Three Weeks, Take Two.

Nine months ago, I wrote for the first time to describe my future adventures in France. It was three weeks before my departure and I mentioned my decision to study abroad, my worries and fears, my anticipation to finally arrive in Angers, and of course my desires and hopes for this year. I can’t believe I am at the point in my journey where I have, yet again, three weeks until my life flips 180 degrees as I return back to my sweet home of Grand Haven, Michigan. However, I do not plan to spend those three weeks packing and dreaming of what I will do when I return. I am going to embrace the time I have here and live la vie française to the fullest.

I absolutely adore summer in Angers. Granted, I still have a week of classes followed by a week of exams, the weather clearly shows that it is summertime! The last two weekends have been long weekends, so I have spent a lot of time outside, which has been such a blessing. My allergies have finally stopped giving me grief and I have been able to enjoy the lovely weather by having picnics with my friends at the lake here in Angers, exploring various parks around the city, and strolling along the lakeside with Béatrice, her daughter and grandson, and Yilan. I had to buy sunscreen because I have already gotten a little sunburned, which makes me so excited for the next few weeks of sun!!!

The highest priority for me right now is exams, sadly enough. Starting tomorrow, I will be plunging into studying for my exams that start on Saturday. No, I am not procrastinating, and yes, my first exam is on Saturday! The teachers are absolutely crazy in my opinion to sacrifice a Saturday to give an exam, but c’est la vie en France! I have at least one really easy exam, français familier (my slang French class), but all of my other classes are going to require some serious review. I have a lot of notes and a lot of rereading, but this semester will be an incredibly good test of my progress. And I can’t forget to mention that on Tuesday, May 18^th, I completed and turned in a twenty-page dossier, all in French, about the modernization of the church in France. I can’t describe the huge weight that was lifted from my shoulders the second I handed it to the secretary at my school. I do not yet know how well I did on my dossier, but I am so incredibly thrilled to have that project done!

As a side note, while I was intensely devoting my life to my dossier and other papers and stories for school, I discovered the most amazing music ever!! Well, maybe it’s not the most amazing, but I can’t seem to get enough of it. It is called the Mozart l’Opéra Rock, and it is the soundtrack of a musical/show about Mozart finishing his tour in Paris and returning to his hometown of Salzburg, Austria where everything has changed. The songs vary in style, from lullabies to love songs to vindictive declarations, and they are all in French. Even if you don’t know French, I highly encourage everyone to go onto YouTube and search for the songs and check out a few. A few of them are kind of scandalous, but it’s the country and language of love and passion, so what can you really expect? My personal favorites: Le bien qui fait mal, Je dors sur des roses, Dors mon ange, l’Assasymphonie, Tatoue-moi, and Vivre à en crever.

This coming Wednesday, I will be singing at the soirée internationale for the second time this year. If you don’t recall or didn’t read the blog post in which I mentioned this occasion in December, it is a chance for all of the international students to share a part of their culture with the other students at our university. It is kind of like a talent show, because the majority of people do some sort of performance that represents their culture. I am going to be singing a blues/jazz song and I have a friend who will be accompanying me on piano, so it should be a fun and exciting night :)

Once I finished my dossier on Tuesday, I realized that I had virtually nothing to do after school and in the evenings, so I have done quite a lot this week. I saw Robin des Bois (Robin Hood), and though it was a decent movie, I didn’t think it was anything amazing. However, it did make me incredibly eager to get back to Grand Haven to watch BBC’s Robin Hood with miss Sara Luckey!! My friend Rémi had a concert in Angers and he asked me on a whim to sing with him. Since I only knew a couple of songs on the list, I sang “I’m yours” with him, and having not practiced at all together, I think we did pretty well. I had the most amazing soufflés EVER on Friday evening! One was a soufflé nordique and it had salmon in it, and then for dessert I had a soufflé chocolat. They were so delicious, I felt like I was on cloud nine for that entire meal. One of my favorite times this week though, was when my friends and I went out for someone’s birthday and Donald, my friend Heidi, and I all started doing random Star Wars voices such as Princess Leia, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, R2D2, Chewbacca, Jar Jar Binks, and the Ewoks. Oh yeah, we had a riot!

