Reflections on Eleven Months Abroad

As this is published, I will have completed eleven months abroad: June and July in Rabat; September, October, November, and December in Nantes; and January, February, March, April, and May in Paris.

Anyone who spoke to me at all last fall will probably recall that I was obsessed with study abroad, and to some degree, I still am.  But around October, I was planning for another summer program.  I dreamed of another two months abroad--Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, St. Petersburg!  I wanted to go to all of them and the hardest decision was choosing a destination.  As my amazing program in Nantes continued and I accepted my offer of admission to Sciences Po, I started thinking about Fall 2015 programs.  Where could I go?  Italy?  Maybe Morocco again?  A whole semester in Russia!

I never wanted to go home.

Nantes was unique in that it was the very first program that I've ever participated in that I did not complain about.  This is not to say that these programs were terrible, because I've also been lucky to never have been in an absolute hell-hole of a program.

But I have done my fair share of complaining and then some.

I moaned about assignments and teachers and late drama nights at Forest Ridge.  I cried during my first time in Nantes because I was cold and I wanted my mom.  I complained about Stanford and its dining hall hours and disruptive RAs.  I did nothing but bitch during my first year at George Washington--both econ 101 and my roommates got equal treatment in emails home.  I complained about the heat and the chaos of Rabat.

Nantes Fall 2014 was so different.  I was fortunate to have the loveliest host mother, the friendliest center staff, the best classes, the most understanding professors, the most invigorating ballet class, and the nicest and smartest friends who wanted nothing more than to speak French and go to brunch and discuss novels and classes and museums.  I was in a beautiful, bustling city.  It was small enough to easily navigate with a single monthly paper pass but big enough to give me new things to do every weekend.  I learned how to bake and how to take a train by myself and how to speak French so well that I fooled governmental survey-takers.  I wrote a novel.  I received a 3.88 GPA.

I understand now that Nantes will always be there for me--I've returned there four separate times in my life and I've never arrived to see it disappointingly different.  In fact, the construction is basically completed, so it looks much fresher than it did in Spring 2011.

Paris was not Nantes.

It also wasn't Rabat and it wasn't Stanford and it wasn't George Washington and it wasn't Forest Ridge.  In fact, I'm going to say that it was my least favorite academic program that I've ever experienced, including George Washington online classes and that weird mail correspondence course in calculus I took senior year of high school.

This is exemplified by the fact that after going to every single lecture and discussion and reading all of the readings, the only fact I have retained from the entire semester is that Vladimir Putin has an honorary doctorate in judo.

It's no one's fault.  It's not my fault nor is it the fault of my professors or TAs.  Sciences Po Paris just wasn't a good fit for me, although I can't pinpoint exactly why.  It might be the odd line that I've been straddling the entire semester between speaking French and being Parisian and speaking English and being American.  It might be the impersonal nature of the university coupled with the lack of central student area mixed with the (quite frankly) irrationally strict format of essay writing.  I'm sure there are a billion other factors that caused Sciences Po and me to never click.

This is where Paris has taught me a lesson.  Paris gave me the opportunity to continue my study abroad experience to the point of over-saturation.  I am not in D.C. right now speculating about what another adventure abroad could have been like.  Instead, I am in Paris, reflecting on how being abroad is after you come down from the euphoria.

Paris was not a bust.  I cannot say that.  Paris taught me how to live in a big city.  I learned how to cook, how to navigate a city's transportation, how to take care of myself without a host family or a program center easily accessible.  I also took a lot of ballet classes.

I spoke to my mother in late March, regarding my application for a summer in Berlin.  I was very enthusiastic because I had been planning it for several months, but after another week, I called her.

"I'm just not feeling enthusiastic about Berlin.  Can I cancel the application?  Is that okay?"

"That's fine," she replied.  "I sent you an email about an internship in D.C.  Did you take a look at that?"

"I did, and I'm working on the letter of interest now."

I have a feeling that she'd been waiting for me to say something along those lines, something like I'm done abroad and I want to come home.  I think she was just waiting for me to be the one to decide.

Une semaine avec Victoria

Victoria and I spent the last week being Americans in Paris, and I quite frankly like it better than being Parisian in Paris.  I've recharged, eaten good food, and done a lot of shopping.

Victoria arrived in Paris on Friday in the afternoon and when she arrived, I promptly headed out for ballet, leaving Victoria to her own devices.  (She bought toothpaste and Pringles and a pizza).  We finished the night with a lot of quiche and champagne.

