Woohoo!!

Today we celebrated November birthdays and whenever we celebrate birthdays, Madame Rouchet and Monsieur de Berranger recognize 5 students who they think did a good job of always speaking French - and I was one of those people! WOOHOO!! As a reward, I got 15 euros! lol. yay!! It's quite exciting, I think. :-D

The country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot come to that" an

I had SUCH an amazing weekend!!!!! On Thursday I skipped my last class and went to London to see Christina!! I got there late because the bus I was taking said it would take 45 minutes to get to where I wanted to be, but it really took 1 hour and 45 minutes and then I had to take the metro but between construction and a transit authority giving me bad directions, I ended up getting there like 2 hours later, but I made it! AND I SAW CHRISTINA AND SPENT THE WHOLE WEEKEND WITH HER!!!!!!!! It was amazing!! The first night we went and got dinner and watched "who wants to be a millionaire" in German. We, of course, didn't understand it but one of the answers was Tellytubby land. lol. So we had dinner, talked and then went to bed. 

Friday morning we got up, went and got coffee, and went walking through Hyde Park, saw Kensington Palace from a distance, went and saw this really cool statue in gold and stone but I don't remember the name, and then we went on a guided tour via Christina's travelbook and saw St. James's park, and got a little lost and ended up at the Stable Yard for the police where we asked for directions and the cop told us that we had a "truly dreadful, truly horrendous" map. haha. Then we wandered our way to Buckingham Palace where we thought someone famous was going to come out because there were guards everywhere and the Queen's flag was flying, but we think it was just the changing of the guard. It was cool, but it was also FREEZING cold and there were people everywhere, pushing, shoving, being rude, etc. But it was still fun to see!! Then we went on a walk through another park and had lunch and saw Parliament and Big Ben from afar. After that, we were tired and decided we wanted to go someplace warm so we wen tot Harrods and went shopping which was really fun. It's so easy to get lost in that store!! And then we wandered up and down Sloane Street (like the fashion street with all the designer stores) and then we headed back to our hotel, then headed back out towards Parliament and Big Ben so we could see those at night. 

We ended up eating at a little Italian restaurant right off of Trafalgar Square that had hamburgers and other food. Except by hamburgers, it was like beef and pork and funny tasting but that's okay. So we tok pictures of all the cool things at night and then tried to hail a cab but failed because they drive backwards so we were on the wrong side of the street -- we ended up taking the metro back. 

Saturday, we got up and took the metro to see Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Big Ben, and Trafalgar Square in the daylight which was cool. I took pictures at Westminster Abbey but not inside which, of course, was the coolest part. But we saw all these tombs and memorial stones for all these famous people -- the royals obviously, Sir Isaac Newton (da Vinci code anyone?), Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Jane Austen just to name a few! It was pretty cool!! And it was amazingly beautiful, I wish I could've taken pictures on the inside! After Westminster, we went and looked a Parliament and Big Ben before we went to St. Paul's Cathedral because Christina wanted to see the Room of Whispers but it cost 10 pounds to enter and we only wanted tos ee one room and so we decided it wasn't worth it. But we took pictures outside,  and then we walked to Shakespeare's Globe Theater, then to London Bridge and eventually to Tower Bridge. It was soooooo cold though! So on one side of the bridge we stopped and got tea, walked across the bridge and headed to Tower Hill. We got there before it closed, but we only had 30 minutes and we wanted to make sure we had enough time to explore  everything so we got tickets for Sunday morning and then headed back to Trafalgar Square so we could see the National Gallery. 

We weren't at the gallery for very long, but it was cool! We saw the painting that Christina wrote her final art history paper on - which happens to be a painting that we just studied in my art history class, so that was cool. We also saw the pencil sketch by da Vinci of the Madonna and Jesus on a saint's lap. Apparently it was supposed to be a sketch for a painting, but he left it as its own piece of art. We wandered around for a little bit and I saw some of the other paintings that we talked about abut in art history. Then both of us decided that our feet hurt so we got dinner and went back to the hotel. 

Sunday morning we got a late start and we made our way to the Tower of London, which I really like! But, of course, you can't have a trip to London without rain, so as soon as we got off the metro, it was POURING rain. I had my really dinky umbrella, which helped a little, but for the most part we still ended up quite drenched. We saw the guards with the fuzzy hats, and the crown jewels and we were going to go see bloody tour but we thought we might not have time to go do other things before I had to go and catch my plane so we didn't end up seeing it. Afterwards, though, we went to Kings Cross station and Platform 9 and 3/4 and took pictures!

Then I had to leave to go to the airport. I had issues getting home -- which is a whole long story which I don't really feel like typing. But I had a FANTASTICALLY AMAZING TIME!!!!!!!!!!! :-D I miss you all, and I come home in about 3 weeks so I'll hopefully get to see you soon!! 

