Spring Break!!

Okay so I'm really sorry I've been so bad at updating my blog! Anyway, so the past 10 days or so has been spring break for me and so far I've been to Copenhagen, Denmark and Prague, Czech Republic and I'm currently in Greece!! I have one more stop to make, a brief overnight trip to Milan to stay with Alyssa before heading back to France. I've really had a lot of fun so far!! Everything is soooo beautiful!!!

Copenhagen was really fun - I went with my friend Melanie from my program and we got there and wandered around. I've never seen so many statues in one city before!! Copenhagen is really easy to navigate and our hostel was in downtown in a really good location. We walked passed the Tivoli Gardens but never ended up going in it because it was closed, and then when it opened the weather wasn't very good. But we went on a Hans Christian Anderson hunt since he's from Denmark. We had lots of fun running all over the city looking for his three statues - we only found two that my book said and found a third in the H.C. Anderson museum so we dubbed that the third one. haha. And yes, I did buy a book a HC Anderson fairy tales. It's pretty much amazing!!!

One day while we were there we rented bikes and rode around the city which was really nice. We saw a lot of gardens, we saw the Queen's Palace and the Marble church as well as the cemetery where Anderson, Kierkegaard and Neils Bohr are buried. So it was a pretty cool trip all around. We also wandered up and down the pedestrian area a lot and had Danishes! Yummm!!! Other than that we just had a really relaxing trip and all of that jazz....I'll write more later, this is just a summary.


As for Prague, it got off to a rough start because Alyssa's flight was cancelled and we didn't get ahold of each other until later so I didn't know where she was and was really confused and scared, so I went to the hotel and checked in. She ended up getting in Friday night instead of Thursday night so I spent Friday wandering around Prague by myself. It was a little weird, but I love Prague! It's gorgeous. The architecture is amazing and you can really get a sense of how rough their history has been. My favorite things were the Prague Castle/Charles Bridge and then the Astronomical clock which was just sooooooo cool!! We went to go see the Jewish Quarter (what they called the Jewish Ghetto, which is an accurate name, but just doesn't seem right either...) but most of it was closed because it was passover. So in that respect, I think maybe Easter wasn't the best time to go visit Prague because a lot of things were closed or on holiday hours. But I really liked the architecture. I had a tourbook of Prague that said that there were some houses in Prague that are so old, they were there before there were house numbers so to tell them apart they'd put images of their professions or something similar over their doors - so I went on a treasure hunt to find all of them. Twas quite amusing. And by all of them I mean the ones that were mentioned in book :-)

I just got to Greece this afternoon, and we just booked a couple of tours to get a feel for the city. We're getting up really early tomorrow because our tour starts at 7:45 which is just so early, but I'm also very excited.

Anyways, I miss all of you and I'm really sorry I haven't been better and staying in touch and/or updating my blog!!!

Wow long time no update....

Wow so it's been 2 months since I've updated....awkward. I'm going to try to catch you all up on things, but we're going to go with the brief version that way my hands don't fall off from typing!! 

So the first week of February, French universities went on strike to protest some law that effects the research that teachers are allowed to do and still be paid by the State. In theory it was only supposed to last a week, when in actuality it's still continuing, but instead of the teachers, it's now the students who are protesting. I'm thinking the strike is going to end soon (this week if not next) which means I'll have my second class at the fac this semester - and I'm still getting credit! Woohoo!!

For February break Mom and Dad came to visit me!!! That was AMAZING!!! They came to Nantes and spent two days here, met my host mom, saw a little more of Nantes, and just generally walked around - the weather was really nice but cold. And then on Monday morning of break, Mom, Dad and I went to Paris to catch our flight to Vienna! It was GORGEOUS there, although it was also FREEZING!! The first night we were there, we walked around a little but mostly just ate dinner and went to be because we got up early and we were all tired, especially them because of the jet-lag. The next day we took a bus tour of Vienna and saw all sorts of cool things including the Theater and the Schonbrunn Palace! I really liked it! It's where Marie-Antoinette (the future queen of France who was beheaded during the French Revolution) was born and her family lived. It's also where Mozart got to perform so they were all over the place. 

Afterwards we wandered through a square with lots of cool looking buildings (I forget the name, but I have it written down somewhere). On Wednesday we took the train from Vienna to Salzburg which was cool because we got to see the Austrian countryside during the day - it was still snowing and really cold so when we passed all these cute looking towns there were kids sledding, and animals playing in the snow. We also saw St. Stephan's Cathedral which was really really cool. 

When we got to Salzburg it was afternoon and we basically just wandered around a little bit to get a feel for the city. I really really liked it! I actually preferred it to Vienna - I liked Vienna but it was more spread out and too much to see in not enough time. Salzburg is split into two parts - Old Town (where Mozart was born, and still looks like what he knew) and New Town. Thursday we took a "Sound of Music" Tour because that's where the movie was filmed. It was so cool!! I learned lots of interesting trivia about the movie, the actors and the actual von Trapp family. 

