstairs for breakfast by 8:30, leave to walk to the bus at 8:50, arrive at IES at 9:20, class 9:30-12, lunch 12-2, more class in the afternoon until 5 or 6pm, buy whatever random things I realized I need, arrive at home by 7/ 7:30pm, dinner from 7:45-8:30, play with the kids until 9, try to get everything done on the internet for an hour until 10, journal/ do homework/ get ready for bed from 10-12:30. Get 7 hours of sleep and repeat.
Learning experience #1: ENTER AT THE FRONT OF THE BUS. I mistakenly entered the second door of the bus because I was worried the bus driver would not wait for me, and had both a passenger and the driver tell me, in front of all the other bus patrons, that I was in the wrong. Ah well, live and learn.
Learning experience #2: READ THE EMPLOI DU TEMPS (schedule), aka I was late to my Langue Francaise class with Madame de Pous. While we had started class at 9:30 three days in a row, no one mentioned the fact that Thursday’s class started a half-hour earlier, so I assumed the same. Slight comfort: about 40% of our class made this assumption, too.
These two things happened within the same 30 minutes, and if you know me and how much I dislike a) being late and b) being shamed or scolded (especially publicly), I learned to not take it personally. I’m learning to admit that I know absolutely nothing about this place, and of course I’ll make mistakes and be stupid. While I could try to justify either of these mistakes, it’s not worth it. My brain’s been on overload here, and I can’t expect to be a local starting from day 1!
Other things I’ve learned:
- M -Monoprix is the best place to go. For anything. If you’re thirsty, you can either pay 1, 30 E for a soda or Perrier in a can from a street stand, or pay 0, 97 E for a 1.25 liter water and a fresh peach at Monoprix across the street. Guess which I picked.
- Pi -Picnicking is the easiest way to spend an afternoon. Clare, Maddy, Lauren and I each had a half-baguette sandwich (again, that’s forearm length) consisting of olive tapenade, brie, and jambon (ham), with blackberry yogurt as a side, and dark chocolate biscuits (like LU cookies) for dessert, and washed it down with a mini-bottle of Rosé wine for us each. So convenient that they come in four-packs. And we got all this for FIVE EUROS EACH! Again, God bless Monoprix.
-S -Splitting dinner is foolproof. The four of us split smoked salmon and crème fraîche pizza and vegetarian pizza, leaving us with half a pizza per person, plus had side salads, and dinner was also only 5 Euros each (also because our salads were on the house since they forgot). While we were initially warned against Place Bouffay, it really has the quintessential outdoor atmosphere: café lights, bistro tables, chalkboards listing the day’s specialties and menu, people playing the accordion in the street, etc. It was wonderful.
-T The French really are nice people. They’ll tell you if you did something wrong, but only to make you aware, not to embarrass you. They get really excited to talk to you and I don’t know that I’ve yet been made fun of (minus the accent mockings and laughter), which is a reward itself.
BR -BRING HAND SANITIZER EVERYWHERE. Not only do the French not believe in ice cubes, cold milk, or free refills (which don’t bother me too much after I got used to being thirsty all the time), they hardly EVER have soap in the bathrooms. It’s not like the soap just ran out; the soap pump itself does NOT exist. So thank you, Dad, for giving me that spray sanitizer before I left. It is one of the more useful things I’ve brought!
LAST SATURDAY (still orientation)
Saturday morning, we went to les alignements de Carnac, which is basically a series of menhirs (monoliths? Large rocks) that are lined up in long lines (I want to say it’s about a mile) with a big circle of these tall rocks at one end. It is basically the French version of Stonehenge, though the rocks are only vertical (no table top). Our French tour guide spoke at grande vitesse (very fast), but basically what I got out of this was that the rocks were moved quite frequently, making it difficult to understand why they were there. After an hour of explaining a couple postulations (funeral markings, keeping track of space/time), she closed with saying, “Oh, and it could be that they had gods or goddesses. Maybe they were religious. We don’t know.” And with that, the tour was over, leaving us very much confused.
