La prefecture ou l'ambassade

The one thing that lasted past the end of the semester was the process of my spring 2015 student visa.

I'd been accepted to the GW Paris Sciences Po program, and since I jump at an opportunity to return to France every time it's offered to me, I accepted my offer of admission and then awkwardly explained to George Washington University's study abroad office that I couldn't go to the pre-departure orientation meetings because I was not in the country.  I also asked immediately for any and all paperwork that I needed, because I hadn't planned earlier for my spring semester and my fall visa expired on the first of January, 2015.

GW sent me my acceptance letter and told me to start the process for the visa extension as soon as possible.  So obviously, I put it off for about a month and a half.

I finally asked IES and was told to head over to the prefecture, and after a little searching, I found the prefecture and walked right in and said I was there to extend a student visa.  I was told that the visa office was closed and I would need to come back the next day, at either 8 in the morning or about 1pm, to wait for it to open again.

My next attempt at extending the visa came several days later when I walked back to the prefecture with the intention of getting a list of required materials.  Just a list, I told myself.  I just need that list of papers that I need.  I'd looked online for lists, and all of them involved OFII applications and copies of my birth certificate and official translations of said birth certificate.  I emailed my parents with the lists and asked them to send scans while I tried to organize the real list.

I arrived in the prefecture and was told to come back the next day because the office was closed.  I insisted that I just wanted a list of materials.  Just a list, nothing more.  The woman at the desk repeated that I would need to come back the next day.

When I arrived the next day, I had a plan in mind.  I walked into the prefecture, took a number, and waited.  After just a few minutes, my number was called and I explained that I wanted.

The woman very gently informed me that I was in the office for car registration.

As I left, I asked again what time the office opened.  The woman at the desk told me with a smirk that it was already open, but then when I clarified that I wanted to know what time it opened the next day, I was told 8am or 1:30pm.

"What time does the line start for the one thirty opening?"  I asked.

"About noon."

The next day, I got to the prefecture at 11:20am and navigated a police barricade before settling myself at the head of the line for the visa offices.  I sat there, with a freshly downloaded album from Noisetrade on repeat, and waited until the office door was opened at 1pm.  With the rest of the line, I rushed into the second waiting room before being allowed to draw a number at 1:30pm.

At 2pm, I finally reached the desk, operated by the nicest embassy/prefecture/DMV worker I've ever encountered.  He'd been around for the past hour, organizing the line and yelling at people who weren't letting a woman with her tiny baby through the line.

I explained to him that I needed to extend a student visa, and after examining my passport, he told me that it was impossible to extend the sort of visa that I'd been given.  He took a fresh piece of paper and started writing down lists and addresses--he told me that I had to apply in writing to an address in Rennes--probably the consulate--because my visa required that I return home before it expired.  I assured him that I was indeed going home, and with a relieved sigh, he tore his list in two and told me to just apply for a new visa in the embassy in the states.

"It's so much simpler," he told me three times, and I ran out of the prefecture and made it to my 2:30pm theatre class in time.

I had already done this deal before--going from being abroad with a ticket home to being abroad with a rearranged ticket to DC so I could get that visa appointment.  I booked my appointment and my parents and I started sending things and submitting money orders.  CampusFrance took time and I started to get nervous when they didn't send me confirmation emails, but otherwise it was straightforward--I'd already done it all before.

My flight was changed from Nantes-->Paris-->London-->Seattle to Nantes-->Paris-->Detroit-->DC and my mom sent all the necessary papers to the hotel.

On the 22nd, I found myself standing outside the French embassy at 8:30am, waiting for the embassy to open so I could get to my 8:45am appointment.  I was let in just a little late and then grabbed the first number, popped up to the window when I was called, and then handed my papers to the man at the window just as fast as he asked for them.  I remembered my first visa appointment, where processing took time and I had to wait for maybe two hours in between being called to the window, being given another number, and waiting again.

I was given a form to sign, one that said that I acknowledged my passport could take up to three months to be processed, especially for the long stay visa.

The man took all of my papers, handed back a few of them, and stapled my picture to the application form.

"All right, you're good to go," he said.

"That's all?"

"That's all."

He pressed a button and someone else was called to the window.  It was 9:15am.

I broke the embassy's door handle on the way out.

The day after Christmas, my passport arrived in the express envelope I'd provided at the embassy.  It had taken a mere two days.  (I assume no one was working on Christmas).

So I guess the whole message of this very long process (and very rambling blog post) is that you 1. shouldn't delay getting your visa, ever, and 2. shouldn't worry too much if you have all of your paperwork.

Le Meilleur du Meilleur

Best lemon-meringue tart:  Perfectly baked, sweet and sour, with glossy puffs of meringue perched on smooth lemon curd.  Found at Au Croissant d'Or bakery near the Copernic bus station.

Best "I hate myself" deal:  Four chocolate croissants for 2.40 euro.  La Grande Cafe, conveniently placed right as you leave the tram at the Commerce stop.

Best cafe: Tabl'o Gourmand forever and ever amen.  Go for the granola and the scrambled eggs for brunch, then the roasted duck with applesauce and goat cheese bagel for lunch, and then all of the baguette and crunchy nutella and spiced hot chocolate for a snack.

Best creperie: My host mom made the best savory crepes, hands down.  They were stuffed with sausage and goat cheese and egg and I loved them.  Second best, Grand-Mère Augustine in Bouffay with the creme-fraiche and smoked salmon special.

Rudest person I encountered: a man who told me how upset he was that I was a foreigner taking advantage of the French university system.  I would have been more insulted, but he was speaking French through the thickest British accent I've ever heard while he was telling me this.

Best class at university: I would say the Law of the European Union, but its only fault was being at 8:30am and lasting for three hours, so I choose the Latin American history course, which was the first time I took a class on that region, and I had the good fortune to have an incredibly articulate, funny professor who demanded order and respect in his classroom.

Best bookstore: Librairie Franklin, two stores over from the bakery with the perfect lemon tart, was the cutest--a tiny, crowded vintage bookstore with books stacked in piles in the middle of the room because the shelves were stuffed.  For actual navigation and selection of newer titles, Librairie Coiffard and its two stores across the street from each other takes the prize.

Best castle:  The castle at Blois, because its tiled floors were so insane and made me extremely dizzy.

Best dinner out: Curry chicken pizza at a pizzeria across from the castle.

Best dinner in: Dany made quiche and galettes and scrambled eggs and sauteed mushrooms and everything was always fantastic, but the galettes were the best. 

Best baguette: There was this one time that Jean-Luc brought a baguette from Trégastel, which is 3 hours to the north.  It was very good.  Also another time I followed a Carrefour employee who was carrying a crate of fresh baguettes into the store and I snagged one while it was still warm.

Best people-watching spot: The tram stop at the University/the steps outside the lecture hall at university.  Everyone's just standing around smoking so it's easy to make up fake backstories or take style tips.