Today, I had the chance to go with Béatrice, my host mom, to an orthodox church that is about an hour outside the city. Since she doesn’t go very often, the last time I went with her was back in October, just before All-Saints Day. This time, we were there for La Pentecôte, or Pentecost. I am so glad that I chose to go with her, because I felt so connected at this service. After writing my dossier, I have a much better understanding of the Orthodox Church, and since I have been here much longer I also was able to understand so much more of what was sung (words and prayers are rarely said, they are sung. I was able to take communion at the Orthodox Church because I have been baptized, and after I received it, I sat down and was surprised when tears started falling down my face. Today, I can say that taking communion was more than just a ritual to celebrate having Christ with you. It was a movement that I am making back in the direction of strengthening my spiritual life again. Honestly, this year has been a huge challenge in exploring what my standards are and keeping my relationship with God alive. God has been a driving force throughout everything I have done here in France, but my faith has suffered a lot because I have not had very much fellowship with other Christians. I have done a few bible studies recently with my friends Mark and Heidi, and it has been such a comfort to have Christian friends with me to pray, read the bible, and hold each other accountable in areas where we may be struggling. And as far as my standards and ideals go, I had another interesting thought during the church service today. Throughout the entire orthodox service, you hold a candle that is lit in the beginning of the service. While I was sitting there with my candle, I watched the flame flicker as a breeze came in through the door, as people walked past me, and as I breathed toward the flame. Depending on how strong the force was against the flame, it would fade into almost nothing, and then return to its bright and shining state. This is what I feel like I have been doing with my standards throughout the entire year. I arrived in France with many ideas about different issues, and being in France without my family and friends has given me the chance to determine my standards and limits without outside influences. I have not done anything shameful by any means, but I have definitely been able to explore and test my limits, just as I observed with the candle. After this year, I have figured out that the standards I arrived in France with are pretty much the same as those I am leaving with, and I am really at ease with that.

Tomorrow I will have 19 days before I leave what has become my home. I left Grand Haven as a relatively naïve and sheltered girl, and am returning with a completely different worldview and sense of self. I love the lifestyle I’ve developed here: I walk everywhere, I make my food myself, I am constantly working to improve my French, and I don’t have to prove myself to anybody, which frankly is something I have been doing for the last ten years of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Grand Haven and it is my home, but France has also become home to me. The next three weeks are going to be challenging with exams, but also so much fun. Tomorrow I am having a picnic with my friends Kai and Yilan, and after that Yilan and I are going on a photo shoot around town! I’ll be going to the lake a couple more times I am sure, and I have no doubt that I will be surrounding myself with those who I am close to whenever I am not studying. 35 weeks down, 3 weeks left!! A très bienôt mes amis et ma famille aux Etats-Unis! Je vous aime!

Le Printemps!

Bonjour encore ! It is finally springtime and much has changed here in France since my blog posts in February.

A la Catho…

At school, everything is going very well. I adore all of my classes and my teachers are so great. In histoire de la musique, we listen to a very interesting variety of music and we just finished learning about the romantic period of music in France with Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet and my favorite, Saint-Saëns. In philosophie, I find it incredibly difficult to pay attention, so I have begun drawing and doodling, which has been highly amusing. Traduction (translation) is difficult, but I know that in the long run it is going to be one of the best classes for me of the semester. Histoire de France is still a really awesome history class. However, the teacher loves tangents and sometimes I feel like we spend more time interrogating and comparing all of our cultures than learning about history. My language class is becoming more and more intense as the semester goes on, and it’s really crazy to think that I have only a few weeks of actual class left before exams start. I have quite a few papers to write in the next few weeks and also a few presentations to give so I’m hoping to get a good start on them over the next week.

