Wofford College - Study Abroad

The theme of this post is "Studying Abroad is Awesome!"

This experience just gets more and more fun, and I don't even know where to begin!  So hi everyone.  This time my first picture for you is not food, but a giant walking, water-spewing mechanical elephant (I know, it's amazing).  It is the main attraction at this place in Nantes called "Les Machines de l'Ile," which consists of a menagerie of large mechanical animals, with a Tim Burton-ish kind of feel.  You can actually pay to ride the giant walking elephant, and it is my goal to do so when I have the time.

The Elephant in action:

It is seriously impressive.

This weekend was really action-packed, starting on Friday afternoon with a visit to my first ever Ikea.  Here it is- the Ikea in France:

Ikea might be one of the most amazing stores I've ever seen.  The funny thing, though, was that we were English-speaking Americans in French-speaking France, in a store with Swedish labels.  It was too bizarre!

This may  not sound possible, but the weekend actually got a whole lot cooler after Ikea.  Right now, the largest "Trimaran" ever constructed is in France- the Banque Populaire V, and this weekend was a big party to celebrate it.  A Trimaran is essentially a type of sailboat with three hulls (I think that would be the English word- all my sailing terminology is in French).  This one is as large as the Arc de Triomphe- around 40 meters tall, and the fastest boat of its kind in the world.  It was christened on Saturday night, with a great fireworks show and a concert, but the festival lasted all day.  Pictures from that are here:

My boat-visiting buddies- L-R: Paul, Jane (from the last post) and Rachel.

Here's the boat itself.  I couldn't get all the mast in and still demonstrate the proportions of the thing- it's huge: see the people?

The whole party atmosphere at night was absolutely amazing.  There were around 5000 people there, and all the activity is impossible to put into words.

Sunday morning, I went to one of the three protestant churches we seem to be able to find with MinSoo (who is from South Korea) and Jane.  Everyone has been really welcoming, and our main friend, Olivier, is really nice about introducing us to people.  After the service, we were invited to stay for lunch with the rest of the congregation.  It was a family-style meal, with passing of plates, and the men at our table filling everyone's glasses with wine or water, and, as usual in France, the meal was really good!  There were these cheese and vegetable-stuffed tomatoes, and the dessert was pistachio ice cream with a whole cooked pear all covered in chocolate sauce... amazing.  Unfortunately for me, I did not enjoy the main dish (although Jane and MinSoo did).  It was something very traditional involving Liver, applesauce, and mashed potatoes.  Jane and MinSoo thought that it was great, but for me, the texture was kind of weird.  It's ok, though, because Jane took care of mine :).

Even better than the food, however, was the company.  Olivier sat with us, and another couple sat down, and when Olivier introduced us to them, the woman said (in perfect English), "You're from America? I'm an American!"  We were completely thrown for a loop, but then she explained about how she came to France as a Fullbright Fellow, and met her husband in the University restaurant.  They now live in Versailles, and her husband Francois proudly informed us that thay have "almost" 9 grandchildren.  We had a great talk with them, and at the end, Marge (the wife) invited us to stay with them if we go to Versailles.

My amazing weekend finished with (yet another) amazing meal, this time, with my host family, who had invited a seminary student from the Seychelles to eat with us.  In accordance with French custom, we sat around before dinner and drank aperitifs, specifically, Kir, which is a mixture of white wine and (I think) a blackberry liqueur.  The U.S. really needs to import that one.  My host mom is an amazing cook, so the food at dinner was beyond belief.  But, as usual, a sizable portion of dinner conversation consisted of my host brothers picking on me, and me attempting (in my limited French) to retaliate.  The frequency of my success in retaliation is steadily increasing.