Best wine:  Chinon Red 2013.  Bake it into fudge cakes.  Drink it.  Make your friends drink it.  Choose it over every other wine in a wine bar in Paris even though you know it already.  Save the labels from every bottle you buy.

Best baked creation: Those fantastic golden-brown puffed up choux pastries that I was making like crazy before I discovered the magic of pre-made puff pastry sheets.

Best tourist attraction: Natural History Museum.  Go in the middle of the day on a Friday for maximum "I'm alone in a museum full of dead things" factor.

Best Breakfast: Tabl'o Gourmand if we're talking in Nantes, but if we can extend to everywhere I went this semester, then the Swan at Shakespeare's Globe, because that's where I had my first full English, and I want another one.

Best Train: Most definitely the Orient Express, because it's the Orient Express with champagne and glossy compartments and welcoming, uniformed staff.  Second place is the TER commuter train, because I had a ton more legroom than on the TGV.

Bonus Round--Firsts:

• First train that I can actually remember (vague memories of trains in Virginia and stories of learning to walk on a train in New Zealand do not count)
• First hostel experience--but to be fair, we got a room for two people so we didn't really have the authentic experience.
• First time in the United Kingdom

Visite chez le médecin à la français

Everyone is sick.

Everyone in the IES program is ill in some fashion or another.  This past Monday, our theatre production included a Tinkerbell who was spending time between scenes sleeping off her fever, a clown who'd just recovered from walking pneumonia, an antiques dealer with a cough, and an assortment of other coughs and headaches and ailments.

I was the mechanical doll with the ear infection.

I woke up on Sunday unable to hear out of my left ear, much like I was on an airplane.  I tried yawning and standing on my head, to no effect, and went through Sunday and Monday feeling off-balanced.  On Tuesday, I sent a Facebook message to Jennifer, my favorite daughter-of-an-ear-and-throat-doctor.  However, my host mom insisted I go the doctor, and after stopping by IES on Wednesday, I booked an appointment for that afternoon.

The doctor I went to see met me in an office--an office like a business office.  The walls were decorated with architectural drawings of opera houses and paintings of the Egyptian goddess Isis.  The doctor himself wore a suit; no white coat here.  He spoke English to me, which absolutely helped, because a healthcare situation is one of the situations in which you want to hear your native tongue.

After the quickest examination ever, he informed me that I did indeed have a small ear infection and he then wrote me up a prescription and, after noticing my solemn expression, assured me that I was not going to die.

I walked a block to the pharmacy and presented the prescription to the woman behind the counter, and in five minutes I walked out with cough syrup, ibuprofen, and an antibiotic.  Of course, when I got home, I decided to do some internet sleuthing to see how the prices compared, because we make a big deal out of socialized medicine and healthcare and I just wanted to see how much I'd saved.  As it turns out, while a ten minute doctor's appointment for a small issue in the states costs $68, I got my twenty minute doctor's appointment for a small issue and all three of my medications for about $46.  I don't even live here permanently, but thanks France.  In the states I'm pretty sure I would have let it go unless I was legitimately going deaf.

Un week-end à Paris

I spent the weekend in Paris.

It was supposed to be a sort of quiet adventure and I was supposed to find the Sciences Po campus and talk a lot with Ashley, who would be meeting me there after a flight from Madrid.  It half-turned out that way.

The week before, I received the most casual Facebook message from Jennifer:

"Coming to visit you and Ash in Paris"

So we haphazardly planned to meet but didn't come to a real conclusion, but despite the vague nature of our plans, I made a dark chocolate fudge red wine cake and an apple tarte tatin and when Friday rolled around, I packed my backpack, wrapped the baked goods in foil, and got on a TGV to Paris.  I navigated the Paris metro in the very basic way--by riding lines to the end and transferring at large hubs.  The hostel that I'd booked for myself and Ashley was close to the Bastille stop, and I passed the opera house and an enormous pillar of a monument before I reached the side street of the hostel.  I'd booked a room for two so that we could sleep when wanted and also make as much noise laughing and watching TV or what have you as well as eliminate most of the creepy factor that scares me away from hostels.  I checked in and sat on the top bunk for about an hour before Ashley appeared.  I stuffed apple pie down her throat, hugged her, and then we headed back out to explore.

Our Friday evening consisted of a sort of lazy wandering up and down the street, scouting out stores and cafes to check out the next day and catching up on everything that had happened in our lives since she headed off to New Zealand and I went to Morocco.  It was a lot to talk about and we bought sandwiches and a bottle of cider and talked some more back at the hostel.

The next day, we rolled out of bed and went shopping.  After heading immediately to a sort of vintage pin-up shop at which we tried on all the dresses and chatted with the amiable storekeeper, we just sort of headed down the street and popped into every store that we took a liking to, all the while continuing to talk.  We bought more sandwiches for lunch and after dropping our purchases off at the hostel, we decided to get on the metro and see more of central Paris, or what we always thought Paris was--the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysees, the Louvre.

We rode the metro to the Champs Elysees stop, fully expecting to wander down the street to the Louvre perhaps, or l'Arc de Triomphe, but instead when we emerged from the station, we looked past the statue of Charles de Gaulle and were greeted by an expansive, sparking, and crowded Christmas market.

We immediately got ourselves cups of hot wine, and then set out to take in as much of the market as we possibly could.  There were jewelry stands, leather bound journals, all sorts of foods and candies and silly looking hoods from Canada and it was incredible.  We reached the Louvre, turned around, and then went though the other side of the market, munching on crepes and merveilleux and marveling at everything we laid our eyes on.

The next morning, we found breakfast in a cafe close to the hostel: pain au chocolat, orange juice, a hot drink--and then proceeded to browse the bookstores that happened to be open on a Sunday before returning to the hostel to meet Jennifer.

We ate and then went straight back to the Champs Elysees metro stop, where we returned to the Christmas market and then to the Louvre.

I have only been to Paris once before, and it was for one day, and it was a Tuesday, and so the Louvre was closed.  This time, however, it was definitely not closed, and the line was nearly non-existent, and so we went.

The Louvre is breathtaking, from the vaulted ceilings to the famous art pieces that you've studied in classes from middle school to university, to the sculptures that figure into the glossy coffee table books that you find at bookstores.  Michelangelo's slaves, Winged Victory, Venus de Milo...we must have seen 10% of the museum before becoming achy and hungry.  It will be a goal for me during the semester there to see the rest of the place.  We returned to the Christmas market for dinner (baked potatoes and crepes and mushroom-chicken pastry), wine (I convinced them to try Chinon red, from the Loire valley), and more talking.

The weekend was a much needed pick-me-up--I got to see some of my favorite people, I got to explore the city that will be my hope for five months, and I experienced the beautiful Paris Christmas market.  Also, I didn't touch a fork the whole weekend, sustaining myself on pastries and crepes and apple pie and chocolate cake and waffles and one cheeseburger.

Un week-end à Blois

This past weekend I went to Blois and I experienced another type of train in the process.

