Before I get too deep into my French excursions, I must say that God has sent me special gifts twice this week (in addition to the million he sends me every other day). Earlier this week I was upset and emotional (shocking right?) and was having a hard time concentrating and getting out of my own head. I needed to kill some time so I decided to go to the library…not somewhere I normally venture here. I sat down and spread out my homework and a little old man sat across the table from me. I didn’t really pay attention but just looked down at my homework and suddenly felt this sense of calm (again…not something I normally feel when looking at my work). I sped through the work and then took a moment just to realize it was the first moment I had felt at peace in over 24 hours. I started packing my bag and finally took a good look at the man sitting across the table from me…he was a French priest. Quietly filling out his crossword puzzle he had chosen to sit at my table even though there were plenty of seats elsewhere. I know God sent him to my table to remind me that things always work out and that I need to relax and put everything in God’s hands.
Today I received a very different gift. After taking a “shortcut” to mass, I sat down in a pew and soon after an older couple came in with a young son and sat in front of me. This young boy had Down Syndrome but was just a beautiful child who was enjoying the adventure of being in church. He had trouble sitting still, but his father was so patient and gentle with him that it was just a beautiful reminder of how many good people are on this Earth and how God sends us gifts in the most unexpected packages.
Okay, now that I have completely gone off my usual track, let’s get back to French adventures:
This weekend I chose not to partake in the trips leaving the country and instead chose to spend a weekend in beautiful Angers. I started Friday with watching Up and Jersey Shore…I just needed some America time haha. After class, Micahlyn and I made the trek to Super-Geant which is the French equivalent of a super WalMart. This seemingly simple place is so rare in France where people shop at tiny marchés and we had fun wandering through the aisles (where we found peanut butter!!). After gathering enough food to make two feasts, we realized we now had to bike all this back to my house where we could prepare dinner. Other than the sheer amount of things we had to carry, the greatest problem was that we had to bike over a bridge…this was particularly difficult for Micahlyn who had three baguettes in her basket which were creating quite a blind spot.
But alas we made it home and made brushetta, garlic bread, an eggplant-tomato tarte, salad, and an apple pie for the ND kids who stuck around Angers.
The next morning we ventured to the market, which was massive! We wandered through stands of jewelry, scarves, clothes, produce, live chickens, and furniture, but we settled on some pretty basic things for our purchases (I didn’t think Chantal would appreciate me keeping a live chicken in the house).
Shortly after, Micahlyn and I took off for a bike ride. It was so nice to leave Angers and bike through small French towns, farms with sheep, and cross beautiful bridges over the many rivers in the region. We could not have asked for a more beautiful day. We finished the evening by preparing a Mexican meal and enjoying some time with the other ND students.
I owe you a post from last weekend too about my castle-tours. So here it is…stop now if you’re already bored.
CIDEF was so kind to let us sleep in on Saturday…we only had to be at the Catho at 7:45 to begin our tour. As we had done the previous week, we all assumed we could sleep on the three hour trip to the first chateau..wrong. We had a microphone-happy tour guide who had some strange fascination with rocks and useless facts who decided 8 a.m. was the perfect time to be peppy. Not okay.
We arrived at Azay de Rideau while it was raining and sped through the castle before going on a hunt for coffee.
After a successful feat, we got back on the bus and headed to chateau number two: Chenonceau. Chenonceau is where it got interesting. Number one, Chenonceau is built over a river, so the most classic shot of the castle is the arches and their reflections (see below). 
A few random facts:
-Chenonceau is one of the few privately owned large castles…meaning I aim to buy it from the current owner. The people who currently own it invented having a chocolate bar that breaks into smaller pieces (like how Hershey bars have 16 pieces or whatever..)…so if anyone can do better than that I would love to marry you. Thanks.
-When Louis XIV visited Chenonceau he brought a massive painting of himself and hung it in the castle…think he could have found a smaller frame?
-Chenonceau was used as a hospital in WWI. In WWII, the front door of the castle was in the Nazi-occupied zone while the southern door was in the Free Zone. The castle was used as a way to get people to freedom.
-Louise de Lorraine painted her bedroom purple and black and painted tears all over the ceiling after her husband, King Henry III was assasinated. She retreated to the castle with a group of nuns so she could mourn. Her room is called the room of tears and is one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been.
It is also known for its gardens…but alas it is February in France so the gardens were not abloom. They were still very pretty and I hope to return once I marry a wealthy American (...this is Chantal’s life goal for me. So glad we’re on the same page).
So Chenonceau was my favorite. But we still had one more to see. After running through the town to try to find lunch..we settled on a croquet monsieur—definitely the worst thing I’ve eaten since being in France. Then we got back on the bus and headed to Chambord.
I’m relatively sure Chambord is a joke. It is so insanely massive that it is not at all practical. You cannot heat a building that large. It has 400 rooms, and 365 fireplaces (which explains the 300+ chimneys you can see from outside), and is just all around ridiculous. It was meant to be a hunting lodge (I’m pretty sure you could hunt IN the lodge), but the owners ran out of money so it’s not really complete.
What they did manage to pay for was a staircase designed by DaVinci. This staircase is a double helix (like DNA), but when you’re on one staircase, you can’t see the other one. It is super strange and I had to walk up and down the staircases so many times to understand what was going on. It was absolutely fascinating though.
After we concluded our LONG day of Chateaux, we got back on board the bus where we looked forward to resting for three hours. Wrong again. The Asian students and our bus driver decided we should have a sing-along. Really? We initially refused to participate, being the sassy Americans we are, but once they started whining in Asian tongues we could not understand, we sang the Notre Dame Victory March so they would leave us alone. After one song, they stopped asking us to participate so it was a great success and a very ND moment for all of us.
So that’s the last two weeks of my life in less than 1500 words. Congrats for following along folks and I will try to post less lengthy insight from here on out. Ciao for now.
there are a few things i love about this post...
ReplyDelete1. pictures with people in them
2. "tarcasm" manifestation in almost every blog sentence
3. your two beginning paragraphs just made me smile
4. the mention of Jersey Shore
5. the comparison of a staircase to DNA
5. a bar made out of chocolate
miss you, love you,
jers.
first of all you have two number 5s. doubt that was intentional jenn. second chocolate=gross. #4 is just abominable.
ReplyDeletecriticizing jenn aside i thoroughly enjoyed this post. we need to skype sometime tara (as improbable as that sounds with both of our schedule it needs to happen)
that is all for now