Then Mom and Dad had to leave which was sad... :-( Since then it's mostly been just school as usual. Two weekends ago I went to Versailles with my host mom which was really fun. Her grandkids live there and her son and daughter-in-law went to Kenya so she was watching her grandkids for the week and I went to visit for the weekend. I got to see the gardens and the inside of Versailles and my host mom's family only lives like a 10 minute walk from the chateau which is so weird!! And my host mom told me (like it was the most normal thing in the world) that this winter when everything freezed over because it was so cold, that her grandkids went ice skating on the giant lake that's in like EVERY picture of Versailles....

This past weekend I went to Normandy with IES to see the Disembarkment Beaches. It was so cool. Incredibly depressing but amazing at the same time....there aren't really words. It was beautiful there and eerily quiet - and it was so weird seeing all the crosses (9387) and then seeing all the names of those who they never found. The thing that struck me is that unlike Arlington National Cemetery where there are thousands of markers - here all the dates were within a 2 year period, and even with those, most of them were within a 2 month period. 

After we saw the beaches we went to Point du Hoc which is where the Nazis were fortified and served as a look out point over Omaha and Utah beaches. On D-Day, the British Air Force flew around France and attacked Point du Hoc so it looked like they were attacking from the South, within France to distract them from the attack on the beaches....

So that's the REALLY abbreviated version of what I've been up to. I miss you all! 

Nationwide Protest

As is normal everytime the French decide that they're upset, they protest. Normally though it's just one sector of the society - teachers, public transit workers, the post office, or something like that. Today has been dubbed "black thursday" because nearly every major sector in France is protesting. They're worried about job insecurity. Personally, and maybe this is just because I'm American, but you'd think that protesting wouldn't really help because the companies would fire them and just hire different people. But that's just me. If you're at all interested, here's an article from cnn.com.

The other night my host mom and I were talking about how German is not a "beautiful language" and she was like "yeah but I'm biased because of the German occupation" and then proceeded to tell me about her experience during the Nazi occupation! I was really surprised - I knew she lived through it and must remember it but didn't think that I should ask. But it was really cool and sad. She was 7 or 8 and had to shelter Nazis in her house because it had enough room for several of them - and her house became like Nazi headquarters for her town. But then she was like "I remember when the Americans came to liberate us; my mom had old curtains that were in blue and red and we made little French flags and gave them to the American soldiers as they walked past our house." And then she was like "it was really cool because we'd see them all over town, getting their haircuts or something" lol. She said she kept in touch with a few of them and they sent her gum and cigarettes until she turned 18 - even though they were only in her little town for 2 days or so. But I thought that was really cool (and sad obviously, that she had Nazis in her house).

Other than that not a lot is happening. I'm getting back into my classes which are alright. The class selection this semester sucks but I have enough classes so whatever. I miss you all!

The French take on the Inauguration

We officially have a new president. And of course, since the French were *such* fans of Bush (haha not really) they are all very excited that America has a new president. I didn't see the whole thing, but I did notice a few things that I found very interesting. 

1) Everytime someone said "Barack Obama" in English, the French translator would say "Barack Hussein Obama"

2) They showed George Bush leaving the White House via helicopter and then promptly stopped talking about him - that was their way of saying goodbye, I guess. 

3) Miss France, who is of a mixed heritage, was in Washington to see the inauguration and started crying and really couldn't say more than three words. It was quite amusing watching the reporter handle that

4) The news showed a black and white picture of Superman standing in front of an American flag and superimposed an image of Obama's face on it - with the caption "Un nouveau Amèrique" (A new America) and then the reporter said that nothing could shake Obama. Somehow I don't think that's true

and finally

5) In true French style, after the actual inauguration and speeches and all that jazz is over, they show pictures of the parties and all the famous political people and start discussing (and criticizing) the food choice for the dinners and lunches. 

It's been quite interesting over here today. I think all of France is glad that Obama's the president. We shall see how long that lasts. 

Retour à Nantes

I got back to Nantes yesterday. My flights were long and I barely made my connection to Paris in Amsterdam but I made it. I couldn't really do anything in Paris. I got my bag - it was one of the first ones off the plane, how weird! - and then I hung out at CDG/the train station until 3:45 when my train was supposed to leave. It was a few minutes late though. So I got to Nantes and unpacked and went to bed. It was very uneventful.

Today, though, I'm really tired. I'm still jetlagged and I didn't sleep well last night which surprised me! There was really strong winds last night and since I sleep on the top floor, they kept me up which was really annoying. I was laying in bed thinking to myself - why am I awake, I just want to sleep!!

I've only had one class so far today, grammaire, which was really easy (just for today though) and then later this afternoon I have French Romanticism which I didn't really want to take but I needed another class, so....yeah. Annoying. I might still find another class to take instead though. Anyway, that's all for now!