La semaine blanche, plus rice krispie treats with creme anglaise

'Ello all,

Somehow I'm more tired today than I was yesterday, despite the fact that I slept an extra hour and a half today (class starts at nine on Mondays, and now that Camille's home she can take me later. Thank you, Camille). I don't make any sense, much less to myself. Yes. So last week after the exams, up until today:

Tuesday:

The longest day of the week, finishing at four. But nothing truly remarkable happened, as far as I can remember.

Wednesday:

In History we had a test over World War One which I think I utterly failed-- I spent too much time agonizing over how to answer the first question that I neglected the other two and had to rush, even though I knew the answer to those ones and could have done them better and more thoroughly. And language barriers make trying to answer a short essay in fifteen minutes eleven times more difficult. I'm not impressed with myself. But we'll see.

After school, I met up with Fanny and we went to her language school, which has an impressive video library, and watched 'Les Amants de Pont Neuf' since it was too cold to walk around town. After that, I went home and did homework, and that was it.

Thursday:

I got out at three since Math was pushed up an hour and English was put at the beginning of the day instead of PE due to the schedule changes for the Bacs blancs, which was nice. I met up with Fanny again and we went back to my house to watch 'Some Like it Hot.' She stayed for dinner (a vegetable quiche), and afterwards we played a card game called 'Nain Jaune.' It was a nice day, overall.

Friday:

There was some brief confusion in the afternoon about when Math was-- since no one in our class had an elective between one and two, they decided to move the math class up two hours so we could go home early, which was nice but kind of hard to get the message to everyone, so Theater (the class just before between 12 and 1) got interrupted several times by people coming to say, "so, you know Math's two hours early today..." Unfortunately, I had to wait around an hour for my bus since there aren't any that run to Mettray until three in the afternoon, but I managed to amuse myself reading the newspaper in the library.

In the evening, we went to a party at a friend of Catherine's celebrating the end of their home renovations, which was fun. I managed to sell a few of my mysterious tickets (four down, sixteen to go!). And one of the parents of one of Lea's friends kept trying to practice his English with me, harder and harder the more wine he'd had (and I think they went through about four bottles that night, among nine people). It was an interesting party. We got home past midnight and tried to sleep so that we could get up early the next day for Fontainebleau. 

Saturday:

We left slightly later than we meant to, but managed to make it in time for a late lunch of roast chicken at Bois-le-Roi, where a lot of Catherine's family lives. I was introduced to one of her sisters, Sylvie, several cousins, her parents, and a few of her nieces and nephews. In the afternoon, we paid a brief visit to the chateau at Fontainebleau. We didn't actually go in (we didn't have long to stay before the sun set; lunch lasted a long time, since they hadn't seen each other for a while), but we did walk around some of the gardens (of which there are many). I'll put up the pictures sometime soon.

Catherine stayed at her parents' house, while Lea and I stayed at her brother Eric's house just a few blocks away. Eric's son has a ferret named Coquinne (rascal, more or less), and I spent a good deal of my time at their house either playing with her or begging to play with her. I didn't realise how serious my ferret withdrawal was until I saw her. They also had two amazingly sweet dogs named Arie and Zoe who snored the entire night and made it difficult sometimes to fall back asleep. We had raclette, which is always welcome, and that was the end of the day. 

Sunday:

Not a whole lot. The morning Arlette (Eric's wife), Lea and I took a nice walk with the dogs through the forest close by, which was nice. There were some boulders in the forest that we climbed up and that was fun.  After that, Catherine picked us up and we went back over for lunch with Sylvie and her parents, which was raclette again. I made Rice Krispie Treats for dessert and had to bite my tongue to keep myself from laughing when they put creme anglaise on top (so of course, I had to try it and it's actually quite good). What I found funniest, however, was that the grandmother loved them-- she had seconds, and quite a big piece-- but the little kids refused to touch them. Just such a complete reversal from the norm...

We played Uno for a while in the afternoon, had coffee and cake, and then we went back. On the way home I tried to catch up on my reading for French, and didn't quite succeed but got close. Camille met us at home with quiche (which was good, despite the fact she kept insisting that she'd ruined it) and we stayed up for a while talking politics and water conservation. 

Monday:

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, Camille was kind enough to drive me to school today, so I got to sleep in and thus negate for a while the effects of the daylight savings time change, which was nice. The morning was fairly quiet; we started the Great Depression in History. I knew all the answers when he asked about the US, but the French end is new to me (I'm sketchy on the Great Depression in Europe in general, to be honest), so it'll be interesting. I really love learning history from the European perspective, just for the change in focus. It'll be disappointing going back to Geography.

In English I made myself an example of the English-speakers who mispronounce the difference between 'ou' and 'u' in French. The activity was to make lists of things that are round in English for the purposes of learning vocabulary, so obviously mine was in French, and I had to read it out at the end for the rest of the class. The word I messed up was 'roue,' (wheel), which, when I pronounced it, sounded like 'rue' (street). I get nervous when I'm put on the spot and my accent is terrible when I get nervous. So I wasn't terribly happy, but now at least I'll always get it right.