Le Bénévolat

I’ve done a bit of volunteering during these past couple months, and it has been a great feeling to be even the smallest bit involved in the community here. I went into a class at my university to speak English with students who are learning it as a second or third language, and I also went to a middle school and taught about ten students various questions and phrases in English related to vacations. It was so much fun to teach them and help them along. Perhaps the most interesting volunteering experience here was with something called the Banque Alimentaire, which is the food bank here in France. I went to a few different supermarkets where I distributed bags and collected goods to be donated to the food bank. I had some really good conversations with French people, and also encountered some who were much less inclined to give, mais c’est la vie.

Les Aquarelles

I had a concert with the Aquarelles in the middle of March and it was so much fun! We got together rather early in the afternoon to practice before the concert that night, and I spoke so much French that day. I talked a lot with the other girls in the choir, met some of their families, and also talked with other people who were performing in the concert with us. The majority of the songs we sang were in English, and our director forgot to look up the translations of the songs for the audience, so he asked me to be “la petite traductrice” (the little translator). So, before every song, I would tell him what each song was about, what they represented, etc. Needless to say, everyone in the audience knew I was American, but I was so happy to show that I was competent in French. Since the concert, I fell sick and then had spring break and have not been to any practices. I will not be able to do any more of the concerts because I will be gone, but my time with les aquarelles was so much fun while it lasted.

Holidays abroad

St. Patrick’s Day! For this fantastic holiday, my friend Jess and I got all decked out in green and went out to the bar the often frequented, klypso. The night before, we had gone and decorated the whole thing because we had some awesome ideas and they told us we could have free drinks if we decorated. Perfect, right? I ended up not staying out too late that night, but it was a good time with my friends.

A few weeks later came Poisson d’Avril (April Fools Day). In France, the typical thing to do is take a paper fish and stick it to someone so that they don’t notice that they’ve been walking around all day with a fish on them. Well, I was not ‘fished,’ but my language teacher played a terrible joke on us. She came into class and told us that we were really awful at writing and comprehension and that we needed to do dictées that were noted. For those of you who don’t know, a dictée is when someone reads a passage from something, and you have to write down what you hear, so it is a good exercise of comprehension and grammar. Anyways, the words and sentence structures in this dictée were terrible and as she continued to read, we all lost any hope of doing good. Soon enough, she smiled at us, laughed, and said “Poisson d’Avril mes amis!” Oh, we were so happy it wasn’t true.

Poitiers

Jess and I went for a weekend to a place called Futuroscope, which is a virtual theme park. I thought is was so incredibly cool! We saw this little movie called Les Astromouches, which was about little flies that go on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon with Neil Armstrong. It was such a cute little 3D story. We watched a few other movies with really cool effects, went through a sensory sort of attraction where we experienced how things would be if we didn’t have our sense of sight, and then a ride called les danses avec les robots (the dances with robots), which was insane! The greatest part was being able to watch all of the movies and understand everything that was said. All of the movies were in French of course, but I had virtually no difficulty in comprehending the words and content. That, my friends, was a big moment in my realizations of my progress.

Les Mecs

Okay friends, I guess this is the part you have been waiting all year for. There’s a boy. A French boy. While having a French boyfriend was something I never anticipated, when does life ever present exactly what you expect? Anyways, his name is Donald (pronounced like Doe-nahld), he is 25, and works at the hospital here in town, loves sailing, and is a pretty great guy. He plays guitar and can sing decently well, which is always a plus, haha. We have been going out for a couple months, and it’s been fun! He isn’t been like the creepy or egotistical French guys that I’ve mentioned in previous blogs. He really likes me and respects my ideals, and I appreciate that so much. He and I both know that I am leaving in June, so we’re enjoying the time we have while I’m here. So…voilà!

I hope you all feel relatively caught up with what has been going on in my life since late February since I last wrote. Also make sure to check out the Spring Break entry I posted just a few days before this post. A plus tard!

Les Vacances de Printemps

"To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy." Hippocrates

What a crazy two weeks! For my spring break, I visited southwest France, Barcelona, Paris, and Normany. I have divided this blog by the different parts of my two weeks, so even though it’s long, hopefully you enjoy reading! Enjoy!!!

