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.
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