After dinner Camille showed me some clips of French comedy on Youtube, which I loved even if I had to stop it sometimes and ask her to explain why she was laughing so hard. Florence Foresti was my favorite so far. I don't know if there's any translations of her routines available (or whether that would even work, since she does a fair amount of wordplay like any comedian), but she was fabulous.

Anyway, this week not too much on the agenda, but still more interesting than last week. Opera on Wednesday and the theater on Thursday, at least. And you never know what things just happen. So, until next week (Sunday, this time, I think), and ciao! 

Another week

Another week here and gone without remark. Apologies for the delay, but look on the bright side: now you don't have to spend a week in suspense wondering how I did on the Bacs blancs, since I took them today. You just have to get to the end of this post. I'm considering making Monday update day, since it seems like I'm always doing something on Sunday that leaves me too exhausted to write at the end. We'll see. For next week it definitely will be Monday since I'm going to be getting back late on Sunday (more on this later), but for the future...play it by ear, I guess.

I have to say, the week wasn't terribly exciting. But in any case, je me lance:

Tuesday: 

In Theater we had a panel of inspectors come, and for some reason it gave me nerves despite the fact that they weren't judging us, but the teachers. In any case, it was a pretty fun class: we did a lot of little exercises in place of a long rehearsal, which was a nice change of pace. During my favorite, you had to come on stage, take seven steps, make some sort of confession, do an action to go along with this confession, and walk off stage again. It's hard to explain, but it was really quite funny watching it. Evidently we made the teachers look good, because we heard in class on Friday that the inspectors had given them a glowing review. So it was a nice day. And we got out an hour early (again on account of the inspection).

Wednesday:

Nothing memorable. I took a run for the first time since January (a real run-- PE doesn't count) out to the house that could be a chateau. I asked Catherine and she didn't know, but she thinks it's very possible since there are a lot of private chateaux in the region. 

Thursday:

No school because the teachers, students, and buses were all on strike. My bus line was still going, though, so in the afternoon I went into town, got myself lost, and then got myself un-lost just in time to catch my bus home. It was fun. Lea had a bunch of friends over and wanted to make them a cake, which translated into I made them a cake, because Lea doesn't know how to cook and six eleven-year-old girls in the kitchen at once means into a lot of sugar going in every direction, which ends all over the floor. But I didn't mind; I like baking. And I got a piece of my creation, so all the better. The cake turned out okay even though I didn't beat the egg whites correctly. I'm bringing the recipe home; it's better by a factor of a thousand than the one I use, and slightly easier (except for the egg whites. You have to beat them until they're foam, basically, which takes a while).

Friday:

Not much that was memorable. In English we're talking about the history of Northern Ireland, which I was always kind of fuzzy on, so I've been learning something, too. In the evening, Catherine called to arrange for me to get a ride out to a reunion with other AFS students in Orleans. And that was it. 

Saturday:

I got up late after staying up until one in the morning on Facebook chat, packed, read for a while, and then Catherine picked me up to go to the train station. I didn't see any of the AFSers when we got there, so I boarded the train by myself and read more or less the entire way there (about an hour and a half). When I got off at Orleans I had about ten minutes of panic because I didn't see anybody from AFS there either, but once everyone had cleared out of the station, one of the AFSers saw me looking extremely lost and asked me if I was Angela. Greatly relieved, I said yes and joined the group.

We took a tramcar most of the way to where we were staying and walked the rest. From what I could tell it was a boarding school of some kind; there were classrooms and a cafeteria in one building and dorms in the other. After we left our things in the rooms, we did a couple of group activities. There was a mix of students from abroad studying in France and French students preparing to go abroad, and the different groups did different things. Our first activity was to name all the aspects of French culture we'd discovered so far on our stay. None of us were quite sure how to answer such a broad question, so we said mostly things like cheese and baguettes and strikes. The volunteers weren't impressed.

Next, we watched while the French students did another activity. One of the volunteers read a story to one of the students, who had to memorize it and then repeat it to the next student who came into the room. The original version was two pages and extremely bizarre (about a Miss Sausage competition in Montrose, Minnesota and one girl who sabotages/assassinates the rest of the contestants in various ways); by the time it had gone through all fifteen students, it was one sentence and still pretty bizarre ("En fait, il s'agit d'une saucisse qui se casse quelque chose sur la tete" = okay, so it's about a sausage that breaks something over its head). The point was to be careful what you say to people about your experience abroad, because things distort and exaggerate themselves in the retelling. But much more amusingly demonstrated.

I also finally met my AFS liaison in Tours. Her name is Aziliz and she studied in the US a few years back (in Minnesota in a little town called Arly or something like that-- have you heard of it, Dad? She hadn't heard of Wasica). She was really nice; we talked for a while about French cinema. 