Les alignements de Carnac
On the way to lunch, we stopped by another chateau (though this was a forteresse) and saw an octagonal, VERY tall donjon (dungeon) that was reminiscent of both Harry Potter and Rapunzel. The fortesse was situated on a beautiful pond, everything around it was lush and green, and the cells even had their own fireplaces. It must have been for VIP prisoners of the Middle Ages, because I know I wouldn’t have minded it…
La Forteresse de Largoët
Maddy, Clare, Me, and Lauren
Is this not picturesque?
All 100 of us from IES hit up a creperie for lunch, where each of us consumed our weight in butter: cheese and ham crepe for the main course, and caramel crepe for dessert. Good thing we’ve been walking so much! From the creperie, we went to the CUTEST place: a port town that just-so-happened to be having a fête d’huitres (oyster festival). While festivals in Bellevue entail more publicity, posters, and planning than actual substance, I feel, it was nice to see the French village way of doing things. There were bagpipers playing, the entertainment was watching a man open an oyster with his teeth, and a parade of what I’m pretty sure was this village’s charter of the larger oyster celebration committee, as there were many old men wearing the equivalent of college graduation regalia, complete with oyster shells affixed to their green velvet berets.
The Village of Saint Goustan from above (we climbed this hill)
(click to see the outfits and banner in all their glory)
Clare, Maddy, Lauren, and I decided to brave it and try a plate of raw oysters. With the help of a very sweet older woman next to us, we successfully downed two each.
Saturday night, after a nice dinner back at the hotel, Lauren and I were exhausted and went to bed at 10:30 pm. The sleep was sooooo needed!
SUNDAY
Sunrise from our hotel room (reflected over the river)
After waking up early and checking out of our rooms, we all filed into the conference room for 3 hours of French placement testing. What, you don’t love spending your Sunday mornings that way? We had lunch at the hotel and then were off to another small village to stretch our legs during the road trip. The four of us were in search of coffee and a bathroom, and found the most adorable B&B/ café that had an interior stone courtyard with a fountain, sculptures, flowers, sun umbrellas, and little bistro tables—perfect for the 75-degree weather. Each of us ordered a café crème and some 5 fruits rouges glace (gelato that was basically pureed blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and 2 other berries) with nothing less than Reddi-Whip on top. And it was delicious.
Me, Clare, and Maddy in the stone courtyard with our glace!
I was welcomed home by my host family, where I jumped on our backyard trampoline with the little girls, had dinner, then went to bed to brace myself for the week ahead…
MONDAY
Lots of orientation today at school: how to fit into the city and meet locals and play sports and buy cell phones and bus passes type of stuff. After class got out at 5:30, I rushed to go pay my 60 Euros for a SIM card and monthly bus pass with everyone else from our program, and was home in time for the now-ritual trampoline jumping with my little sisters before dinner.
TUESDAY
More orientation stuff at school. During our two-hour lunch, Maddy, Clare, Lauren, and I grabbed lunch at La Mie Caline, a cafe where you can get a baguette sandwich, Perrier, and chocolate croissant for 3, 20 E and we ate on the steps of a fountain in a little square, surrounded by lots of other French people our age. It felt so normal!
WEDNESDAY
All of IES went to the University of Nantes to explore, eat lunch at an RU (restaurant universitaire—a nice cafeteria) where you can get a three-course meal for 2, 90 E. Not bad! In the afternoon, our classes started, which was the beginning of a three-day French brush-up session, a sort of pre-placement for our required IES French class.
THURSDAY
After 3 hours of morning classes and lunch by that same fountain, we had a two-hour walking tour of Nantes, (the cathedrale, the château des ducs de Bretagne, and all the historical parts) which was actually really interesting. I got home relatively early, around 6:30, only to see family on the other side of the street, going the opposite direction. The four little kids were biking, and the parents were walking. They were headed to the Musée de Beaux Arts to see an Ernesto Neto exhibit, a picture of which I have hanging in my room here in my homestay, so I walked along. The Musée is also open 2 hours later and free every Thursday evening, which is great. The contemporary art was pretty cool to look at (you lay on beanbags on the floor and look at things suspended from the ceiling that are the equivalent of sugar and sand suspended in pantyhose-like nylon, though much more artful than my description) and then we looked at some more historical paintings and sculptures before dinner at 8:15. Considering how most of my friends’ families watch movies together or go swimming, this is a very different family activity, but it’s nice to do things together with them that are more active and that everyone can take part in.