Blois is a small, old town to the east of Nantes, and you can take the TER train there, which is a ride of roughly two hours.  Like on the TGV, I sprung for first class because I like having a whole row to myself, and on the TER like on the TGV, you can get solo seats.  Quite frankly, the TER first class is nicer than the TGV first class--the solo seats are divided by little plastic walls, there are places to hang coats in  between each seat, and room for your bag right behind the seat so you don't have to leave it in the communal baggage area where it might get squished.  Also, I was carrying eight pears in my bag and so I was more concerned about bags getting squished than the average passenger.  I wrote plenty on the train there, and had a great time looking out the windows, since I'd taken a train at 11:18am and not after sunset like my TGV experience.

When I arrived in Blois, it was 1pm and I'd already been warned by TripAdvisor that not only could I not check in to the hotel I'd booked before 5pm, but the hotel itself was pretty much locked until that time.  I decided to take as long as I could to actually find the hotel, maybe eat something, and also scout out my touristy options in the area for the next four days.  I walked around Blois, finding a large shopping center, two nice parks, dozens of signs pointing to the castle, and finally the hotel.  I found it at 2:30pm, pushed on the front door, and, finding it to be indeed locked, I headed up the road and found that I'd made a circle to the train station, so I sat myself in a cafe and stayed there for two and a half hours, making a lemon tart and a double espresso last as long as I could.  I finished reading a book there, too, Reves de Femmes: Une Enfance au Harem, that I'd picked up in Morocco.

At five, I got myself back to the hotel, checked in, and spent the rest of the night watching French TV and writing.

Saturday morning I woke up early and rushed off to the castle, to find that I was pretty much the first person there and that the art museum wing of the structure was closed for the week.  The Chateau at Blois puts a lot of emphasis on architecture of the era on the first floor and holds an immense amount of artifacts in the royal apartments.  The most interesting part of the chateau, and the part that is the most different from the rest of the castles that I've seen in France, is the dizzying tile patterns on the floors.  They are truly incredible and make you feel a little like you're in Wonderland.

After the castle, I walked down a long staircase to find that there was a street market going on!  I love markets maybe almost more than any other type of tourist activity.  I walked as slowly as possible, circling the market three times and finding the Blois natural history museum.

Thinking this was a good idea, I entered and tried to buy a ticket, only to be told that I would have to make the rounds in half an hour and that I should come back after I was full of food and happy.  So I went back to the market and acquired chicken couscous, chebekia, and little sugared brioche bites, which I ate at the hotel.

The natural history museum was very different from the Nantes one.  Firstly, it was tiny, its temporary exhibit featured enormous replicas of all the bugs found in the WWI trenches, and also it was poorly lit and had forest noises playing, which made it insanely creepy.

The Maison de Magie was closed, and so I found myself shopping instead, and I ended up with more books (someone help me).

That whole day I'd been checking my phone to see if I was spending a good amount of time at every destination, and when I was sitting in the room that evening, I realized that I just really, really wanted to be back at Nantes.  I wanted to be in my own room, with easy access to tea.

The next morning, I changed my ticket from Tuesday to Sunday night.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get a refund on the hotel room, but it was a dirt cheap hotel and I took really long showers to make up for it.  I walked around in the morning to find everything closed, then got to the station, got on the train, and went back to home base.

Dany was panicked when I came through the door, but after assuring her I wasn't sick, just lonely, she calmed down.  She'd in fact warned me about that, about being too lonely and bored in Blois, and she was happy to see me.

In a bonus for coming back early, it turned out that university classes were held today.  It's very odd because the university had vacation when IES didn't and IES has vacation when the university still has classes, which is confusing and a little frustrating, but at least I came back in time.

Un long week-end à Londres

So I spent the weekend in London with Jess after arriving in Victoria station on the British Pullman.  On the first night, we went with two of her friends to a real pub, so I checked that off the list.  I wanted some Irish coffee, but they were out of coffee, so I just stole sips of Jess's beer and shared pulled pork quesadillas with her.  After, we did some awkward grocery shopping: lemon cakes and yogurt and wine.

The next morning we caught the tube to Camden Market, where we ate pierogis, browsed a bookstore, and then got lattes and shopped more.  I acquired two items of clothing, both of which feature an owl pattern.  I also talked Jess into getting an enormous leather journal with a scary engraved pentagram on the cover.

We dropped our things off at her flat, put on tights, did our hair, and rushed off to tea at the Swan at Shakespeare's Globe.  On the way there, we found a man clicking away at a typewriter alongside the river, next to street performers.  The sign in front of his mint green typewriter read:

Literature While You Wait: short stories, poems, suicide notes.  Pay what you goddamn like.

I would not shut up about it as we reached the restaurant.

Tea was the usual tiny sandwiches, scones, and little sweets including a citrusy custard we couldn't identify (pineapple) and the darkest chocolate cake bite.  It was so rich it almost made me sick.  It took a while to get the check, but then once we did, we walked back along the river and I pestered Jess enough that we finally went back to the literature-while-you-wait guy.  After he explained it, I asked for a poem and we were told to wait for ten to fifteen minutes.  We walked around, passed several of London's floating chair people, and one accordion player playing right under a No Busking sign.  The typist eventually found us and told us that my poem was done, so I bought a poem for three pounds about missed connections in an art gallery.

We ordered Chinese food that night, popped the Orient Express champagne, and started our new novels.

The next morning, we woke up with every intention of doing tourist things in London!  Yes, we declared.  Today we will see Saint Paul's Cathedral and also maybe the British Museum.  Yes, good.  We debated for all of five minutes before we agreed that we did not in fact want to take a tour and instead we wanted food, so we made a quick reservation at the Swan, pulled our clothes on, and ran over for breakfast.  I had my first full English breakfast, Jess had eggs Benedict, and we both had mimosas, which masquerade under the name "Bucks Fizz" in the UK, apparently.  We returned to her flat after food, changed back into pajamas, and wrote.

That night, Leah showed up and we ordered Chinese food and wrote and discussed politics and it all felt very West Hall from last year.

I ended my weekend with another writing sprint the next morning and then I got on the last train of the weekend, which took me to Heathrow Airport.  The last exciting aspect of the trip was that I had the whole row to myself on the plane to Madrid and that I set foot in Spain, but it was only for two hours.

And next weekend is vacation too.

Un Voyage de luxe

This past weekend was my grand vacation.  It was incredible and exhausting and this post is going to have to detail the fact that I was on five different kinds of trains--four of them within 24 hours.

Now, I have little to no experience on trains.  Supposedly I learned to walk on a train in New Zealand, but I don't remember that.  I have very vague memories of being on a train to Virginia that was very late and had a few drunk businessmen on it.  In any case, this was the first time that I truly remember being on a train.

I left Nantes at 6pm from the Gare SNCF on a TGV (Train à grande vitesse/super fast train).  I'd sprung for first class on the train and booked a solo seat because if there are things I enjoy, it's wide, cushy chairs and being alone in a row on transportation so I don't have to bother other people to get up.

