Finals, Crepes, Jeff and Clementines

On Friday was my dreaded grammar final. It was __________. I'm really not sure how it went. It wasn't nearly as long as I thought it would be, and instead of it being on conjugations and all the stuff we had talked about relentlessly in class it was on prepositions which I cannot do for the life of me. But then the free writing part I think I did alright, although that was the part where my prof came by, looked at the 5 things I had crossed out (because we had to write in pen and I made a mistake, etc) and she looks at me and says "Elizabeth, tu es trop bete, qu'est-ce que c'est tous ca? C'est moche!! Qu'est-ce que tu penses?? Il faut que tu fasse attention!!!!" (Elizabeth, you're so stupid, what is all of this? It's ugly, what are you thinking??? You have to pay attention!!!) Which, as you can imagine, did NOT help my nerves and all that. But the subject for the free style was an excerpt from someone writing on being abroad and not understanding anything and then it was like "now that you've been in France for 4 months, reflect on and write your experiences similar to these" which I was able to do, so....we shall see. 

Yesterday, Jeff and Laura came to see me and it was fun!! I wanted to take them to go see les machines de l'ile which is a mechanical elephant....but it rained so much yesterday and the night before that they were closed. So we ended up going to the chateau, the cool old bookstore, le jardin des plantes, the Christmas markets, we saw the  Theater, and IES. We went to the boulangerie and all of that fun stuff. I think they had a good time....It was kind of sad though cause there wasn't a ton to do because a lot was closed because of the rain. 

Last night after Jeff and Laura left, I came back and studied for a little bit before I met my friends for our last out to dinner for crepes. It was really fun. We took some pictures and then went out for drinks afterwards, instead of coming back home and studying more since I hadn't studied basically all day....

On Monday (tomorrow) I have 2 finals (Art History and Translation); Tuesday I have French Lit; Wednesday I have nothing!!!; Thursday I have sociology and then Friday I'm going to finish packing and then I'll be home for Christmas!! 

This week is surprisingly full of things (other than finals) to do! Monday evening my grammar teacher (the one who yelled at me in the final) is inviting us over for drinks which I just find amusing....and then Tuesday I'm having dinner at Erica's house, Wednesday I don't have anything and then Thursday it's the end of IES shindig thing....I'm going to go but I also told my host mom that I would eat dinner with her since it's my last night in Nantes for a month. 

Oooh and my host mom put up some of her Christmas decorations and they're so cool! I really like her Nativity Scene!! And we're hoping her wreath doesn't get stolen (apparently that's a problem here...I'm really not sure why....). 

The other thing: I really don't ever want to eat a clementine again. My host mom seems to think that since I eat fruit at school that I don't eat fruit (this is also following a misunderstanding about what fruit I can and cannot eat because she was going to use some of it for a meal...whatever) so she decided that since she knew that I like citrus fruit that she should go get some clementines. A logical assumption, I must say. However, she bought the clementines on Thursday afternoon and wants me to eat all of them by the time I leave on Friday. Normally - not a problem. So how many clementines did she buy??? She bought 5 kilos of clementines. Now I really only have to eat like 3.5 kilos because her family's coming over today and they apparently really like them and she'll eat them too, but she's expecting me to eat almost all of them. Of course, now that I saw I never want to eat a clementine again, I'm going to get back to the States and want a freaking clementine. lol. Anyway I miss you all a lot! I get back to Portland on Dec. 20th in the evening! :-)  But I'll be in the States around noon Portland time (assuming my flight is not delayed) so feel free to call me while I'm chilling in the airport!!