In all honesty, I really love the fact that my host brothers feel comfortable making fun of me like that, because it makes me feel more like a part of the family.  It's the kind of thing that reminds me how similar my host family is to my American family.  I don't think I could have asked for a better placement than the one I have.  Thomas, my youngest host brother (16) likes a lot of the same music that I do.  Thibaud, my middle brother (19) is funny, and alternates between picking on me relentlessly and being really friendly and chatty (also, he's really good about correcting my French, which I love). And

Stéphane, my oldest brother is surpremely helpful with whatever I need (including trying to fix my wifi when it decides that it no longer wants to work).  Also, I think Stéphane understands my challenges here, since he spent a year studying abroad in Australia

This weekend was also really great for cool pictures, which I promise to put up very soon.  You can check out all my pictures at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/danielle.has.pictures

I wait way too long between posts... (or, sometimes you improvise)

Hi everyone!
Once again, I'm going to start this post with a picture of me and food.  This time, it's something I enjoy much better than Sardines (even if said sardines come from a cool famous factory in France).  I'm holding Berlingots- a french candy unique to Nantes.  They're fruit-flavored hard candies that are incredibly delicious.

Since I failed to talk about my host family last time, let me go ahead and say that they are really awesome!  Here I have 3 brothers between the ages of 16 and 24, and my host parents.  Everyone has been so welcoming from the beginning, and I'm starting to really feel like I belong.  They like to laugh and joke, and I'm starting to be quick enough in French to actually joke with them, which is doubly amusing because of the surprise factor.

My first weekend in Nantes, they invited me to go sailing with them on Sunday, and I had an incredible time.  Since it was my first time ever, I was not helpful, but the day was beautiful I enjoyed being on the water and trying to stay mostly out of the way.  My favorite memory from this experience, however, involved the bottle of wine to go with our lunch.  Before leaving the dock, we realized we had forgotten the cups at home; however, we were going to enjoy the wine anyway.  When lunch time rolled around, my host dad pulled out the bottle and realized that not only did we have no cups, we also had no corkscrew.  My impulse would have been to give up then, but for a good bottle of wine, French people may do many things.  In our case, this included trying the pry the cork out of the bottle with a pocketknife, a screwdriver, and finally, a screw from the boat.  Sadly, all of these efforts failed, and our last resort was to use the screwdriver to force the cork into the bottle, which was subsequently done, to much rejoicing.  However, remember we have no cups?  So we celebrated successfully opening the wine by passing it around and drinking straight from the bottle.  I can honestly say that I never imagined I would ever feel the need to drink wine straight from the bottle, but it was worth all the effort!

In other news, classes have finally gotten to a decent start, and I'm really excited about a couple of them.  I worked with the director of IES Nantes to be able to take a Microbiology course, so I get to hang out with French people who like science.  During my first class, I met a girl named Elodie who was so helpful- she explained the setup before class started, and then showed me the dining hall on campus.  She's interested in getting a Doctorate and doing behavioral research with animals.  Also, in the history department, I'm taking a course on the history of subsaharan Africa.  So far, the class has only met once, but it was really interesting and I can't wait to learn more.

This weekend, IES organized a trip to Mont Saint Michel and the town of St. Malo.  Both places are incredible, and I think the beauty of Mont Saint Michel is better described in pictures:

This is Mont Saint Michel from the outside- a fortified town on a rocky Island.  Inside, it is very steep and the roads are narrow, and at the top, there is a very old Monastery and Cathedral.

This is what you see when you look up from inside the walls on the way to the top.

The Cathedral at the top

One of the views from the top

Saint Malo is also very pretty, a town surrounded by ancient ramparts, and a beautiful beach.  This is also the location where the French writer Chateaubriand is buried, and visiting his tomb resulted in the most memorable experience of this trip.  The tomb of Chateaubriand is situated on a small rocky island about 100 meters away from the beach.  There is a stone path connecting the two, and when the tide comes up, the path is completely covered, and the currents are very strong.  When we arrived, a few of us wanted to go see the tomb, so our Social Coordinator, Samuel, who was leading the trip, told us to hurry, because we had to come back before the tide came in.  So we hurried.  When we got down to the pathway, there was a little water on it around a low spot in the middle (a little chilly), but we crossed anyway.  On the other side, two of the girls were too concerned about the rising water to go further.  However, Jane and I decided that the tide wasn't coming in that fast, and if our legs got a little wet on the way back, that would be ok.  We climbed the island to find the tomb, and along the way we passed several French people going in the othe direction, warning us that the tide was coming in (which we knew), so we decided we would hurry.  We found the tomb, took some pictures, and enjoyed the view for about 3 minutes before deciding to hurry down again.

