Bonjour tout le monde! I have officially been in France for one week. At this time last week we were beginning our first French meal with Alain and Chantal (mes parents ici). Now, I am fully French-ified and am adjusting to la culture francaise. Proof:
1) I am remembering not to smile at strangers on the streets.
2) I am speaking quieter and become offended when people are loud.
3) I wear a lot of black.
4) I have stopped shaving (jokes...maybe).
5) My diet is now 85% carbs, 10% ham and 5% other (2% is probably Nutella).
Anyway, with our lack of class, life has been rather glorious. Some of the days have blurred together so let me summarize:
Thursday: I went to see "the King's Speech." Not my most French experience but it was an incredible film. We all laughed really hard, but the French ladies around us did not...we don't know if they didn't understand the jokes or if we're just obnoxious. But anyway, afterwards, we went to a Tapas Bar.
This was fun because we didn't know what anything was so we ordered rather random things. It turned out to be a pretty American meal with chicken fingers and tater-tot like items and salad and a casserole of sorts, and zucchini parmesean. So we basically had a purely non-French day.
On Friday, we had lunch at school with PMcD (the director from ND in Angers). This experience was not fabulous but it manageable. Today it was much worse in the cafeterial; our only options were plain noodles and a bacon wrapped hotdog. Oh why did we ever complain about South Dining Hall?? Then we went to the train station to purchase our 12/25 cards which are student discount tickets. After that extravaganza we went grocery shopping. In the later half of this week, my three meals a week plan ran out...wahwah. Alors, I bought 2 apples, 4 clementines, a baguette, yogurt, nutella, almonds and cookies. I have since added a cucumber (which turned out to be a zucchini) and some jam to my groceries. I'm pretty sure this will last me until Saturday when we leave for Paris (!!)...but I'm getting ahead of myself. So train ticket: check. Groceries: check. Then we had a girls' night at a pizza parlor...basically Jeff just didn't come. Voila, instant girls' night. But we had pretty decent pizza for being in France so that was a fun discovery.
Saturday, we went on our first trip! We took a 9:20 train to Nantes (don't worry Nin, we adequately validated our tickets before boarding) and arrived expecting great things from the capital of "les Pays de la Loire." After a quick walk down Rue President Kennedy (this is pretty common...we don't know why), we arrived at the Chateau des ducs de Bretagne (see below).
All I can say is WOW. But I will say more. The Chateau is even more stunning in person. En plus, you can walk around the perimeter on top of the walls of the palace. Even MORE, there is a 34 room museum within the castle explaining the history of Nantes. We spent hours wandering through the rooms. For a brief history lesson:
-Nantes is an important port city and has been since the Romans. During the Roman empire it was invaded by everyone and their mother.
-Because of its location on the river, Nantes was one of the biggest cities in the slave trade in France so they have a long and complicated history with slavery.
-Nantes had pirates.
-Nantes was invaded by the Nazis and all of the Jews from Nantes were sent to Angers before they were sent to Auschwitz.
-Nantes now has a mechanical elephant (see below) that you can ride to get a tour of l'ile de Nantes.
After the chateau, we moved onto the Cathedrale des Saints Peter et Paul.
Again, stunning. But churches here are not heated so we could not stay too long. We spent the rest of the day eating sandwiches (which ALWAYS have ham on them), drinking espresso, and being generally fabulous. We made it home on the train and have now successfully completed our first trip. Hooray!
The only thing of note I did on Sunday was attend my first French mass which was interesting. The first part of the mass moved very quickly, but then I heard the longest homily of all times. I got lost somewhere after 10 minutes or so and had a hard time coming back in. Remember when I mentioned churches aren’t heated??? I am un peu surprised that I still have functioning toes after that mass. Most of the songs are in Latin in French mass and I don’t think the responses and such are the same as they are in America, but I need to do further research. I will return because I like mass and will hopefully understand soon enough, but I do have somewhere around six cathedrals to choose from.
Alors, that was my weekend. I will update you on the less exciting part of my life (aka class) before I depart for Paris this weekend! Until then, a bientot mes cheres! Je vous aime.
whaaaa. whaaaa. so much ham and cold toes. sounds awful
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