There were very few people on the train and it was very quiet, so I wrote a lot, read a little, and tried to look out the window, but it was dark already, so I ended up just looking awkwardly at my own reflection.  The train arrived at the Paris Montparnasse station and I had to take the metro to Gare de l'Est, which was actually very easy, except I think I broke the ticket selling kiosk.

The next morning, I had a ticket for the Orient Express.

It's not the same Orient Express that ran in the 20s since that train was sold at auction, but someone bought those cars and now the train runs anew.  There is a car on the train that was used as a brothel in WWII and everything is very old and very fancy.  I found that it existed after a short trip through Google and then realized that one of their Paris-London trips coincided with a long weekend when I had been planning on visiting Jess and Leah up in the UK.

I spent the night at a Holiday Inn right across the street from the station before getting up early and heading to the platform for check in at 8:30am, an hour before departure as was recommended.  The train was already waiting when I arrived--it was deep, glossy blue, with lettering in brass.  I was given my tickets and travel documents before a woman named Nastasia led me to the cafe to wait for my compartment to be ready.  She escorted me back to the train where I met the manager of the car, Pierre, who was dressed in a white double-breasted coat.  I'd written that the purpose of my journey was to celebrate my letter of admission to Sciences Po.  If you tell the Orient Express that you are celebrating something, I suppose they tell the entire staff, because everyone from a very distinguished tour guide to the stewards in their bright blue suits with their round blue hats congratulated me.

I had the 10:30am breakfast sitting, so I headed out of my private cabin early and ran across a tour and just sort of pretended that I belonged there, which allowed me to learn more about the history of the train.  Breakfast was actually brunch which was actually more like lunch.  I struggled with the scrambled eggs because I didn't know which fork to use, but it was delicious and topped with smoked salmon.

I love smoked salmon.

The second course was lobster with mashed potatoes and then the meal finished with caramelized apple cake and vanilla ice cream.  One super benefit of travelling by yourself is that every table got five chocolates, no matter how many people were sitting there, and so I got to eat all five of them.

We arrived in Calais at around 2:30pm, ready for our transfer to the coach buses that would take us through the tunnel.  I count the tunnel train, which could hold all of our coach buses, as the third train.  It was uneventful, but I was tucked away in a bus.

The fourth train was the British Pullman, a sister train of the Orient Express.  On this train, we had an afternoon tea: sandwiches, scones, and little cakes.

Some of the sandwiches were smoked salmon.

I arrived in Victoria Station in London, about an hour later than expected, and before my phone died I was furiously Facebook-messaging Jess, and fortunately she found me, put me on the tube, and we got to her place and even had the energy to leave again to go to a pub that night.

That was a lot of trains.  You can even count the Paris metro and the London tube as trains too, and then there were even more.

Que les week-ends sont belles!

Last weekend, after the mad dash around Nantes with Jess, I left at 7am the next morning to meet with the IES crew to explore Les Chateaux de la Loire, or four of the many castles that line the Loire river.  The bus ride was long and mostly during sunrise, which meant sun in our faces, but at least it woke me up enough in time to experience the castles.

Our first stop was Azay-le-Rideau, a relatively small castle tucked into the middle of a little town of winding roads that didn't necessarily facilitate the large bus that we were taking, but our driver managed beautifully.  Azay-le-Rideau is mostly characterized by its open, Italian style staircase.  It's an Italian staircase because it's one of the early examples in France of a straight staircase with little landings between floors and not just a spiral staircase.  The castle is surrounded by water mirrors-- a sort of decorative moat, and mostly park-like gardens.  There was a chapel at the back but we weren't allowed in there.  Our tour was audio guided and we all wandered through the hallways and skinny staircases and high attics with those little radio devices pressed uncomfortably to our ears.  One of the audio track inexplicably held nothing but a Renaissance love poem read by an Irish woman.

Our next stop was the castle, but more importantly the gardens at Villandry.  These gardens are perfectly pruned--with square hedges and labyrinths and gorgeous blooms.  We tried to get into the castle but we were unfortunately right behind a large group and were directed to the gardens instead.  At the tail end of our visit, my group of friends dashed back to the castle and zipped through the rooms in record time, taking a handful of pictures and getting back to the bus early, ready to continue on to Tours.

Tours was where we were sleeping that night, and we had about three hours to explore it between check in and dinner, which we used to exclaim over the Star Wars-esque tram lights, to search for batteries, and to explore a very beautiful cathedral.

The next morning, we popped over to Amboise, where we had a guided tour of the castle and free time in the gardens and the surrounding town.  No one had bothered to mention to us that not only did Nantes's favorite, Anne de Bretagne, live in the castle for a period, but that Leonardo da Vinci was casually buried in the tiny chapel.

Our last castle for the weekend was Chenonceau, which I'm pretty sure was the largest of the four.  There was the castle, the enormous gardens, the river, the 17th century farm, the labyrinth, the flower garden, and the donkey park.  Sydney was most intrigued by the donkey park because she wasn't exactly sure if there were donkeys there.  Spoiler alert: the donkeys were there and they were adorable.

This weekend, I stayed in Nantes.  This Friday, I headed to the IES center to learn how to make soufflés and then had breakfast on Saturday at Tabl'o Gourmand, which is fast becoming my go-to place for breakfast/snack/coffee/atmosphere.  It's just so unhurried and welcoming, with stacks of books and games which give the general idea that you should be in no hurry to leave your table, so just kick back and take your time.

After that, Miel and I walked up alongside tram ligne 3 until we found Place Viarme, where the Nantes flea market is located.  This is the sort of flea market mostly full of antiques, shattered bits of violins, old ivory-handled canes, creepy dolls, and boxes of books.  Miel and I sifted through boxes of ancient post-cards and I had to be talked out of buying a book on economics because the book happened to be in Greek.  As I learned, while haggling in Morocco can be aggressive and harrowing (and haggling in Senegal can be traumatizing), haggling in Nantes consisted mostly of acting skeptical of the price and being hesitant to buy.  In the end, I walked away with two old post cards and no books in Greek.

Yesterday I had a cooking class with one of the IES program host families; four students in one little kitchen making a three course lunch.  We ended up with goat cheese and sausage and grapefruit-rose wine cocktails for an aperitif, goat cheese samosas for appetizers, then mushroom risotto and sausages for lunch, followed by four types of cheese and then an apple and banana cake.  We ate and ate and then talked politics and drank coffee as the host father smoked about five cigarettes in the course of an hour.  It all felt very, very French, and I'm going to have to make that cake again.

En jouant l'hotesse

Sometime at the beginning of my stay here in Nantes, Jess emailed me and said she was coming to visit on the 16th of October and that she would stay for the weekend. Unfortunately, I was going on a weekend trip with IES that weekend; one of those excursions included in tuition, so I was clearly obligated to go.

That meant I had one day to show Jess Nantes.