Southwest France

Oh, la vie en France. We stared our voyage by going to Bordeaux, Biarritz, and Bayonne. Though I was in Bordeaux in February, it was fun to return and see the city in the springtime ad explore some different places. We visited some of the parks in the city, a gallo-roman theater, the waterfront, and le miroir d’eau (the mirror of water). While in the southwest, we went couchsurfing. For those of you who have never heard of couchsurfing, it is essentially a networking system where you can stay at people’s houses for free and it is a cultural exchange sort of thing. The couple that we couchsurfed with was doing something called an Assistantship, which is where they teach are given a place in France to go teach English for a few hours a week. They were such wonderful hosts and made our short time in Bordeaux totally worth going again.

The next day, Claudia and I made our way down to Biarritz to meet our next couchsurfing host, an English boy named Charlie. He was also in France doing the assistantship. We met him at a bus stop, dropped our bags off at his house, and then he took us on a tour of the city. It was so beautiful and the view of the Atlantic was indescribable. We went to the beach, saw some markets, and walked along the coast of the ocean. That night we met a lot of his friends and we had a fun time mingling and playing Werewolves (essentially the card game, Mafia, but cooler). We did a lot of exploring the city on our own and fell in love with it. However, I feel like it is incredibly touristy and rather ritzy. Nice to visit, but only for a few days. We left on a Friday, explored the city of Bayonne for a few hours, and then plans changed a little…

FranceàBarcelona: (I wrote this part of this blog entry as I was sitting on a train Irun in western Spain, to Barcelona, which is on the opposite coast).

Qu’est-ce que l’on fait lorsqu’il y a des grèves? What does one do when there are strikes? An unforeseen change of events is causing me to arrive in Barcelona tonight rather than spending one more night in southern France. Ah the French whom I love, the ones who believe in liberté, fraternité et égalité, the revolutionaries who make changes when needed. My friends, les Français have done it again and j’en air as le bol! J’en ai ma dose! Ça suffit! The SNCF railway strikes have altered my plans and they have inconvenienced a large number of people. They better get what they were striking for, because these past few days have been full of a little too much improvisation and compliance with the SNCF.

Qu’est-ce que l’on fait lorsque la terre décide de changer enormement? What does one do when the earth decides to drastically change? Even though there are strikes going on in southern France, I had a beautiful first few days of my break and am still making it to Barcelona. However, as we all have observed, mother nature has been a little vengeful as of late…I personally think she was after those of you who have neglected the environment. Multiple earthquakes, tsunamis, and to cap it off…a volcano, in Iceland! Joy. Of. My. Life. My parents called me today and told me that over 16,000 flights were cancelled today. If my flight with Drew to Paris is cancelled, I will be super upset. Excuse me, I mean that it is highly unfortunate for those poor souls who are truly plagued by this natural phenomenon…

Barcelona

What a beautiful city, Barcelona. Claudia and I arrived Friday night and Saturday we explored the neighboring streets of our hostel. When Claudia went to meet friends she would be staying with in Barcelona, I went to the train station and met Drew. He and I took the metro to our hotel and were overjoyed about the quality and the centrality of its location in the city. That night, we went to the magic fountains on Montjuïc, and they were so incredible! These ornate fountains that have light shows synchronized to a fun variety of music honestly put the musical fountain in Grand Haven to a little shame. I will however have a lot of fun memories now whenever I see the musical fountain. We walked up the steps to the palace near the top of Montjuïc and though we could no longer hear the music, it was truly a magical experience to see the fountains down below and the sunset at the opposite end of the city. That night we walked down Las Ramblas, which is like the Champs Elysées of Bacelona. We ended up eating dinner at a nice restaurant right on the port, and I had the Spanish version of a crêpe (though my allegiances stay with the French).