Saturday was our first of many shopping days.  We headed out on Rue de Rennes, exploring the area and popping into little shops that we'd never heard of as well as all the ones we knew from stateside.  We amassed quite a bit of merchandise before we hopped back on the metro and I dragged her to my Saturday afternoon ballet class.

Sunday, I left Victoria in the morning so I could go to my ballet class and she could recover more fully from her jet lag.  After my class, we met at Place Monge in order to make it to La Comedie Saint Michel.  We walked out of the metro station and straight into a street market.  After buying samosas and Moroccan tajine, we started the trek to the theatre, which took longer and was more painful than we had previously anticipated.  After traipsing around the area for a while, we picked up our tickets, which were classic tear tickets stamped with my name--a cool bonus that happens when you reserve tickets through TickeTac (which you need to get on if you're going to be spending time in Paris).  We saw a production of Le Petit Prince that was intended for children and it was maybe one of the best plays I've ever seen.  I laughed wildly, joyfully engaged with the actors when prompted, and literally cried at the end.  At the curtain call, the actor playing le petit prince declared that that day was his 107th trip to earth, which was children's-theatre-actor-code for "I've been playing this role for 107 shows" which is incredible.

We walked from the comedie to le Jardin du Luxembourg and from there we found ourselves at Pierre Hermé, and we jumped at the chance to start our discovery of macarons in Paris (the famous Pierre Hermé vs. Ladurée debate/war).  We returned home and ate four pastries--the lemon tart, coffee tart, ispahan rose pastry, and baba rum cake as well as picking from the box of 24 macarons.  The rum cake was immediately our favorite.

Monday went without a lot of fuss or interesting events, but Tuesday I made reservations for lunch at Ladurée.

We met at the church just by the Saint-Germain-des-Prés metro stop and walked up the street to Ladurée, where we were seated in the mostly empty café before being swiftly moved to the little table bearing a card with my name on it (which I saved, of course, like everything else).  Lunch at Ladurée is delicious, but if you go for two courses it is a lot of food.  Victoria opted for the cauliflower soup and chicken club sandwich and I got the smoked salmon plate and the duck with artichokes.  Victoria couldn't finish her sandwich.  The waiter told her that she couldn't take it home in a box, but I guess after her dismayed look or the fact that there was 2/3 of a sandwich on her plate, he snuck us a box from the bakery and made her hid it in her purse.

After lunch, we walked into the bakery area, so that we could continue the Pierre Hermé vs Ladurée discovery.  We went home with macarons, the Ladurée version of the ispahan rose pastry, and a rose Saint-Honoré cake.  Here, we came to the conclusion that Ladurée macarons are superior (as is the packaging--Laudrée is just cuter, all in pastel etc., while Pierre Hermé seems to be designed so that men don't feel weird shopping for sweets there).

Wednesday we started our day rather late and headed out to the local pharmacy (well, one of them).  After all of the Youtube videos and the Buzzfeed articles, we decided we needed to stock up on the cult beauty products.  While I only walked out with two things, it was only the beginning.  After the pharmacy run, we swung by the pizzeria and picked up a ham and egg pizza and a calzone.

We had reservations at Le Petit Medicis restaurant to have the foie gras and other lovely things that night, but in the middle of the day, we both realized how much we didn't want to do that.  So instead we met up at a park after my class at 7pm and haunted the Bon Marché as it started to close up, just touching pretty things and looking at interesting books and expensive juices.  After that, we didn't stop and go home; oh no.  We went out to late night at the Louvre, where the Louvre closes at 9:45pm and stayed until the announcement came over the speakers that it was time to get out.  The museum is very empty at night, and we ran around through the Napoleon apartments before almost getting locked in the basement when the metro station closed.  After that, we ate the rest of the pizza and calzone, more quiche, and drank red wine.  Quite frankly, I think the cheap food and the wine and homemade quiche and Louvre time made us happier than Le Petit Medicis would have.

Thursday was pretty great because my law class was cancelled and so we went out shopping--our favorite shops and then also more pharmacies, where we picked up the famous homeoplasmine, which is supposed to be a miracle product.  I had to leave Victoria for two hours during my security class before we met up again because she said that she'd found some good white sneakers for me.

White sneakers for Megan was one of Victoria's quests apparently, for her week and she'd found the Bensimon store near Sciences Po, where we spent some time.  I eventually got navy blue sneakers (sorry Victoria) before we walked back to the metro and headed home.