The cathedrale that I pass on my way to school each morning (that we saw on the tour). I'm pretty sure this is the Saint Pierre, because our tour guide mentioned they dropped the "Paul" from the name. It's kind of weird to see what a difference cleaning it makes (left vs. right).
Statue guarding the tomb of Francois II (duc de Bretagne). One side is a woman, and her hair creates the old man's beard. I forget about the woman, but the man is supposed to represent sageness and wisdom.
The stained-glass windows that are actually from the latter half of the 20th century because Nantes was bombed during WWII and most windows blew out (except that of Sainte Anne, patron Saint of Brittany)
The front of the château des ducs
The interior of the château des ducs (from the courtyard)
One of my all-time favorite pictures. Please note the baguette in his briefcase!
The Passage Pommeraye, a three-story market-like square where you can buy everything from plants and garden supplies to photocopies to fine leather goods to chocolate. Our tour guide also told us that while it had the opportunity to become high-end boutiques, the city consciously decided against it, as it would change the spirit and purpose of what the Passage Pommeraye had previously been like. (The high-end boutiques are one street over.) While I haven't yet seen it, I'm not sure if the Bravern can top the Passage...
FRIDAY
I signed myself up for my courses, and right now, I’ll be taking these at IES:
-French Classicism: Art and Architecture
-Advanced Topics in French Language and Literature
And these at the University of Nantes:
-Cognitive Psychology (because the Director/ my advisor is making me take 2 courses à la fac, though this should be interesting)
- And the one I’m most excited for: Biopharmacology!! Yes, I know, I am kind of crazy to be taking this in a different language, but it sounds amazing, and if it’s horrible, I can drop it, but the director (M. de Berranger) said he thinks I can handle it, and he’s also a professor at UN, so I’m taking his word for it. This is TBD, though, because I don’t have the timesheet for any of the Bio classes, so I’m praying it fits with my schedule.
By Friday evening, I was so tired and worn out that I had a 30-minute-long period of temporary insanity and uncontrollable laughter while we were waiting for advising to finish. I just couldn't stop laughing! (Mom, I’m sure you can picture this.) Afterwards, I went out with Lauren, Clare, and Maddy to Place Bouffay for some much-deserved, end-of-the-week kirs before I went home for dinner. I came home to 14 nine-year-olds celebrating Ambroise’s birthday (which I had been expecting) and so after jumping on the trampoline with the little girls, I helped to make all the personal pizzas for the kids, and Soline and I watched some of the news before watching A Very Long Engagement with Audrey Tautou (which was, by the way, amazing). Soline and I had four-cheese pizzas we made for ourselves, and let me just say that CPK cannot live up to the Gruyere, chevre, mozzarella, and crème fraîche pizzas that we had. They were DELICIOUS.
I woke up at 8:30 and played dress-up with Berenice, of course, until 11am, when I was planning to meet Maddy, Clare, and Lauren. Due to my forgetfulness that the buses don’t run nearly as frequently on the weekend, I now know the path necessary to walk the entire way to school (which only takes about 30 minutes and isn’t bad) and arrived at 11:45. My phone’s Mobicarte (mobile minutes card) seems to be on the fritz, and I need to buy a new one, but I was still able to let the girls know. We hit up Monoprix, then had a two-hour-long picnic and conversation on the lawn under the sunshine at the Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne. Picnic next to a castle while drinking wine and eating baguette and brie with three amazing friends? Yep, just a day in the life. To make it even more perfect, on our way back from the Chateau through Place Bouffay, we heard some music, only to discover a whole marching band full of jovial adults celebrating the district of Bouffay and the city of Nantes. Some were wearing royal-looking regalia, some were in fancy old European cars, some were just goofing off. When they realized the cars couldn’t even get through some of these old streets, they temporarily stopped while they had all the café-goers scoot in their chairs from the terrace seating, and on they went. Then a few minutes later, we saw a donkey further down the alley. Minor holdup: nobody realized that the donkey’s cart carrying two costumed girls wouldn’t fit with the little posts that were up for pedestrians. The girls climbed out, the policeman helped them lift the donkey cart over the posts, and the show went on. Logistics? Advertising? Of course not. Have an impromptu parade celebrating your quartier because you love it, and if something happens, whatever. It gets fixed. It bothers no one. That is truly la vie française.