After dinner, we did another activity where all the French students were paired up with the exchange students. The French students were given a piece of paper with a geometric design on it and we had to re-draw it based on their description. The catch was that we were seated back-to-back and we weren't allowed to ask any questions or for them to repeat themselves if we didn't understand. My design turned out wrong, but I was kind of close, if I flatter myself. It was hard to hear with everyone talking at once. There was a brief break, and then we did another activity. It was a fake ceremony of a kind, difficult to describe, all done in complete silence, and at the end, we had to do an analysis of the imaginary culture. At first, it was assumed that women were inferior in this culture (all the girls were seated on the ground, and the boys were in chairs, and when water and bread were passed around, they were placed directly into the boys' mouths whereas the girls served themselves), but after the volunteers informed us that the earth was considered sacred in this culture, it turned out that women were actually the superior ones, since they were allowed to touch the ground. A lesson in making assumptions about different cultures. Interesting enough, if it did go on a bit too long. I ended up going to bed at around one in the morning and I was one of the first ones to go to bed. And we got up at seven the next morning. Hence why I was too tired to write Sunday evening.

Sunday:

We did a few more activities in the morning, still along the theme of cultural misunderstanding, and had a big lunch with all the pastries at the end that the French students had made. During the afternoon the students hung out and played various games while the parents talked and had their own meeting. Rachel (the other American student in Centre) and I talked with a French student headed to the US next year, and then a student from Brazil joined the conversation and we ended up trading ways to say 'shut up' in various languages... in general, just fun and silly things like that. It was really nice to meet everyone like this and trade experiences. I'm looking forward to the next one. 

Monday:

The day started out really foggy and beautiful, but it didn't do much to lift my spirits. It was interesting to think, though, that this time a month ago, I was getting up in the dark, and it gave me something to be thankful for.

We started out the day with a four-hour French exam. Yes, four hour French exam, you read that right. And I thought the ACT's were miserable... It was entirely analysis of poetry, and luckily the poems were fairly recent and in language that was easy to follow, so I didn't have any trouble with the comprehension. What was frustrating was that it took me much longer to write my analyses than in English, and my observations were in much simpler and childish-sounding language, which was embarrassing. Usually writing in French is easier for me than speaking because I have more time to think, but the fact that I was writing longhand and in pen made it difficult for me to go back and correct my mistakes. That and the fact that I thought I had four different things to write, where in reality I only had two. There were two parts to the exam, one initial question and then three different analysis options. Evidently on the second portion, we had the choice of which one we wanted to write, but this wasn't clear to me: this was my first test in that class, and it wasn't marked on the paper that you were supposed to choose one (I checked afterwards to be sure. Four times). I actually wouldn't have known that I only needed to do one until after the test, when Laurene asked me which option I'd done. And I said, "You could choose?" So that was rather annoying, because I'd rushed a bit and done all three rather superficially, whereas I could have done one much better and more in-depth. But oh well.

After lunch, we had an hour and a half science exam, combined Biology and Physics, over the eye and vision. This was easier; I understood all the questions and knew exactly how to answer about 75% of the time, knew how to answer but wasn't sure how to phrase it about 15% of the time, and had no idea for the rest. The trouble was that I hadn't understood the directions, and ended up having to rewrite the test entirely on different sheets of paper when I was only halfway done with the physics and then had to rush through the end on that, so I'm not thrilled with how that went either, but it seems like I had an easier time than most of the French students from how they said it went for them afterwards. Still, by the end I was rather frazzled, so I bought myself a Nutella crepe at the stand by school while I was waiting for my bus, and after that I felt much happier. The fact that I didn't have to do the math exam improved my mood, too (it was over material from the beginning of the year that I wasn't there for, so there was no way I could have taken it). At home, I translated a letter for one of Catherine's friends and went over later to deliver it. She (the friend) was quite nice and told me all about her travels around the States. She loves Miami. She really, really loves Miami. She would be a brilliant sales agent for Miami, I think. And then I came home and helped Lea with her English homework. Much calmer evening. Very pleasant.

The week seems calm, nothing much on the radar. I get out every day at four because of the way the schedule was rearranged to fit in the exams, so that's nice. On Saturday we're headed up to visit Fontainebleu (a chateau), which I'm looking forward to. We'll be spending the night and all of Sunday, and I don't expect to get back until later, so the update will be next Monday (as I said earlier). So have a good week, everyone, and until the next!

First week back from les vacances

Another week, another day late. But look on the bright side-- this way, you get to hear about one extra day for every day the blog is late. Not that a whole lot happened today. Anyway:

Monday:

A very "fun" day: in French, we started work on Le Rouge et le Noir, which, as I found out in the first five minutes, we were supposed to have finished during the break. I hadn't understood that: when she said, "we'll pick up with Le Rouge et le Noir after the break," I thought that meant that we would start it then. So this has been interesting, trying to catch up on the reading amidst the analysis of the text. Luckily, we're still doing at least every other class analysing poetry since it's the subject of the Bacs blancs (the practice for the end-of-year exams), so I'm not completely lost. The reading is going very slowly, however. I started Wednesday and I'm on chapter nine. Roughly one-seventh of the book. Not exactly what you'd call 'swimmingly,' but for my second language and for such a difficult text I'm trying to take it as a victory rather than a failure. 

