Where did the semester go?!

I'M DONE WITH FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe I come home in 2 days! It's crazy!!! The semester flew by! I had a ton of fun though, now all that's left is finish finding Christmas presents, packing and flying home!!! WOOHOO!!!

I love France but it doesn't seem like it's almost Christmas...plus I want to play in the snow!!

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!! 

So little time left!

There's only 10 days until I come home for Christmas! How crazy!!! Things here are going well. My host mom has been gone the past couple of days but is coming home today so that's good. On Saturday night I accidently left the back door open all night because I thought I had shut and locked it earlier in the day but as it turns out the door wasn't all the way closed so the wind blew it open and then it was open all night. Normally, not a huge deal because it hasn't been super cold until the past couple days -- but the high on Saturday was 30 and on Sunday was like 32 so it was FREEZING in my house. But it's gradually warming up again.

Last night I asked Sophie for help with grammar and she was able to answer most of my questions, although she had difficulty explaining some of it. Oh well, it was good anyway. So since I only have 10 days left, it means that I have finals!! This Friday I have grammar (which I'm totally afraid of). Monday I have art history and translation, Tuesday I have French lit (which I just found out should be pretty easy!) and then Wednesday I have off, and Thursday morning I have sociology and then I'm done! 

This semester has flown by! I can't believe it's almost over! I'm so glad I'm coming back! I love my host mom, and France - although I am ready for a break. :-) Only 10 days until I come home and 40-ish days until I come back! <3 

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas...

The Christmas decorations in Nantes are all up and lit and it's so pretty! Earlier today I went Christmas shopping - at first with friends but then they all had to go catch trains and planes, so I went by myself for the last little bit. I love it here - it's so beautiful!! I can't believe the semester's almost over!! I think tonight or tomorrow night I'm going to take my camera and take pictures of all the pretty lights - they're truly gorgeous! And I love the Christmas markets! There are two of them really close to my house and IES. Today I went and had lunch with Laura at the markets - I had Tarteflette which was really good. It's like sliced potatoes, cheese, meat and spices. Yummy! We ate on the steps outside of the FNAC - very French-young adult like. hahahaha. I'm starting to get ideas for people for Christmas which is good. The only weird thing about the Christmas markets - they don't play Christmas music. They play American music like Katy Perry, Jason Mraz and on occassion French rap....it kind of makes it seem fake. Maybe next time I'll bring my iPod and listen to Christmas music on that, lol. 

My host mom is going to be gone this weekend but she said when she gets back she'll probably decorate a little bit. She also offered to take me to her neighbor's house because they have an amazing nativity scene that she wants me to see! I know this is going to sound silly, but being in France around Christmas time sometimes feels like how you see Christmas portrayed in Love Actually or Harry Potter. Weird huh? It's obviously not exactly the same - I'm not in a massive city nor am I in England, but it has the same sort of feel, which I think is so cool!!! 

Next Friday is my grammar final - I'm so nervous for that! Lately I've been making silly mistakes - conjugating things wrong, forgetting accents, etc and I really really want to do well!!! We shall see how it goes....

Paris!

I forgot to write about my weekend in Paris....last weekend, after thanksgiving, I went with Erica, Anna and Alee to Paris for the weekend! It was good for the most part. Our hostel was awful but the actual seeing Paris part was really fun!!! Alee has friends in Paris so Friday night we ate at their house, but before that we wandered up and down the Champs and looked at all the lights, the window displays and the Christmas markets. It was soooo beautiful!! I took soooooo many pictures! I have 2 photo albums online and I didn't even post all of them! lol. So after the Champs, we went to Alee's friend's house and had dinner then back to the hostel. 

Saturday we got up and we saw Montmartre, Sacre Coeur -- which was really cool because they started putting up their Nativity Scene which was BEAUTIFUL. Then after Sacre Coeur we made our way over to Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter. Notre Dame was also gorgeous - it had a big tree with lights on it outside, and the inside had another amazing Nativity Scene. When we went to Notre Dame, actually, there was a service going on and they were singing Christmas carols and celebrating the beginning of Advent. After that we wandered around and then decided to go to Sainte Chapelle which was really pretty, but it wasn't super sunny so you couldn't appreciate it as much. Saturday night we went and saw the Eiffel Tower and night and took pictures - it was lit up blue with the EU stars on it because the French President Sarkozy is currently the head of the EU.  Then we went and ate dinner at this cute little restaurant nearby. Then we headed back to our hostel. 

So when we woke up both Saturday and Sunday we noticed that we had bug bites on us but didn't really think about it, until Saturday into Sunday when Erica and I woke up and had bugs all over us! it was DISGUSTING! We have since figured out that they were bed bugs and that all of us got bit even though we had our sleep sheets, our beds were apparently infested which is just NASTY! We all took really long showers and washed all of our clothes and now we're all paranoid about bugs. It was seriously GROSS. 

Sunday morning, we were going to go to the Jewish Quarter but it was rainy and gross so we decided to spend the whole day in the Louvre which was cool. We saw a lot of paintings we studied in Art History, the Mona Lisa, the Coronation of King Louis, and other cool paintings. We also saw Hamarabi's Code in the Egyptian exhibit which I thought was sooooooo cool! and we also saw Napoleon's apartments, Marie-Antoinette's last letter, King Louis' last letter and all sorts of really cool things. 

Here are pictures from Paris: album one and album two. 

ooh PS - I come home in 17 days! I love it here, but I'm excited to come home. It's weird seeing all of the Christmas decorations and trying to think of Christmas ideas for people - so if you have any ideas, please please let me know!!! <3 

Thanksgiving

I've decided that it's not really Thanksgiving if I have to go to school and I don't get a real Thanksgiving dinner. Wow that sounded really bratty...I could change it, but it's true. lol. Last Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving and I had to go to the Musée des Beaux Arts for art history and then had the longest, most boring lit class ever - which is saying something. But exciting news, in between my two horrible classes, I played football in the park!! Which was totally bad, I'm really not that good, but it was really fun -- but I was the best of the girls! lol. So instead of writing my paper, I played football in the park for an hour and a half. and my team won!!! It was amazing!! I still don't understand the rules really or anything, but still! And then I went back to my host mom's house and got ready for dinner. Madame Béchaux wanted to come but  couldn't because she had to watch her grandkids so I met Erica and we went together. It was interesting. Slightly depressing. The food was really really weird too....and then I got sick from dinner. Overall, not the best day....I miss you all!!

Pictures from Thanksgiving....

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