Here are my pictures from London with Christina!!

Grammar, Love Actually, Strike and London!

So I took my grammar midterm today - I'm not sure how it went....more importantly tomorrow is exactly 5 weeks til Christmas which means that I could start watching Love Actually! AAAANNND even more important than that, CHRISTINA'S COMING!!! WOOOHOOOOO!!! I'm so excited! So tomorrow I'm going to London (baby!!!) the only slight kink in the plans is that there's a TAN (public transit) strike tomorrow so I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to get to the airport. I think I'm going to ask my host mom and if that doesn't work then I'll end up taking a taxi which is going to be horrendously expensive so I hope that doesn't happen!! I miss you all! 

Carte de Séjour

I finally have my carte de séjour! woohoo! I never have to go back to the prefacture again!! woohoo!! I'm quite excited! :-D Sorry this is so short but I thought I'd share....miss you all!

Marseille, Arles and Avignon

Friday through Tuesday we had a five day break (as a type of fall break thing) and classes started again on Wednesday. I went to Marseille, Arles and Avignon with Amy, Emily E., Minsoo and Danielle which was interesting. Our group consisted of really quiet people and really outspoken people so it made for an interesting dynamic - and since we never split into smaller groups, there was some tense moments, but it was really fun!

On Friday morning, I took the TGV to Marseille and we got there early afternoon. We checked into our hostel and then decided to go wander around. We weren't very far from the train station or the Old Port so we decided to go to the Old Port and look around. It's so cool! There were a ton of boats (obviously) and there was a fish market and it was so cool! I can definitely see why Marseille became such a big city! I thought it was really cool, too, to see the differences between Nantes and Marseille. Marseille is on the Mediterranean so it has a more diverse population but the architecture and colors of everything are so different! The colors are warmer - more oranges, reds, and warm earthy colors and the buildings are taller (probably because it's a bigger city). And the style of architecture is more...adobe like in certain parts and then other parts it's closer to Nantes. I made the dumb mistake of saying (without thinking, of course) that it looks more Mediterranean than Nantes does...well duh! I felt like an idiot...haha. After visiting the old port a little bit and wandering around, we still had some time to kill before we could check into our hostel so we went to this tiny beach and I stuck my feet in the Mediterranean Sea! We hung out there for an hour, taking pictures, looking at sea shells and jumping waves :-) 

Then on Saturday we decided that we were going to go see the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde which over looks the Naval Port which we saw the day before. It was amazing!! The inside of the basilica was gorgeous and then it was sitting up on one of the highest hills so it has a view of the whole city, the Mediterranean and beyond! I took lots of pictures! That night we took a TGV to Arles which I think was my favorite city that we visited. It's a lot smaller than Marseille and slightly smaller than Nantes so it was really different. But it was really cool because it has a whole bunch of Roman ruins that are really well-preserved! When we got there it was night so we just got some dinner at the Kebabery (spelling?) down the street and then went to bed. The next day after we had breakfast we went to the tourism office and got maps and bought a day pass to go see the roman ruins since the museums were all closed. We went to the ancient theater first which was really cool but we had to go back later because when we got there it was closed. But when we went back, we went inside and looked around instead of just looking from the outside. And I climbed up on the old stage and stood on some of the ruins even though I wasn't supposed too - although to be fair, other people were doing it too and no one was watching...although I sound a lot cooler if I don't say that part. haha. Anyway, between our first and second visit to the ancient theater we went and got some groceries then we headed to the old amphitheater where we ended up eating lunch. It was cool - not as big as the Coliseum in Rome, but better preserved. And apparently at one time when Arles was under a threat, they fortified the walls of the amphitheater and moved the whole city inside! The amphitheater was big, but not big enough where I can imagine fitting a whole city! After the amphitheater and the ancient theater we went to the roman baths which were all hyped up by the tourism office - they were cool but not as cool as everyone made it out to be. It was small and not that exciting, sort of a disappointment. Then we went to the old graveyard which was pretty cool. 

While we were in Arles, we also saw a whole bunch of things that had to do with Van Gogh because he lived and painted there for awhile. I found this particularly interesting (more interesting than the other girls who I was traveling with) because I had just been in Amsterdam and seen most of his art in the museum, so I've officially made the Van Gogh tour. It was really cool though because we got to see the Van Gogh Café which is in his painting of "the Night Café" and I took a picture from the same point of view as the painting - it didn't look the same though haha. We also saw the stone that said where he house (the yellow house) once stood, but during WWII it was bombed and destroyed. Then we took the TGV again, this time to Avignon.