...I also quit Italian. There's no meaningful way I can participate in the course when the rest of the class is learning the subjunctive and I don't even know the indicative.

That's about it for Monday. 

Tuesday:

The last rehearsal before Portes Ouvertes, which was Saturday (more in a bit). After practicing my bit opening the show, there was general agreement that it would be great when I opened the show because I have such a cute accent. Compliment? I still haven't decided. And then at the end of class, Julie happened to ask me how I was getting to the theater that evening. Theater? I asked. 

"Yes, we're going to see a play. You didn't know about it?"

But luckily there was another student who couldn't attend, so I used her ticket. It was a monologue by Wallace Shawn called 'Fièvre' (original title/translation: The Fever), which was interesting in that I think I almost could have written it, a couple of months ago. Not in terms of style, of course, but in terms of subject. It was interesting; it either gives you a lot to think about, a lot to feel guilty about, or is insufferably annoying for trying to make you do so, depending on how you want to approach it. You can read it online if you search the title/author on Google; I did because I was curious how the French translation differed from the original. But it works better listening to it being performed. Very impressive: one actress speaking for an hour and a half without pause, barely moving from one spot on the stage. She wrung her hands a bit, and that was more or less it for movement.

Strange thing: I happened to see Fanny at the theater. She was there with her host family, her dad who's currently in Paris improving his French, and one of her dad's friends. Evidently the latter had helped with the translation of the piece, so she was able to get them all tickets. It was just such a strange coincidence to see her there.  I guess it's a stranger coincidence that she's in France, in the same city and at the same time as I am, but even still, what are the chances of running into her like that? Small world. 

Wednesday:

Honestly, not a whole lot. I embarrassed myself in History by not knowing who the commanding general of the US army was during WWI, but I made up for it by being able to explain isolationism and the Monroe Doctrine. So, not entirely bad. And I failed to mention this in the Monday paragraph-- I got back my first test in French, and the grade was 13. The French system runs from 0-20. The highest grade in my class was a 17, and the lowest was a 10. One of the English teachers later told me that on the French system, you will only rarely see grades higher than 17, and anything from 13 up translates more or less to an A on the US system. So not bad, for the first try. I'm pretty pleased with myself.  

Thursday:

The schedule changed to include an extra hour of math every week, which I was thrilled about, as you can imagine. And my brain completely broke during Spanish. The class had gotten back projects that they'd handed in before my arrival, and I was supposed to be helping one of my friends correct hers. Her problem was that she had translated the French too literally, so the expressions she used didn't make any sense in Spanish. The trouble was, I didn't know some of the expressions she was using, even when she told me in French what she was trying to say. So, burnt out from the three-way translation, the language-processing center decided to mutiny and I ended up saying, in English, "So, I think I know what you did wrong," before I caught myself. This bodes ill.

Friday:

After school, I met Fanny in town in order to spend the night at her house. We went more or less straight to her house after dawdling a few minutes in a fabulous REI-like store in order to waste time before the bus arrived. Her host mother Catherine had another guest over who brought a bottle of ratafia with her, which I think is now my favorite alcoholic drink. Unfortunately, according to her, it's not something you can buy-- you have to know someone who knows how to make it, so chances are I'll probably never see it again. It's made from champagne, and it's sweet in a very pleasant way, not overpowering at all. It's also quite strong, but the taste isn't... I'll clearly need better vocabulary if I ever hope to be a sommelier. There was also leek tart as a main course, and Fanny's host brother made cigarillo cookies for dessert (the tubular kind you stick in ice cream). 

Catherine has a cat named Kalinka, who is the polar opposite of my cat in temperament. She fell asleep on my bed and stayed there almost the entire night. It made me miss Roxie a bit (because while Roxie is a canine, she would actually do that. Puddy shuns my bed when I'm sleeping in it. In the afternoons while I'm at school, evidently, it's acceptable). 

Saturday:

In the morning, Fanny and I took a walk around the neighborhood, which is very pretty and will be even more so in a few weeks after all the plants have come fully into flower. After that, I caught the bus to get to Vaucanson for Portes Ouvertes, where I completely screwed up my lines during the extremely abbreviated rehearsal, but managed to deliver them correctly for the actual performance. Evidently I was understandable, and I didn't stumble over the pronunciation, so I'm overall happy with how I did. The scenes themselves went really well, especially considering we had to replace one of the actors at the last second. Overall, a sucessful afternoon.

I went home for about an hour and then left again in order to make it to Fanny's house again in time to go to a concert. Her host father is a professional flutist, and he got us free tickets to a concert his orchestra was giving that evening. It was a beautiful performance: they did pieces by Mendelssohn, Chopin and Magnard. I hadn't been to an orchestra accompanied by a piano before; the effect is beautiful. I need better musical vocabulary too, evidently.