On Friday, I put all of my ballet gear into my purse and we ran off to the Louvre.  We fortunately got there before the enormous, enormous crowds and we popped up there and discovered the Dutch paintings and a lot of iconography and a whole bunch of stuff that Victoria knew very well and I had literally never ever seen before.  We finished our trip with a long stay on a marble bench in the Babylonian area of the museum, overlooking the statue garden.  After grabbing sandwiches at the Louvre's Paul bakery, we headed off to the Opera area to discover Rue Saint-Honoré and popped into all interesting stores.  I had told myself that I didn't need to get to ballet but at 6:18 I suddenly decided I did, and so I dragged Victoria back to the studio, tossed her the keys, and got back to the apartment at 10pm, promising Victoria I would make Shakshuka for her, but that was a long time to go before dinner, so she had bought a calzone, and when I got back I ate the rest of it.  I however, still needed to get the baking bug out of my system, so we made a grapefruit meringue pie, right then and there.  Victoria discovered the secret to stiff meringues (not the soupy stuff I've been dealing with) and it consists of no cornstarch, whipping the eggs like you're starting a fire with a stick, and adding the sugar very, very slowly.  We made that, stayed awake enough to eat a slice, and then went to bed.

Saturday was Victoria's last day in Paris and we decided to make it our last-minute shopping trip.  We walked down Rue de Rennes again, then found ourselves by Pierre Hermé where we bought pastries (the rum cake included) and ate them in the Saint Sulplice church courtyard.  After that, we made it to CityPharma (the discounts there are not quite worth the anxiety-inducing environment), which had been taken over by firefighters last time we were in the area.  After abandoning our choices when confronted with the lines, we continued to Ladurée for macrons and more pastries. We ate sandwiches in a sidewalk café, bought more sneakers at Bensimon, and raided another pharmacy for all of the recommended products.

That evening I finally did make shakshuka and we ate it with pierogi and mangos and pie and washed it all down with a bottle of champagne that I accidentally spilled all over the kitchen.

And then that Sunday morning at 4am, Victoria hauled her suitcase, backpack, bag of macarons, and two pirozhi wrapped in foil out the door to the waiting airport shuttle.

This past week, I learned that Victoria sees Paris as I've finally realized I should see it and experiences the city like it should be experienced--shamelessly and with a brave smile and an eagerness to see everything.  Who cares if you  aren't wearing great street style?  Who cares if your dress is too fancy?  Who cares if you're speaking English loudly on the street or in a shop or in the Louvre?  Show salespeople pictures of what you're looking for, grin widely, point at dresses you want to try on, touch expensive clothes in high-end stores.  Who cares?  It's Paris.  Be brave and unashamed.  I am trying my best to do this, but I've also realized that Paris is only like this when I'm with an old friend.

La Danse, les Spectacles, et les Tartes

Since the last blog post, my life has been a blur of boring academics, cooking and baking adventures, and a lot of ballet--both watched from a red velvet chair and done on a mylar dance floor.

During my spring break (which may have actually been winter break), I opted to stay in Paris, since
I hadn't done anything in Paris yet.  I actually didn't do much anyway, even without classes, and instead I got a lot of rest and caught up on the readings for all of my classes.  One afternoon, I did head over to the Louvre and walked through the Jardin des Tuileries, spending some time on a lawn chair by one of the little ponds, reading Arabic poetry.  I got flack from some for not going into the Louvre, but I don't even care--it felt good to get outside and even better to crack open a book that I brought here and hadn't yet started reading.

On the Saturday before classes started again, I found myself at l'Église de la Madeleine, which is immense and impressive.  I was there to listen to Mozart's requiem, which was performed there for the first time at the funeral of Chopin at his own request, even though women were not allowed to sing in church at the time (they just hid the soprano and alto sections behind black velvet curtains).  I have heard the requiem before, but it was the "rock-iem", a reimagined version with a keyboardist and a drummer and an electric guitarist.  It was truly moving to hear it performed classically with an orchestra in a building like that.

I have also now been to the Paris Opera.  Along with several people from my program, I attended a production of Faust, which was good because I'd never seen it, but I did study it with Sr. O'Dea in high school and I still remember most of that entire class.  Opera is a little too much for me, what with the staging and then the little screens above your seats with the libretto--I was just flickering in between watching and reading and also listening, because you can also just listen to opera with your eyes closed.

And yes, I've been cooking and baking a lot.  I moved away from Russia with the medovik and pierogi and pirozhi, sustained myself off of one pot pastas for a while, and then transitioned to Shakshuka.  It's a Tunisian/Israeli/etc in the region dish, with bell peppers and tomatoes and onions and eggs and it's delicious and now I'm living off of that.  Pi day was also an adventure for me, because I decided to progress from the apple pies directly to lemon meringue.  My first try was a little bitter and weepy, but today I found that I had two more lemons, so what could I do but make another pie?  This one was excellent, in my own humble opinion, and I am going to need to restrain myself from eating the whole thing in one night.