I didn't find Avignon particularly cool - I liked it but I saw it four years ago with my school group and I kind of wish I didn't go on this part, because by then my patience was wearing thin, and I had already seen everything so I was bored. But it was still cool. I took pictures - we saw the Palais des Papes where the Popes lived when there was division in the Catholic church and some popes moved to France. We also saw the Pont d'Avignon which is a half-bridge that got destroyed in a military thing, was rebuilt and was about to fall into the river and they fortified half of it before the rest of it fell and then they never rebuilt the rest. After that we saw a cute little park and some cool rock formations (I can't remember the name) and then went back to the train station to take the night train from Avignon to Lyon to Nantes. Avignon was cool though because the hostel that we stayed in was literally right across the river from the Palais and the bridge so at night you could see it from our window. 

During my 5 day adventure I took lots of pictures and now I have (once again) two albums: the first one and the second one. I have pictures of Marseille in the first one, Arles in both, and Avignon in the second one. 

Pictures from Amsterdam

Erica and I behind the counter of a Dutch restaurant where they were serving a traditional Dutch thing -- fries with mayonnaise. I tried it and didn't like it, but still, I tried!

Erica and me in front of the bikes and canals. 

I'm in a clog!!! hahahaha

Here are my pictures from Amsterdam (as well as some pictures that my friend took of me on her camera above).

Amsterdam & the election

Last weekend I had Friday off, so I went to Amsterdam with Erica and Alee. Alee left Friday morning while Erica and I left Thursday night. It was really fun!! The first night Erica and I stayed in a hostel that was surprisingly nice and clean. The next day (Friday/Halloween) Erica and I met Alee at the Anee Frank house which was really cool but depressing! I always thought that the Anne Frank house would be like really small cause I always pictured her staying in like a closet with 8 other people, but as it turns out, the part of the house/store where she stayed was really big! I was surprised -- not that I would want to be couped up in a house for two years, but still. I was surprised. It was cool but kind of a Debbie Downer. oh well. So after that we went to go get lunch and then we wandered around and took pictures. We found a cookie bar which served really yummy cakes and cookies, tea and hot chocolate and had a wine cellar which is just weird, but it was really cool. The architecture was amazing, it was very European, small, cozy and quaint (yes I did just use the word quaint). After the cookie bar, Erica and I went to meet Maurits, her friend who lives in Amsterdam, at his house.

Oh my goodness, his house is amazing! It was really old, had amazing architecture and he had a library!! And Erica and I didn't just get to stay in the guest room, we had essentially the whole floor to ourselves, it was really cool. So Friday night was Halloween and one of Maurits' friends was having a halloween party so we went out to a bar and then to the Halloween party where we stayed until like 4:45 in the morning and then went back to his house. The next day we slept until about 10 and then we went to go see the Saturday market kind of thing which was really cool. After that we wandered around and took pictures and his dad got us tickets for a canal tour so we went on a canal tour which was really cool! We saw all these historic buildings, and there was one part of the trip where we saw seven bridges that go over the same canal (which is supposedly really rare because the canals turn so much) so that was really cool! After that we went back to his house for dinner then we left again because it was museum night in Amsterdam.

Museum night is when (if you have tickets) all the museums are open and you can go to which ever museum you want, so that was really cool. We saw a whole bunch of museums whos' names I can't remember right now. I wrote them down but I don't have the list with me. The last museum we went to that night was the Van Gogh museum but by the time we got there it was closed so we went to a bar and then home. Then Sunday morning we got up early and went to the Van Gogh museum quickly before having to catch the train back to France.

I have lots of pictures, and I'll post the link to them later.

So as I'm sure you all know (unless you've been hiding under a rock, lol) Obama won the election. The French are going completely crazy. Well not really, but they're all really happy that he won, which makes life easier for me. I'm really glad it's all over now though because I was sick of trying to explain the American electoral process to them without the necessary vocabulary and even if I did, they wouldn't understand it anyway -- they all think it's way to complicated. So anyway, I'm glad that that's over.

Oh and I went to the Prefacture again yesterday (where I get my carte de sejour) and they told me to come back sometime after 28/10 so I decided to go back yesterday and I took my receipt and everything and they told me it wasn't ready, they didn't have it and to come back after the 13th of November. How dumb!! If they don't give it to me soon, then I can't re-enter the country after Christmas! And I'm getting really annoyed because they keep promising me that the next time I come I can get it, but they keep lying. So in total I've been to the Prefacture 10 times (once for the actual request, four times for my name and five times because they keep telling me to come back to get my carte de sejour). I'm getting really irritated, but whatever. Hopefully I'll get my carte de sejour before my visa expires. Although I know it doesn't expire until the first of December so I have until then to get it otherwise once I leave France I can't come back! :-(

I miss you all and hope you're doing well!