I asked around that Tuesday at conversation club, demanding of all the native Nantes students:

"If you had one day to show someone Nantes, what would you do?"

To which they all responded.

"That's not enough time."

Nevertheless, I penciled in the castle, and then decided to hope for the best.

On Thursday, the 16th, Jess arrived at the train station at 9:30pm and once we were home I shoved quiche, pain au chocolat, and the rest of the cream puffs in her direction.

The next morning saw us getting up early and heading to Tabl'o Gourmand, which has become mostly my go-to breakfast joint. This time, I was wise enough not to choose the enormous brunch and instead had a bowl of granola. After this, we crossed town to the castle, moseyed around there for a few moments before deciding not to spend the five euro for the museum. Le Select, a cafe-bar-restaurant happens to be right across the street from the castle, so we stopped for a coffee and tea.

We crossed town again to the bakery near the opera house at Place Graslin, where Jess got the tiny chocolate mousse dessert that she'd been coveting since my Facebook post of it and I got what was essentially a piece of French toast covered in sugar and chocolate chips. After this, we decided to hit up the museum of natural history, because if there's one thing you want to do on a Friday afternoon, it's spend time in a huge building of dead things. As it turned out, we were literally the only people in the museum. This clearly allowed us to commandeer the children's room, where we spent a good chunk of time coloring.

The end of our visit to the museum saw us cross town yet again to find lunch at a creperie and then a snack at Sophie Bakery.

That evening, Dany made us ham, cheese, and egg galettes.

It was a very food-oriented day in Nantes.

I left early the next morning and Jess was gone an hour later. Dany told me afterwards that she was very alarmed, because she woke up and no one was home.

My adventures with Jess will continue in less than a week for the beginning of NaNo, where our kick off will be on her turf in London.

Patisserie Megan

On Sunday the 14th, I Skyped Victoria and she told me to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I had not yet seen.  I then watched it, watched it again, bought the soundtrack, and this is where the pastry craze that has seized my life began.

That next Tuesday, I had a free morning, so after heading to Monoprix and getting my hands on pastry bags and the relevant groceries, I started my pate-à-choux, the dough used to make little cream puffs.  The dough was incredibly easy and the custard to fill the little puffs was even easier.  I spent most of the morning in the kitchen, piping dough onto sheets, then piping cream into puffs, and then brought the leftovers to conversation club.

On my way home from conversation club, I bought two bars of flavored chocolate and a carton of eggs.

The next morning, I started working on two more batches of custards--Lindt chocolate orange bar and blueberry bar went into two different pots.  You only need yolks for custard, so I whipped the whites and stuck them into the oven as meringues, which were flat and sad and burnt, but still sugar, so I ate them anyway.

After ballet on Wednesday, I made two batches of pate-à-choux and produced two enormous batches of puffs, glazed them in raspberry royal icing, and stuck them in the fridge.  They lasted for an enormous amount of time and I brought them on the bus that weekend for my friends on the trip to the chateax de la Loire.

And after that, I just didn't stop with the pastries.  The next week, I tried for choux pastries one more time and this time they puffed up, enormous and perfect and I filled them with the leftovers from the rest of the custard batches.

After spending some time on Pinterest, I decided to give puff pastry sheets a try, and after stocking up on three rolls and checking carefully on the Pinterest guides, I made little Danish pastries out of jam and kiri cheese, braiding the dough or just smushing the pockets of dough closed: apricot and cheese, cheese on its own, raspberry jam, strawberry jam, nutella with cinnamon...I had a pile of them.  With the last sheet, I made a rose shaped apple tart--the usual French design with the thinly sliced apples and I glazed it with apricot.

Dany tasted it and then had another slice and then three little nutella braids and told me that I should leave my studies and start baking, and I think if a French woman tells you that your pastries are that good, you've accomplished something.

Today, I kept up with the puff pastry line, with a ham and goat cheese and kiri cheese and mustard puff pastry pie and a rose design apple and plum tart.  I don't think I'm ever going to stop with this.  There's something extremely satisfying about checking back on the oven and watching pastries puff up and brown under the egg wash and the apples and plums caramelize and then of course presenting it to friends and being all happy when they appreciate what you've made.

So once I move back into a dorm situation, come find me and I will probably have baked goods.

Un gout du Maroc et un grand brunch à Nantes

I didn't end up writing a post on the fifth week, and that's mostly because nothing unusual happened on the fifth week.  I went to classes without interruption from strikes.  I chatted at conversation club hour.  I ate a lot of bread.

On Friday the 10th, I went shopping with Sydney, because we sort of needed things and we also mostly wanted things.  We poked our heads into Kiabi, which advertises "fashion at a small price."  We found many small prices, and we also found sweatshirts supporting the fifty-two states of America.  Whether this is a simple mistake or some sort of misguided campaign for the statehood of Puerto Rico and Washington DC, we aren't completely certain.  H&M and Zara seem to be the same everywhere.  We walked around a little more before Sydney brought up my earlier plans to find a bakery called Al Rayan.  I'd told her that I was going to find it on Saturday, but since we had little else to do, we hopped on the tram, rode it just one stop, and found the bakery easily.

Al Rayan is a Middle-Eastern bakery.  Every plate of pastries has a small sign stuck into it with the name of the pastry, its country of origin, and the name in Arabic script.  I have been craving chebakia ever since I left Morocco, and I had some of them the night I left.  Chebakia are fried twists of saffron dough, soaked in honey and coated in sesame seeds.  I love them especially because I learned how to make them with Ouafae and Lima in Rabat and two-year-old Lina learned alongside me.  I beelined past the marzipan fruits and the almond cookies and the honeycomb pancakes and pointed at the chebakia right when I laid eyes on them.

"I would like the chebakia," I told the proprietor.  "I would like six of them."

I ate two of them right there and the other four were gone before Sunday.

That Sunday, Sydney, Audrey, and I met for brunch at Tabl'o Gourmand, which I mentioned in the scavenger hunt post.  This time we headed for the other location, as we were worried that the large location in the center of town would be crowded.  Therefore, we found ourselves at the slightly smaller location close to the IES center, a cozy cafe tucked into a side street.  It was raining and it was also ten in the morning on a Sunday and we were essentially alone. We shared the basket of bread--still warm and soft and spread with violet jelly and cherry jam and Ovamaltine, the crunchy nutella, essentially.  I decided to go all in for the Tabl'o Gourmand signature brunch, which came in waves.

First thing was a chocolate chip muffin and a coffee, followed by plain yogurt with honey, scrambled eggs with fried bacon, and then the brunch salad.  At Tabl'o Gourmand, the brunch salad is a cup or so of salad surrounded by three different cured meats and three literal bricks of cheese.  Warning:  if you eat the whole Tabl'o brunch like I did, you might not eat anything else for the rest of the day.

After the brunch, Sydney reminded us that it was Fete de la Science in Nantes, which meant that the natural history museum was free.  If a museum that you normally pay for is free, you should go see it.  I really do love the natural history museum at Nantes--it is structured in levels, from geology to mammals and sea-creatures, and then birds and seashells on the loft level.