We got back to the house around ten and had dinner, and by the time that was finished, it was nearly midnight, so I ended up spending the night there. Fanny and I stayed up talking until two in the morning, and Kalinka slept on my bed again.

Sunday:

Catherine picked me up at ten from Fanny's house, and we went home briefly so that I could shower and change before we went out to Florian and Cristelle's for lunch. It was nice to finally meet them, after hearing so much about them, as well as their daughter Thaïs, who is impeccably behaved for being two years old. Their house is in deep wine-and-chateau country and the area around is simply gorgeous. We stayed out for the afternoon working in their garden and came home after sunset. When we got in, Catherine and Léa went to McDonald's, since Catherine didn't really feel like cooking, and I made myself sautéed potatoes and put curry powder on top, just because. She also offered me sardines since she had some in the house, so I tasted those for the first time, and they're actually quite good. I went to bed early since I hadn't slept much the night before and, on top of that, I had school today; thus I forgot to update the blog. 

Monday:

Not a whole lot. We watched  a presentation in the morning by Action contre la faim; evidently they're holding an event just before Easter break in order to raise money to fight hunger in Afghanistan. It's a pledge run, so now I need to find a sponsor...as well as sell tickets to raise money for the trip to London in May. The trouble is that not only do I not have any idea who I should try to sell them to (they suggested grandparents if we were stuck for ideas, but unfortunately my grandparents are on another continent), I don't have any idea what the tickets are for. So at the moment, I'd be trying to pawn off numbered slips of paper at two euros apiece. I'll ask the theater teacher tomorrow. 

And in the afternoon during the two hours of free time between English and Theater, I took crazy pictures with Rachel, Lucille, and Coralie, which are probably going to end up on Facebook in the near future, but oh well. I was also forced to sing the first few lines of 'Angie,' because I was the only one that knew the lyrics (or the band that originally played it), as well as read the first paragraph of 'Hard Times' (I had to translate the word 'fact'). It was an interesting afternoon. 

And that's about it for the week. 'Til the next!

That was nice of me...

So, I uploaded the pictures yesterday to Photobucket like I promised...I just forgot to write a note telling you all so. Sorry about that.

Link, as always:

http://s711.photobucket.com/albums/ww120/bleumarten/

I swear I'll put it on the sidebar at some point. But tonight I'm going to the theater rather unexpectedly, so it'll have to wait. 

Ciao!

Les vacances: week two

So, I'm back and well and I have school tomorrow. Fun! Photos will be coming tomorrow, since my poor camera needs to charge before I can upload them onto my computer. But they are coming this time, I promise. The events of the week, quickly recounted:

Monday:

Honestly, not a whole lot. I went to the doctor and evidently I had some sort of minor infection, bronchitis of some kind...nothing serious. He prescribed some antibiotics and something for the cough and sent me on my way. And that was about it for the day.

Tuesday:

I took a long walk in the morning before the five-hour train ride and found a gorgeous old house that looked quite a bit like a chateau...and when I turned around, I realised that it could very well be a chateau, since this is the region for it. I still need to ask Catherine about it. When I have the answer, I'll let you know. The train ride was nothing spectacular; I started by reading and ended up playing round after round of Memory with Lea so that she wouldn't get too bored (she didn't have books or anything for the train). We found Camille almost immediately and walked for a while around Toulouse's plaza (evidently it's quite common for the towns in the south of France to have plazas like Spanish cities). From there it was another hour and a half's drive to Foix, where Camille is studying and thus has her apartment. We got in at around ten thirty/eleven and went to bed more or less immediately. 

Wednesday:

We got up early this morning in order to go skiing at Ax-les-Thermes. I loved Camille's breakfasts: she made bowls of hot chocolate and then dipped Nutella-covered slices of brioche and baguette in. Even apart from being sugary and wonderful and chocolate by itself, it makes for a pleasant wake-up in an apartment with fritzy central heating. 

Because her car doesn't do well with snow, we took a train and then a bus to get to Ax-les-Thermes. Normally the train runs direct from Foix to Ax-les-Thermes, but they were doing work on the tracks while I was there, so we took the train to another small town that I've forgotten the name of and then took the bus the rest of the way. All wearing our ski gear, because we're that fabulous. I had to borrow more or less everything because I hadn't anticipated skiing when I packed for France (Tours is in central France, remember, far from the mountains), so I looked very mishmash and thus doubly fabulous.

Camille took Lea on one of the green runs to practice since it was Lea's first time skiing and told me that I could go ahead and ski wherever I wanted for an hour before we met up for lunch. The skiing, I have to say, wasn't brilliant-- there hadn't been new snow for nearly a week, so it was crusty and icy on a lot of the runs. I did find a couple of nice ones going from a lift farther from the entrance but only got to ski them once since I had to leave early to meet Lea and Camille. We did the green run together again and stopped about halfway down for a picnic lunch. After that, we left Lea on the bunny hill to practice some more and Camille and I did some more difficult runs together. By the time we finished, it was beginning to snow quite heavily. I thought we were going to leave, but Lea was so put out by only having done two real runs that we went out for a third...which was a mistake. Everyone was cold, miserable, and it was nearly impossible to see. But in the end we made it to the bottom in one piece, if a bit frozen, and back at the apartment we took hot showers to warm ourselves back up. Happy ending.