When we got to the bottom, we realized we had a big problem.  The was a man halfway across our pathway, now walking through waist-deep water.  So now, Jane and I are feeling like stupid americans and really want to get back to the beach without having to be rescued.  Fortunately for us, there were a couple of french people also still on the island with us, and they provided a solution: they were pulling off their pants to wade through without getting througoughly soaked.  Jane looked at me and said, "you want to do it?" The obvious answer to this was "When in France, do as the French do," so our pants came off, and we stuffed them into our bags to keep them dry and began to wade across the slippery, now thoroughly sumerged and slippery path through the currents.  Thankfully, we made it to the other side, to the crowd of people (French, British and some of our American classmates) watching our crazy spectacle.  Later, we were thanked by a bunch of loud (slightly drunk) Brits for providing the best entertainment of the day, and while I can't say it was wise to ignore all the warnings, it was definitely worth it!

The island before we went to visit it.  Note the dry path leading there.

The island after we visited it.  Note the complete absence of path.

The tomb we went to visit.  Chateaubriand wrote Mémoires d'outre-tombe and was involved in a lot of cool stuff.  He was born in Saint-Malo

So there you go! A couple of cool fun stories and some information about my life at the moment.  And a piece of advice: if the natives are telling you to leave the island, it's probably a good idea to listen to them (unless of course, you want an awesome story to tell later- telling people, "Well, we saw the island where Chateaubriand's tomb is located" is not nearly as interesting)

Bonjour!

I apologize for being a bad blogger!  I have been in France now for a week and a half without writing anything here.  In my defense, though, it has been a very busy week and a half, and I think I'm finally starting to settle in. 

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Right at the beginning of my adventure here in Nantes, I got to spend 4 days with the whole IES group (all 56 of us) in the coastal city of Vannes, which is quite a bit smaller, I think, than Nantes, but very pretty, and within an hour of tons of historic sites and pretty places (several of which we visited).  I'll show some pictures and start with the oldest places:

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Here is a picture of me at Les Alignements de Carnac.  Carnac is the place, and the "alignements" are some 3000 enormous rocks standing on end across 4 kilometers.  The structure is around 6000 years old, and nobody really knows why they are there.  Some people believe aliens put the rocks there to help them find uranium, but my favorite theory concerning the rocks is that if you hug or kiss the rocks, you will then feel a greater love for humanity afterwards.  Obviously, I tried it, but I don't know if my love for the human race increased afterwards...

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This is a picture from the ruin of La Forteresse de Largoet, a huge fortress built in the middle ages.  It used to be surrounded by a huge wall several yards thick, which is almost all gone by now.  It also contains the tallest prison in France, a terrifying and enormous stone tower with tiny spiraling staircases (184 stairs).  One of the Kings of England was imprisoned inside; I saw his cell, the size of a closet with a tiny slit for a window and no other light.

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This is what it looks like looking up from the bottom in the prison tower.

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OK, this is the last place I'm going to tell about today.  This is from the beautiful little port town of Saint Gustain, where most of the buildings are several hundred years old, but people still live in them and have shops and restaurants, and people drive their cars over the cobblestone roads.  As you can tell from this picture, it is very hilly (and it was raining that day)

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Last picture: This is also Saint Gustain, but on the water.  There is a stone bridge over the river, and I really like the sailboat, now completely out of the water, because the tide is low.

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One of the things that really strikes me here in France is how old everything is, in the sense of centuries.  I think that's one of the most enchanting qualities of this area of France.  When you walk around the smaller towns, an even in Nantes, which is a modern city, it almost feels like a movie set.  There were times when it really reminded me of Beauty and the Beast.

OK, now that I have (mostly) satisfied my desire to talk about our traveling excursion, next time I'll talk about life here in Nantes.  Classes start on monday, and that's going to be a really full day!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the picture at the top is of me in the gift shop of La Belle Iloise fish cannery, which has specialized in packing sardines for over 50 years.