And so that weekend was much more exciting than the week that preceded it.

La Quatrième Semaine

I have been here in Nantes for a month.  One month and a weekend.  I have gone through three weeks of classes, three IES organized trips, twenty pages of my writing notebook, and one jar of peanut butter.  It is organic peanut butter; the only kind they sell at the Carrefour across the street.

This week saw very little changed from last week; I went to ballet and Arabic Civilization class on Monday.  Tuesday I tried to go to Art History class, but the tram was cut short because of the pharmacists' strikes and so I gave up and went to IES early for theatre.  So there was that; a tram line out of service because of strikes.  I've been cast as the mechanical doll in the theatre production and perhaps this week I will bring my pointe shoes to rehearsal.  We'll see what works best with the role.  Wednesday I went to politics class and then rushed home and then rushed out again to ballet, which was incredible.  The teacher is appropriately strict, the combinations appropriately challenging, and the teacher's assistant appropriately jaw-droppingly poised, flexy, and helpful.  On Thursday I went to the history classes on Africa and Latin America and then went to IES to hang around for a couple hours just because I could.

There's no homework here.  I finally have an assignment for the class on the Law of the EU and it's my final dissertation project.  I should get on that.

Friday, I met with Sydney for lunch and then we went to the Machines de L'Ile, a tourist attraction/cultural center of Nantes.  Julie was supposed to accompany us, but since someone tagged along who was not on the list, there weren't enough tickets, so she handed me the stack of entry cards, slipped the "group chaperone: free" ticket into my pocket, and told me to lead the group to the gallery and the ticket counter after the carousel.

The carousel is themed "Marine Worlds" and consists of three levels: the seabed, the abyss, and the sea surface.  This is to say that the carousel on the bottom floor has fantastically large squid with mechanical tentacles, enormous blue crabs with pincers that snip, and tiny lobsters with seats specifically fit for very tiny babies.  The second floor consists of floating fish; fish that you find in the middle of the sea with large teeth and strange glowing lures that are the size of couches and equipped with leather seats in their tummies for the passengers.  The very top floor is where we were allowed to ride the carousel and we did indeed have fun.  I have video of Sydney riding a flying fish bicycle, Emy and Audrey inside a conch shell, Emiliana perched inside an over-sized walnut shell.  I managed to get on the large flying fish with the other Megan in the IES program and it rose up and down as we operated its fins and pressed the level to open its mouth.

The gallery is where the famous elephant lives, and is also where the heron that flies, screams, and carries two basket seats takes flight; where the fifteen foot inchworm with a leather padded seat operates on a slick branch, and where the five foot tall ant that seats five is tucked away.  Staff members operated the steampunkish, Jules Verne-inspired animals and strapped visitors into suspended seats that rose high above the ground or were lowered into deep dips in the floor.

The visit ended with a look at the studios where they build these machines and then a short walk along a large metal branch that will, in five years, be only a small part of a whole metal tree walkway above Nantes.

On Saturday we went to Clisson and then to a vineyard.  Clisson immediately became the setting of my NaNoWriMo novel this year; a tiny, gorgeous city surrounding a decrepit but impressive castle.  It rained at the vineyard, but not enough to dissuade us from taking the tour and attending the wine tasting.  Wine tastings in France are not like ones in the US.  In the US, I've seen wine tastings--I guess that's the first difference.  I am twenty and it is wholly legal and chill for me to attend a casual wine tasting in France.  But in any case, in the US, I've seen wine tastings with tiny splashes of wines in different tiny glasses.  Sometimes people spit it out after they taste it.  I don't quite know the details, but the quantities are small.  Here, we were given one glass, and it was filled.  Therefore, to taste the other two wines, it was necessary to drink the first one completely, which I did.  Three times.  They were quite nice wines but I do not want any more wine this weekend.

La Troisième Semaine

I've made it through an actual full week of all classes.  This means that the history department is in gear, I've dropped the class on Palestine fully, and I signed a paper with Julie, our academic dean/registrar.

I dropped the class on Les Miserables mostly because I don't want to read a book that heavy and I also don't want to start it in the middle (the class starts in the fourth "book" of the first "part").  Also, Danielle doesn't want me to be sad for the whole semester, and if there's a class that's going to make me sad, it's going to be the one where I'll be studying wholly the Fantine bits of Les Miserables.  I'm sticking with the ballet classes at the university because it's a ballet class where the teacher gives me good corrections and I ultimately paid 15€ for the whole semester--for a weekly ballet class, that's not half bad.  This past Monday I also managed to find the class on Arabic Civilization, which promises to delve into colonization, fights over oil, and a little bit on Israel's presence in the area; so, business as usual.  I'm happy that I'll get to have my Palestine class after all, essentially, and the syllabus sounds incredibly interesting.

Tuesday, I spent a while searching for a class on the Ostrogoths before giving up and having a café créme.  As far as I can tell, that's a café au lait but with steamed milk?  I just googled that and apparently it's different based on where you are in France (and completely different if you're in Switzerland).  After sipping that, I did manage to find the course on medieval art history, which is also interesting because it's not just art; it's also the influence of the Church on culture and life at the time, which is always fascinating to me.  Later in the afternoon, I had the second session of theatre class, which started with a massage (always good), required me to be poked in the ribs (not good), and also provided me with a chance to use some Russian vocabulary (unexpected).  Tuesday finished with the conversation club, a meeting of IES students and local university students.  In my group, I met a geography masters student who was at La Pérverie at the same time as I was during high school.  We spoke French for 45 minutes and then switched to English, which was definitely a case of linguistic whiplash and was also a little surreal because I hadn't really heard the other IES students speak English.

Wednesday morning I got to the 8:30am politics class early and then spent three hours learning the exact dates of when countries submitted their proposals of candidacy to be part of the EU to the EU and the exact dates of when the EU acknowledged the proposals of candidacy and the exact dates of when negotiations were opened and then when treaties were signed and when the treaties were ratified, and then of course when the countries became part of the EU.  It was a long class.  In the afternoon, I accompanied Danielle to her daughter's house and talked with Victoire, a friend of Danielle's granddaughter who was at the conservatory and, to the best of my knowledge, seems to have professional aspirations for ballet (and the skill level to get there, definitely).  Victoire then took me to La Péverie to talk with the ballet teacher there, where he told me that my form and placement were not great, but that he could fix that.  I find this terribly exciting: I am not sure exactly what attitude French ballet teachers have; I think it must be somewhere between Russians and Americans, but I need someone who's going to whip me into shape here.

On Thursday I made it to two history classes, one on Sub-Saharan Africa and one on Latin America.  I'm mostly especially excited for Latin America because I have literally never studied that area and I didn't have any intention to, and so that should be good.  I'm also a little apprehensive about the course because the professor was ten minutes late and then dismissed us an hour early.  We'll see how that goes.