Thursday:

We got up early-ish again in order to drive out to Carcassonne, which has one of the better-preserved medieval chateaux of the region (there are two basic types of chateaux, the medieval or "strong" chateaux, which are for defense, and the Renaissance chateaux, which are for showing off how rich you are). Having never seen a chateau like it before, I took pictures like a madwoman, as you'll see tomorrow. We spent the morning and the first part of the afternoon there, touring the battlements in high wind, which was about as fun as it was cold. On the way home, since we got back a bit early, we also went to the Chateau de Foix, where I took more pictures and got even colder. In the evening, we bought warm baguettes and Camille introduced me to the region's cheese and sausage specialties. Delicious as usual. I'll never get tired of French cheese. 

Friday:

This time we could sleep in a little more, since the two things we visited weren't too far away from Foix. We set out first for the Grotte de Niaux, one of several caves in Europe where well-preserved paintings from the Stone Age have been found, dating back over 14,000 years. I've been wanting to see them for ages, ever since reading about them in one of my history classes in middle school (and, okay, I'll admit, after reading Jean Auel's Children of the Earth series). It was truly incredible, seeing them and imagining the people that painted them, and the simple thought that their traces have survived so perfectly, for so long. What was equally as interesting was that in the cavern we visited, there were two paintings of bison, nearly identical and about twenty feet apart on the same wall, that were made a thousand years apart. Given how much has changed in the last thousand years, it was, for lack of a better word, mind-blowing to imagine a culture that changed so little for thousands and thousands of years. It gave me shivers. And it made me wonder. 

After that, we went to the Grotte de Lombrives, evidently the largest cave in Europe. It was impressive in size-- we only saw a small part of it in our hour-long tour. There are tours offered that last seven hours, and even still there remain still huge portions of the cave closed to visitors for reasons of research and preservation. There were some interesting formations (my favorite was a strange little projection close to the ceiling called, "les cuisses de la femme pendue:" the hanged woman's legs. It looked like what the name says, and amazingly realistic for cold stone), but all the same I was slightly underwhelmed after the first cavern. The other trouble was that I had a hard time following what the guide was saying; he had an extremely thick southern accent, which made him difficult to understand. The first guide didn't have much of an accent and she spoke English, so she could translate the words I didn't know, such as "bucatin"-- ibex (don't worry, I only asked her to translate a couple of words; for the rest, I listened to the tour in French like everyone else. What was funny was that Lea and Camille were the only two people on the tour whose native language was French-- there was me, an Australian couple, and then an Austrian man. But the tour was given in French nonetheless).

On the way back from Lombrives, we stopped off at a little bridge dating from the 12th century and I took some more pictures, as you'll see. Later in the evening, we all watched the Enfoirés on TV. The Enfoirés are an annual music special for the benefit of the Restaurants du Cœur, France's system of soup kitchens. Evidently almost every big name in French music was there, and they sang all the French as well as American hits (they even did "I Kissed a Girl," to give you an idea). It was certainly quite the show; the costuming alone was incredible. And for such a good cause, too. 

A good ending to a good day, certainly.

Saturday:

Once again, we got up early in order to drive out to Collioure, a beautiful little town on the Mediterranean. We dipped our feet in the water but not much else; it was frigidly cold. Instead, we walked around the town and saw the painters, the colorful houses, and toured the chateau (a medieval chateau, if you're curious. I took pictures). On the way back to the car, we stumbled upon an ice cream shop/patisserie that sold churros with Nutella-- evidently a Catalonian specialty, according to the lady who made them. Whether or not this is true is irrelevant to the fact that churros and Nutella are a match made in heaven. I'm going to open a shop with just that and perhaps crêpes in the US, and I'll be rich. Who needs college anyway?

On the way back home, we stopped off in Perpignan and tried some more Catalonian pastry (as if we hadn't been sugared up enough already). We split three desserts: a cream dessert called 'Lema', a millefeuilles cake (which I don't think is Catalonian, but it looked good so we got one anyway), and a small cookie/cake thing that reminded me quite a bit of Mexican wedding cookies. Interesting the cultural echoes, how they distort... Anyway, all were delicious, but I think the Lema was my favorite.

Sunday:

Not much. We drove out to Toulouse and walked around the plaza again in the hour we had to kill before the train left, saw one of the more famous churches, and then left. Five hours on the train, reading mostly (Camille bought Lea a magazine, so we only played Memory for the last thirty minutes after she'd finished reading it and started asking me every five minutes what time it was). And now I'm home and writing this. 

That's it, since it's late and I have school tomorrow. I don't see much happening this week, but you never know what surprises are around the bend. Don't expect anything greatly exciting, though.