The following day, we went to mass in the cathedral at Barcelona, and it was amazing! It was a beautiful cathedral, and though I don’t know Spanish (or rather Catalan, which is the mix of French and Spanish spoken in that region), I was able to understand certain phrases and words thanks to my knowledge of French. It made me miss church back home a lot, but it was a good experience. After that, we walked to a park at which many non-profit organizations were gathered. People were sitting in the grass, playing games, having picnics, and so we went and sat in the grass for a while and just took in the atmosphere. It was really cool. We then went to the Picasso museum, which was rather interesting, took a cable car up to Montjuïc, and spent a few hours exploring and getting lost in the parks on the hill. Eventually we reached the castle at the very top and had a breathtaking view of the ocean on one side and the city from the other side. I could have sworn that when I looked down at the ocean, that I was actually in Kirk Park or Rosy Mound Park back home overlooking Lake Michigan.

Our last day in Barcelona was spent visiting different places designed by Gaudi. We started with the Sagrada Familia and then went to the Casa Mila. Both of these places were so cool and any pictures that I took would not have done any justice to the crazy architecture. That night, Drew and I took a bus to Gerona and found a bus that would leave the next day from the airport and take us into Perpignan, France. Clearly, our flight to Paris was cancelled because of the volcano, and because of the train strikes, trains were not allowed to cross the Spanish border, as they normally would be.

Tuesday, we left for Paris as planned, but it took so long!!! Two hours by bus from Gerona to Perpignan, a two-hour wait in Perpignan before we were able to take a train up to Paris, and then eight hours on the train. There ended up being a delay of almost four hours because of a fire that was on/near the train tracks, so we didn’t arrive at our hotel until almost three o’clock in the morning. The train ride was well spent though, and our hotel reservation was still valid, thus we were content and at ease…and in Paris!

Paris

Wednesday morning, Drew and I woke up and went to the Sacré Coeur and Montmartre to explore the area a bit. We made our way to Châtelet by metro and had our baguettes with chèvre cheese and a bottle of wine right by the Eglise Saint Eustache. We then continued on our way to the Musée de l’Armée (Les Invalides) where we saw Napoleon’s tomb and a lot of interesting exhibits about wars in France. We ended our day by walking down the Champs Elysées, passing by the Arc de Triomphe, and seeing the Eiffel Tower.

The following day, we went to Versailles and had a blast. I have already been there twice, but it was so cool this time because I listened to a French audio guide and understood almost everything that was said. We also relaxed a lot in the gardens after exploring the château. We went back into Paris and visited next the Musée d’Orsay. My personal favorite part of the museum was the paintings by Camille Pissarro. Van Gogh was also grand, just not my favorite. That night for dinner we went to a wonderful restaurant called Ty Yann, which a man from Bretagne owns and he makes amazing crêpes and galettes. That night we walked along the Seine, and it was really peaceful.

Friday, we went to Châtelet again and did a little shopping, and then we went to Notre Dame and La Sainte Chapelle, both absolutely stunning. I can’t imagine how cool it would be to go to church every weekend in La Sainte Chapelle! We followed this up by walking through the Jardins de Tuileries, and going to the Louvre. That night we went to a really nice French restaurant for some authentic cuisine, and it was très délicieux. We ended our stay in Paris by going up the Eiffel Tower and it was absolutely fantastic. I have been up twice before, but this time was really different from the other times. At the top, I reflected so much about home and I wanted nothing more than for my mom to be there with me…one day both of us will be here.

Normandie

For the weekend, Drew and I visited Normandy. Because of train delays, we didn’t arrive in the town of Bayeux (close proximity to the beaches) until late afternoon, and so we saw the cemetery, Omaha Beach, and Pointe du Hoc right before sunset. Again, it was a super cool experience, and I was happy to have the opportunity to visit these places for a second time.

All in all, my two weeks of travelling were very busy, a little stressful at times, but a spring break that I will remember for the rest of my life. If was wonderful to escape the pressure of school for a while, to discover new places, and also to return to where I had been before. It was a huge relief that Drew and I got along so well and have become friends, especially seeing that we never talked in high school and that we were with each other virtually incessantly for a week. Lastly, I was able to laugh, smile, experience new things and cultures, and just breathe easily.