And today I had no classes.  Sydney texted me, asking if I wanted to grab lunch, and so I did.  Lunch then turned into checking the FNAC for USB chargers, which turned into browsing CDs at the FNAC, which turned into searching Monoprix for a thermos and cooing over tiny espresso mugs, which then became wandering all over the general area of Place Graslin.  We finally stopped at Aux Merveilleux de Fred, a chic-looking bakery selling merveilleux.  As we had no idea what those were, we obviously had to buy some.  They turned out to be meringues slathered in whipped cream, rolled in chocolate flakes--we had made a good decision (as I type this, the rest of mine is sitting in the freezer; too much sugar to eat in one sitting).  We also stopped in La Librarie Franklin, a very small bookstore crammed with very old books, among which was a 1958 edition of the French equivalent of "American Daily Life for Dummies" and a book on Nantais slang/vocab/names, which I really want, but is a little too pricey.

When it comes to the ballet class on Friday evenings, I've come to the conclusion that a seven o'clock class in a tiny wood floor studio with a busted up CD player for music is not worth paying the equivalent of a dollar and a half more than a class on mylar with a live pianist at Pacific Northwest Ballet.  Also last time I went to that class, I got followed halfway home by a sketchy dude, so I'm just not doing that again.

It was a fantastic week, especially since the factor of where are my classes in this disorganized and unlabeled campus is solved.

Le weekend: Un Séjour à Saint-Malo et Mont Saint Michel

So on Friday, we had a scavenger hunt.  Quite frankly, I had no intention of participating, but then again, I also had literally no other plans, so I ended up going, and I also ended up going an hour early to have lunch with Sydney.  After a good couple minutes wandering around, looking for a bakery that wasn't Paul, we finally settled for little savory tarts.  Mine was tomato, which translates just to a flaky crust full of tomato puree.  It wasn't terrible, but next time I'll find something else.  I also got a tiny chocolate mousse square and have decided that I need to get more of those things.  Not to say that cakes are underrated, but I could definitely use a couple more of them in my life.

The scavenger hunt sent us all over Nantes, buying baguettes and post cards and finding the old names of monuments and searching for dates of events.  My team got most everything done, even though a few of the required things on the list didn't exist, even after we asked staff members.  We were sent to the Fnac to get a "cultural agenda" and I had to ask three different employees, none of whom knew what the heck that was.

After the scavenger hunt, several of us ended up at the Tabl'o Gourmand, a cafe that provides something called a "quatre-heure," or a gouter.  We were told that it consisted of some bread, some jam, and a hot drink.  It did indeed include a hot drink, but the bread was brought to us in baskets and there were about a dozen different jams and butters, from crunchy chocolate Nutella-style spread to cookie butters to milk jam to green tomato preserves.  All of it was delicious and I essentially ate bread and sweet spreads for dinner.  In fact, I spent so much time there that I unfortunately missed ballet class and could only eat about a cup of broccoli for my actual dinner.

Yesterday, I woke up with a terribly sore throat at 3am and slipped in and out of sleep until 6am, when I dragged myself out of bed and to the bus stop so I could get to IES by 7:45.  We all stood there in the middle of the totally empty street, the whole IES group, before we were packed up in a large tour bus and headed off to Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Malo.  I've seen Mont Saint Michel before, with Meije and Jean-Philippe, although not as in depth as yesterday.  Mont Saint-Michel is gorgeous; the abbey there is awe-inspiring and free yesterday, thanks to the journées du patrimoine and we (Sydney, Miel, and I) spent a good amount of time standing at the abbey courtyard, looking off towards the sea.  The views are incredible and the novelty of the location itself is awesome in every sense of the word, but the food and food service was not very good (Sydney ordered vegetable soup that ended up apparently tasting like rotten vegetables/Windex) and there are tourists everywhere (all signs are in French, English, German, and Japanese).  I noticed a lot of French tourists brought their own little picnics to eat at the gardens, and if I ever come back I would definitely do the same and I would recommend others do the same.

While I'd seen Mont Saint-Michel before, the only thing I knew of Saint Malo was from a line in Santiano, and therefore all I knew was that it probably had a connection to trade and sailing.  It definitely does; the beach and port are right there and there's a close relationship to Quebec and its trade lines.  I did find Saint Malo a little more interesting than Mont Saint-Michel; at least, to me.  It belongs to the genre of town that I call "cute French towns that are surrounded by walls because once they were juicy targets for attacks."  It's a bit of a mouthful, but Saint Malo is indeed adorable and indeed surrounded by battlements.  After spending a while circling the town and looking out at the sea, we got ice cream (my dinner) and then spent some time in a bookstore, where we found an amazing amount of locally published mystery thriller books centered around cities in Bretagne and Normandie that had titles like Barbeque Mortel à Saint-Malo.  I did not end up buying any, but I did take pictures.

I searched for a cute mug for several minutes in five different stores before it was time to head back to Nantes, and while I didn't find what I was looking for, I can probably find something here in the city.

La deuxieme semaine

I made it through the first week of classes and came out just barely unscathed--as I sit here typing this post, I am battling a cold with the help of green tea and self-pity.  I've mostly solved the mystery of my weekly schedule, which means now the work really begins.  Classes in France meet only once a week, for the most part, which is bizarre to me.  Even small-group literature classes that meet for an hour and a half only meet once a week, while stateside that would probably be a three-times-a-week deal.  My host mother seems to think it's a downside of the French university system, and I might agree, but it's also great for abroad students.

Monday, I have literature, studying Les Miserables.  It was a terribly difficult ordeal to find a copy of the book--especially for such a classic book and such a common print version, but I eventually found one.  The class is a TD--a sort of smaller, discussion session based class and I'm already terrified, but I would really like to follow a literature class.  After literature I go to ballet; an actual weekly university class, which is excellent, although my Balanchine arms are apparently too stiff here, and the teacher tells me to loosen up and enjoy myself almost every other minute.  In the evening, I have Arab Civilizations, which I have not yet been to, but I will find tomorrow.

Last Tuesday, I searched for an Arabic translation class, which apparently doesn't exist, and so the only class I have is theater class through IES.  That's a totally awesome course, involving improv, which I find more difficult in French (although it's difficult in English too), and yet a lot more freeing.  Somehow, it's easier to be dramatic and make things up for me when I have to use French, from "red light, green light" to that improv exercise where you can't say "no."  I'm happy there, so far.

Wednesday is the day I have the 8:30am European Union law class with the IES director that lasts for two and a half hours.  This past session was mostly a review of my International Organizations class last semester at GW, but I think it will get more specific as it goes on.  Bonus, there's no class on the Wednesday before my vacation weekend, so instead of a Thursday-Sunday vacation, I get a Wednesday-Sunday vacation so I'll have more time to go to Paris/go to Rennes/bother Jess and Leah in London.  Last week, I also headed back over to La Perverie, the high school where I was studying when I stayed with Meije and took a ballet class before going to Danielle's daughter's house, where I met Danielle's granddaughters and their friends.  This is another instance where I feel ballet benefits me immensely in a different country, because even though the girls I spent time with are French and ten to four years younger than me, we spent almost half an hour discussing and demonstrating the differences between the Paris Opera Ballet School's technique and my own Balanchine technique.  Ballet is universal but not too universal--you can still find a lot to discuss between schools and countries.