We picnicked where that person is laying in the far background, almost behind the tower.
Maddy, Clare, and Lauren enjoying our delicious pique-nique in front of the château!
Start of the parade
The band that was playing
This man stopped playing so he could strike a pose for me. So cute.
Old European car that everyone had to clear out of the way for
Look closely, and that man in the cap is the gendarme (police officer) who navigated the donkey cart. Don't worry, here the cops are on top of it all...
Crisis averted, and the parade goes on!
We then did a little shopping at H&M and some other stores, only to realize we were so tired from walking all over town, so we headed back to Maddy’s to see her homestay, as her parents were gone to a wedding for the day (and her siblings are all grown up). After sufficient lounging around, we went back into town around 8pm to have dinner at Place Bouffay, where we had those incredible pizzas. We ran into lots of other IES people along the way, but didn’t want to hang out in groups of 10 or more people, so we continued along to meet Lauren’s host brother, who spent two weeks at International School in Bellevue last February and loves the US. Go figure! He sat outside at a bar with us and we chatted for an hour, before he left with his friends and I took the 11:30 bus back home. (Saturday night buses only run once an hour, so it’s important not to miss it.) After such a LONG day, I was so ready to pass out!
SUNDAY
I woke up at 8:30 (Mom, France is the cure for me sleeping in too much, btw) and after breakfast at 10:30 and a quick shower, all 8 people in my family were piled into the minivan for a trip to the beach by 11am, and we took an hour-long drive to l’île de Noirmoutier. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noirmoutier-en-l%27Île) It was absolutely beautiful. When we arrived, there was absolutely no one on the beach except for us. While it was a little chilly and pretty windy, it was warm enough to sunbathe, but not enough to be in the shade or the cold water (for me at least—some people did!) After getting over how pale I am compared to people who spend a month in the south of France every summer and don’t put on sunscreen because they don’t need to (!!) I laid out and napped/half-listened to my four little host siblings play with each other in the sand. After a picnic lunch of grapes, ham and cheese sandwiches, chips, and yogurt, I played with the two boys (ages 9 and 10) with whatever that beach game is called that just has regular ping-pong-like racquets and a kind of light ball and we hit it around for a good 45 minutes or so, playing various games. As this past week has been mainly spent playing dress-up with my high heels and dresses and looking at my makeup with the 4 and 7 year olds, it was nice to hang out with the boys for a while! All of the young kids and I buried each other in sand and flew a kite they brought because the wind was perfect for it. After some ice cream and a walk through the forest and onto the pier to watch some fishermen, we headed into town to poke around—there was a village-wide rummage sale of sorts that was just finishing up, and it was a rather cute and centuries-old downtown. The most interesting part of the trip was the drive home; because it was low tide, we got to drive back across what would be the ocean floor at high tide—they decided to build a road across the bottom that would be open sometimes instead of building another bridge that would be open all the time, so it’s pretty cool to drive across basically a tidepool-y desert. There were a ton of people that just parked off the side of the road (pulling to the side/onto the sidewalk if applicable and putting your flashers on is equivalent to parking your car here, by the way) and lots of people were clamming (I assume) or shellfish fishing of some sort. L’île de Noirmoutier is also known for its miles of salt flats that were all along the roads on the island. I wish I had bought some!
(Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of this!)
MONDAY
The start of real classes; I had Advanced French Topics today, which should be good, and Art History, which was a little boring this morning (especially since our professor didn’t realize the clock was off and went for 25 minutes too long) but should be good since we will be going on 5 or 6 museum field trips, so it’s not all classroom discussion.
I also found out that the pharmacologie class at the university is the same time as Advanced French Topics at IES, which REALLY bums me out. I don’t really want to take any other Biology class because everything else is more or less what I already studied (lower-division general stuff). So I can choose to drop French (as my level is facultatif—optional) and take another class and not get credit for my French minor/major and take something I think sounds amazing that wouldn’t count for my Biology major anyway, but would be a good experience, or stick things out. It's not a question of difficulty, but of finagling the course credits/SCU requirements along with what I'm actually passionate about. I have to say, I found it awfully comforting to have Biology to work on while I'm here, to my surprise! As for my plan of action, I’ll have to sleep on that…