 'Til tomorrow for the pictures. Ciao!

Les vacances: week one

Apologies for the one-day delay in posting-- when I got back in last night from Paris I was so exhausted that I barely made it through the first course at a party we had last night before excusing myself and going to bed. I'm sick-- Catherine's taking me to the doctor later today since it's been nearly a week and I don't feel much better-- and I'd barely slept the night before; hence the exhaustion. But I slept for a good ten/eleven hours last night (which is more than I've slept at once for a while), so I now have the time and energy for the blog. So, Paris and the days before:

Monday:

I went into town with Susan, Sandrine and a few other Mettrayennes to see Twilight (I know, I was kind of like, "What, Angie's going to see Twilight?" too). However, despite the fact that I didn't really like the movie, it was nice to hang out and go into town-- it got me out of the house, anyway. And the movie had a few unintentionally funny moments-- during a scene that was supposed to be highly romantic, they were playing an Iron and Wine song in the background that is decidedly not a love song. I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. When we came back we went for a walk around the fields together before everyone went home, which was nice. We were originally going to take the dog with us, but Catherine had taken him to work (it was kind of nerve-wracking for a second, though: I came home and the crate was open and empty, so I thought I hadn't shut it properly and he'd escaped...). A pleasant day.

Tuesday:

I spent the morning taking walks with Darwin in order to keep him distracted from eating my feet while I was trying to read or do work on the computer. Later in the afternoon, I met up with one of my friends from the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, Fanny, who happens to be in Tours studying French at the same time as me by some strange twist of fate. We walked around town, saw some of the highlights like the little record store and a chocolate shop that sells sweets in the shape of cell phones and flowers, and I almost but didn't quite get us lost at least twice. She came over for dinner as well, where Darwin tried repeatedly to eat her feet despite the walks he'd had that morning and spending the afternoon playing in the gardens Catherine was working in. We had raclette, which hopefully was good enough to make up for his behavior. All in all, a nice day.

Wednesday:

I woke up with the beginnings of the cough that still hasn't left, and very nearly missed my train to Paris after Darwin decided he really didn't want to come back inside when we let him out to pee. Luckily my car was right next to the stairway from the main part of the station-- I got on and the train left literally one minute later. Sophie met me at the station again, and after picking up Elisabeth, we went to the Rodin Museum. Rodin, if you're not familiar with him, was the sculptor who made the Thinker as well as the Gates of Hell. The museum was quite beautiful-- it had very much the feeling of an old house (which makes sense, since I think that's just what the museum used to be), which made it very intimate and personal at the same time as being extraordinarily beautiful. In the afternoon, we went to the theater to see 'Le Malade Imaginaire.' I could get the general idea of what was going on, but the specifics were difficult for me to follow. The audience would laugh at times and I would have no idea what was supposed to be funny. But there was about an equal number of times that I got the humor, so I guess it all balances out in the end.

For dinner, we had a fondue, but not a fondue with cheese-- we had a pot with hot sunflower oil, and we'd dip pieces of meat and vegetables in to cook. It was very good.

Thursday:

I got up at around eight-thirty and read for about an hour before going out to meet one of my friends from Tours who happened to be in Paris at the same time on the Champs-Elysees. I got there at around ten and sent him a few texts to figure out a place to meet up while I walked around a bit. I ended up doing an entire circuit of the Champs-Elysees as well as a few of the side streets before he messaged me back to say that he'd gotten up late and wouldn't arrive for another half hour. It was cold outside, and I was sick, and in Paris, so what's the logical response?

Go to Starbucks, of course. 

So I wasted a pleasant half hour with a grande chai and a chocolate chip muffin, and took pictures with my crane. 

After another fifteen minutes' worth of telephone tag, Armand and I finally met up and we did another full circuit of the Champs-Elysees and went into a few stores. I found a copy of Good Omens in French but didn't buy it, which I'm regretting. I mentioned the Starbucks stop to Armand and he decided we were going there again since he'd never had Starbucks coffee before. Evidently I got him addicted, because he got a second coffee, a venti, after he'd finished up with the first. We took some more pictures of ourselves drinking coffee and then said goodbye (he had to get ready to leave that evening). 

After Armand left, I walked through the Tuileries (which are pretty in a skeletal sort of way in the winter) to get to the Louvre. The Louvre, which is overwhelmingly huge from the outside, is even more overwhelmingly huge from the inside. I decided to skip the popular stuff and picked a gallery that I thought would be quieter (Ancient Mesopotamia) to look at more thoroughly. I think that was definitely the way to go-- even that collection was simply breathtaking. It brought back memories of ninth and tenth grade history, where we'd learn about how this or that collision of culture or religion brought on these or those changes in art-- things I knew, but had never really seen for myself. And in a room of art from ancient Iran, there was an incredible case of pottery with designs that could have been found on Pueblo pottery in New Mexico. It's incredible how symbols repeat themselves, all across the globe. We really aren't as different as we want to believe we are. 