Thursday I went to campus in search of my African history course only to find that history classes start next week, so I hopped back on the tram and did some shopping at H&M because some of my clothes are literally falling off of my body and that kind of stuff doesn't fly in France.  The afternoon saw me in a course on "Palestine since 1945" that consisted of biblical history and an in-depth discussion of American presidents and their inauguration years and immense disappointment on the part of the teacher that no one knew when Lyndon B. Johnson was elected. I have since dropped that course and will instead be looking into the Latin American history class.

Still hemming and hawing on whether or not I want to do the internship for teaching.  It would require me to not take my African and Latin American history courses, but it would also be a good experience, but I also don't like teaching, so we're sort of at an impasse.  If I don't like the history classes, I'll do the internship, I suppose.

Fridays are free.  Long weekends, here I come!  This past Friday, IES organized a scavenger hunt around Nantes that really deserves to be part of the "weekend post" that I'm planning, just so you don't have to read immensely long posts.

La prémiere semaine

First week in Nantes is complete and it has been busy and exhilarating.

On Monday afternoon, I was called into Julie's office.  As far as I can tell, Julie is essentially the dean of students here.  Or maybe the academic dean.  In any case, she's the IES Nantes staffer who deals with both our registration at university as well as emotional stability.  She informed me that every semester, the staff chooses one student to make a short speech at the mairie (city hall?) when the mayor of Nantes greets the American students.

And this semester they chose me.

I have terrible stage fright.  I'm not sure where it came from or when it started or why it only seems to apply to speaking and not to acting; I've done drama before, and I had to memorize pages and pages of dialogue and at city hall I only had to speak for a minute and I had the speech written out on a paper in my hand, but my heart nearly exploded.  However, Wednesday rolled around and I did survive and several French host families came up to me after and told me that I spoke French very well, which is all I want to hear when I'm in France.

On Thursday we went out as a group to something called La Cantine, which is located on an island in Nantes.  I can best describe it as a combination of a restaurant, a nightclub, a beach, and an airport.  It's a restaurant because you can order food, it's a nightclub because there's thumping music and alcohol and a lot of good looking young people, and it's an airport because there are locations like "North Exit" and "Bar B2" versus "Bar B1" and signs with arrows and little symbols of exits and taxis and everything is in English and French.  After loitering awkwardly with our backpacks (we hadn't been told it was such a "hip" location; the advertisement said we'd be tasting local foods) and watching the rest of our group down mojitos and Belgian beer, my friend Emily and I each ordered a glass of rosé wine and drank that on an empty stomach.

We soon found out that both of us are lightweights.

Dinner was a salad, tough steak, tasty potatoes, and a drink.  I chose a tiny carafe of red wine, which likely wasn't the best idea, but Emily and I shared a fromage blanc with jam and a chocolate mousse for desserts and made it home safely.  I take this to mean that I know the bus system here pretty well.

Friday meant registration (finally) and I found, to my delight that I had placed out of obligatory French courses and could essentially take any classes I wanted.  Therefore, this semester will take the form of Les Miserables, an in-depth look on the EU, theatre class, history of Africa, a discussion of Palestine, and an Arabic translation course.  All of these classes will be taught in French, including my Arabic course.  While I am a little worried about the whole English to French to Arabic adventure, I'm also very excited.

Friday afternoon I had my first ballet class in Nantes.  The studio has one, slick wooden floored room and a coed dressing room and I had to circle a building to find the little entrance.  After sitting awkwardly in the foyer for half an hour, I finally approached a girl my age and after stumbling around my initial introduction of "excuse me, hello, can you help me, I am an American student and I would like to take a class here," I got a friendly smile, a gentle vocab correction, and the assurance that I could definitely take the class to try it out.  I ended up being the only person in class wearing tights and a leotard with my hair in a bun and felt a little too formal, but I also picked up the combinations fairly quickly and laughed and talked with the other girls and had a good time, so I think I'll be going back weekly if possible.

Not a bad week, all in all.

L'arrivée

I've been here in Nantes for about six days now, which have all consisted of orientation and vacation. Touching down in the airport felt almost akin to coming home, and while that seems stupid when I say it, since I was last here for a week two years ago and my three month stay was nearly two years earlier; I still feel comfortable here.  It's not all familiar; two paper stores have closed and the Sephora moved across town, but it's still Nantes.

The orientation in Vannes was almost stupidly French; they gave us picnics and bikes and told us to explore a tiny island and a town encircled by an ancient fortress, after which they served us proper three course dinners with red and white wines to try.  It's a little shocking to have the program provide alcohol; not because I'm stuffy and disapprove of liquor, but because my previous experience abroad was in the Muslim country of Morocco and there wasn't a drop of alcohol to be found where we were, and here in France the director of the program is circling the table, pouring us glasses of Merlot.

Here IES has had no issues communicating exactly who is living in the house, while in Rabat they failed to mention the two brothers and tiny granddaughter in addition to the listed couple and two daughters, here they indicated a couple with grown children, but for the most part it is just me and Danielle.  She's supportive of my language progression and enthusiastic about my stay here and helpful with my search for ballet classes and an excellent cook, so I really lucked out.  She still seems to like me even though I temporarily knocked out the power with my obnoxious American power strip.  That thing is going right back in my suitcase.

The last time I was here, I either took the tram to school or I biked, if the weather was nice and Meije was available to guide me on my bike through the streets.  Here, I take the bus, which terrified me initially.  I have hardly ever taken a bus; growing up in Sammamish, where you have to take a ten minute car ride to see anything that isn't a house or a tree, did not prepare me for city living, and even in DC, I don't take the bus simply because I don't know how and I am scared to ask people.

But here, Danielle accompanied me to school the first day, told me which bus to take home, and gave me a few tickets.  There was no choice but to learn fast, and I feel as though I have.  I bought my billet mensuel, which allows me to ride any bus and any tram at any time as many times as I want for the month of September for about 34 euros ($44).  Even considering that September has already started, since one ticket for a one way trip is 1.50 euro, it's a pretty good arrangement, especially because now my socially anxious self can't use the price of a bus ticket as an excuse to stay home.

It's orientation week now, which means a lot of PowerPoints and handouts and little French classes that are a little too disorganized--by which I mean we were just playing hangman for about an hour with the most complicated French words we knew.  Other activities include finding places to eat lunch, leaving the room when other students speak English, and texting my mother stupid pictures.

We've received our student ID cards, and mine has the super smug picture of me that I've been using for all of these study abroad adventures.  Tomorrow we'll get to use them at the university and I'll get to see where I'll (hopefully) be taking most of my classes!