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!
