Michael and Me in Front of the Cathedral
I’m back, sorry for the delay my beloved fans, but I wanted the other bloggers to have a chance to catch up because I am definitely winning “Best Blog” award right now. Anyway, this will be a super blog because a lot has happened during my four month French class that I haven’t had time to talk about yet, but first I have some thoughts:
1) What a great Super Bowl, I got to watch it here and it was definitely a classic worth remembering, but I was a little sad the Cardinals lost because I’m not a big Steelers guy, but it was still a good game.
2) For the love of God, if anyone finds a way for me to watch March Madness here, let me know, I will sneak any sort of item you want through Customs if you know/can find a way for me to watch the national time waster.
3) If you are studying ANYWHERE where the Euro is not the main form of currency, be grateful because the exchange rate here is awful and I’m losing money like our economy. So if you are in Argentina, Ecuador, or anywhere in South America or Africa be grateful that you still have money, because I’m flat lining financially.
Well anyway onto the blog!
Altar of the Cathedral
Well two Fridays ago (I know this sounds like old-news but I forgot to mention this is my last blog), our first Friday of class, IES paid for a tour of Nantes for our group. The tour took us to the Cathedral (I don’t know the name of it), the Chateau in the middle of the city (again, I don’t know the name), and a tour of downtown. The Cathedral was absolutely beautiful, but it was missing many of its old stain glass because most of it was broken during WWII. The Chateau was also beautiful; it was walled with a moat. The tour around town was very nice, except for the weather; it was freezing cold with a crazy wind wiping everyone around, I was worried I would see a rogue cow or crepe come flying by it was so strong.
Chateau, over that brick wall is the moat.
Last Wednesday was Charles’s 20th birthday. To celebrate he took Julie, Alex (an American we met here), and me out to dinner. I know that seems a little strange, but his grandparents gave him some money for his birthday with specific instructions to Charles to take some friends out to a nice dinner for his birthday, so he took us to a mussels restaurant. For anyone who is confused, there are many restaurants here that specialize in one particular food, for instance there are crêperies which only serve crepes, and this restaurant specialized in mussels. It was absolutely delicious; Nantes is close to the sea so we all ate fresh mussels that may have been caught that day.
Charles's Birthday Dinner, sooooo good.
Every year their is a famous music festival held in Nantes called La Folle Journée, it’s a classical music concert which focuses on one or two different artists, this year is was Bach and Schultz. IES bought every student a ticket for a concert. The concert lasted from Thursday to Sunday, Julie, Michael, Will and I got our tickets for Saturday at noon. We met at IES and took a special bus to the concert. The pianist for our concert was only 22 and he played beautifully, but I don’t think classical concerts are for Will and me because Will fell asleep midway through and I started playing Tetris on my phone within ten minutes of the concert starting. Once the concert ended Will, Michael and I met up with Charles, who couldn’t go to the concert because he had been sick the day before, and we looked for a good way to waste time. We settled on trying to find the elephant. The elephant is a giant robotic elephant hidden somewhere on the Ile de Nantes
and we had been trying to find it for a solid three weeks. We finally found it, and it was a melodramatic moment. The elephant was cool looking, but it felt like a journey was complete and we no longer had something to do as a time waster. We later learned that the mechanical elephant was funded through tax money, the last time I checked, giant robotic elephant was nowhere near as important as funding for education or transportation, but that’s not important it, it was a giant robotic elephant.
The piano, the pianist worked magic.
Last Thursday the public transportation workers around France held a strike, but I had no idea what they were striking for. It was a hassle getting to IES because I rely on the bus to get me there and it only went halfway, but I got to walk through a crowd that was protesting, and it was pretty cool. After class Charles, Justin and I watched the people march through the crowd. They didn’t seem angry at all, on contraire, they seemed happy to be marching around time. It was like watching a giant parade of protest go by, and it was a good experience because there are never any strikes in the States.
The strike. VIVA LA FRANCE!
Yesterday Charles and I got to play touch rugby with our friend Ludo who is the owner and bartender of our favorite bar, Webb Ellis. He drove us to the club rugby stadium where, he is trying to get a club touch rugby team started and invited us to join. Neither of us had ever played rugby before so we were looking forward to either humiliating ourselves or really humiliating ourselves. Ludo started the game with a few drills for the group to do, which was good because it helped Charles and I get a feel for the game. After about an hour of drills we played 5 on 5 touch rugby. I was on the team opposite Ludo and Charles and I have to say we dominated. I scored twice and I stopped Charles just short of scoring, so it was a good day.
Me in front of the elephant, good to know tax money is going to a good cause.
Well that’s it and that’s all for this chapter in my four month French class. I hope all is good at Wofford and that everyone had a successful Interim and that everyone is safe and happy back home, à toute à l’heure!