I finished up Mesopotamia with about another forty-five minutes to spare before closing, so I decided to sprint across the galleries to make it to the North America/Oceania/Africa gallery (even then, I found the combination somewhat strange), just to see what was there. I got there with about twenty minutes to look-- it was a pretty small gallery, though, so I saw everything, even if I didn't get to spend as much time as I would have preferred. There was a sign at the front explaining how this was the Louvre's attempt to elevate "primitive art" to its proper place in the cultural canon. It was clear from the wording that they're not quite there yet (what do we mean with this word, primitive? Are people who can carve gigantic heads from stone and erect them without cranes primitive?).

In any case, I got to take a self portrait with one of the Easter Island heads, so I guess I can't complain. 

When I came home, we made our own sushi for dinner and served it on one of those wooden boats. I took pictures of it with my crane. A lovely arrangement, as well as delicious. 

Friday:

I got up early-ish again to go to the Picasso Museum. My bus stopped inexplicably about halfway there and everyone was ordered off, so I had to walk about thirty extra minutes in order to get there. Added to that, I got slightly lost twice by misleading signs, but it was in the Marais, so it wasn't a terrible place to get lost. Very old and very pretty, and rainbow flags all over the place since it's more or less the Castro of Paris. I felt very welcome. By the time I got to the museum, I could only spend about half an hour there because I'd already made plans with Sophie to meet up for lunch on the Champs-Elysees. It's a fairly small museum, so I sprinted and saw more or less everything, but I know I didn't have the time to appreciate it. Even the glimpse was wonderful, though. I'm not complaining.

I walked back to the Hotel de Ville to take the metro over to meet Sophie and Elisabeth. We went to a little restaurant that was famous for its carpaccio. So of course, I ordered the risotto, because I make that much sense.

After lunch, Elisabeth and I went to the Musee de Cluny, which is a museum of artifacts from the Middle Ages. The most famous piece of the museum's collection are the tapestries of the Lady with the Unicorn-- if you do an image search on Google, you'll recognise it immediately. In person they're simply stunning; you really appreciate the hours and care the artist(s) must have put into creating all of them. All the fine detail, from the little flowers in the background to the folds in the Lady's dress to the unicorn's reflection in the mirror... The rest of the museum was wonderful as well, of course. It was just that the tapestries made the biggest impression. But then again, the Lady with the Unicorn is a hard act to follow.

After that, we went to a bookstore just across the street, where Elisabeth managed to read an entire manga in the time I spent looking around (she reads fast, in my defense). I found a French translation of a Portuguese novel that looked interesting, as well as translations of the Sandman comics. Unfortunately, the latter were far too expensive for me, but the first wasn't. 

We had cheese soufflet for dinner and then went out for a ride on one of the Bateau-Mouches (little flat boats on the Seine, mostly for tourists). It was cold and it's kind of the off-season (I say kind of because there's still a good number of French tourists on winter vacation right now), so we had the boat mostly to ourselves. We went past the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, and the Eiffel Tower, among other monuments. I tried to take pictures, but my camera doesn't function well in the dark to start with, and the motion of the boat made it even worse. I gave up after a couple of tries.  

After the ride, we met up with my cousin Mathieu and then headed out to John's house in the country. We got in around twelve-thirty and didn't get to bed until one.

Saturday:

A quiet day. I spent most of it reading. I think it might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that I spent all of it reading. In the few moments I wasn't reading, I went out into the garden, made a few calls, and baked scones. They didn't turn out terribly, but they didn't turn out brilliantly, either. 

Sunday:

Another quiet day. I really didn't feel well at all, especially since I barely slept the night before given that I woke up every half hour from being unable to breathe, and again spent most of the time reading. We went out to a local fromagerie in the morning and made acquaintance with some of the goats. There were eight-day old kids (the goat kind) that were absolutely precious. I tried to take pictures but for some reason my flash seems to be on the fritz and only a few of them came out. We bought some of the cheese and had it at lunch-- I think I'd be hard-pressed to come up with I time I had better goat cheese. 

We also went out to a local market by the river. We caught it at the end, so there wasn't much to see, but it was nice all the same. 

On the way back into Paris, there was so much traffic that for a while we were worried that I was going to miss my train, but luckily we got to the station with a good twenty minutes to spare. By this point I was so exhausted and out of it that it took all my concentration not to fall asleep on the train so that I wouldn't miss my stop. I was planning on going to bed as soon as I got home, but I'd misunderstood that they'd waited for me to start the dinner party. By some miracle, I stayed awake long enough to eat a little bit, and then Catherine finally ordered me to bed when I refused the cheese course (yep, I was feeling that terrible, that I refused a French cheese course). I slept, and now I'm feeling not much better but at least not as tired. 

I'm leaving for Toulouse tomorrow provided that the doctor says I don't have anything contagious/serious, so there'll be more on that next week. And later this afternoon/evening I'll post pictures from Paris. I didn't take quite as many this time as the last and most of them are of food, but it's something.

Ciao!