This past week, my evenings have been monopolized by three trips to see the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre's Paris tour, featuring their prima ballerina, Irina Kolesnikova.  Tuesday, I saw Swan lake--the second performance I've seen of it in Paris.  It was incredible--the company is enthusiastic and talented and the costumes and scenery were just what I wanted from Swan Lake--vaguely medieval and extravagant.  Irina was excellent, and while her extensions are clearly capable of grazing her ears, she does something that I've rarely seen ballerinas do--she limits their height in order to preserve the alignment of her hips and therefore the line she presents is very clean.  That sounds a little nerdy/snobbish but I found it very lovely.  Also, the corps was so in sync for the whole performance that it was a little unnerving.  Thursday night, I saw La Bayadere and got all excited when the corps performed the sequences that we learned at Sun King Dance in Richmond during the summer!  I've never seen La Bayadere before, and it's quite a different type of ballet  than I've usually seen because there are multiple scenes where three characters are on stage but none of them really dance--if you want to see a ballet that really showcases why your dancer friends sometimes talk about mime classes, you should see La Bayadere.  Also if you want to feel bad about yourself and your workout routine, go see La Bayadere, because the corps dancers will likely be wearing costumes that show off their midriffs, and all of them will probably have six pack abs that are clearly well defined while they are delicately twirling about the stage.  Friday night was Romeo and Juliet, another mime-heavy ballet with tons of fencing and incredibly satisfying amounts of folk dancing.  The scene changes were a little disorganized and I was seated next to someone who was upset that people were applauding the dancers, but it was still excellent.

I will be seeing the Paris Opera Ballet in Swan Lake next, and Victoria is coming to town in two weeks, which means I may finally explore Paris as a tourist, after having lived here for two months!

Un mois à Paris

I have been Parisienne for a month now and I still can't say how I feel about it.  It's been a rush of classes and metro rides and ballet and baking, mostly.

One of the best things so far is that I found the site Ticketac, which lets me search through all theatre events, comedy shows, ballets, concerts, etc. in Paris.  Obviously I went totally wild with the discounted tickets.  After all, this is my first time living in a cultural capital of the world, and with all of the theatres and available sights, I bought myself tickets to twelve shows this semester.

The first show I went to see was La Scala Theatre's production of Giselle.  It was at Palais de Congres on the edge of Paris, and when I arrived, the section I had paid for was roped off and I was led to a much nicer area, due to underselling.  The ballet was incredible, and after two viewings, I am about ready to declare Giselle to be my favorite ballet.  It has a village scene, which means you get energetic dancing, and intense emotion, and then the most visually striking image of the corps in white veils.  How could I not love that?

The second production was the Imperial Ice Stars in Swan Lake on Ice, which was just about as visually striking, technically stunning, and unbearably cheesy as you probably imagine.  There was wirework, circles of flames, and swordfighting, but it was dizzying even to just watch the performers spin, sometimes with three people spinning on one blade.  How do they even do that?

My third venture to a theatre was with St. Petersburg's Eifman Ballet.  I didn't know much about the company aside from its location and the fact that it has just recently built a new academy building, but their performance of the night was a modern piece based on the Fitzgerald novel Tender is the Night and I decided to go for it.  It was a striking performance--the first modern ballet piece I've seen that incorporated a storyline, and it did it so well.

In terms of baking, I have ventured tentatively away from apple pies and chocolate cakes and quiches with a sudden, vibrant burst of enthusiasm for Russian cuisine.  After sitting for two hours in an 8am Russian history bonus class, I felt the need to attempt to make pierogis, which eventually resulted in me boiling and mashing potatoes with ricotta, mixing it with beef, and then making so many pierogis that they didn't all fit in the available tupperware in this apartment.  I froze two containers and am already making plans for the next batch.

The Russian honey cake, my first four layer cake, came the day after the pierogi experiment.  It promised to be light and not too sweet, which I found intriguing, since I have recently discovered that chocolate cake is too rich for me now.  I mixed up the dough and separated it into four bowls, since the recipe was for a four layer cake.  I arranged my layers and while they baked, I made the buttercream--thickened with flour.  I don't have any sort of electronic mixers, so my buttercream was made with whisks and wooden spoons and an increased risk for carpal tunnel.  After assembly, I stuck the cake in the fridge, only to cut into it the next morning for breakfast, where I found that my very first layer cake ever was a total success and didn't taste too bad either.  This weekend I plan on trying it again and making it a little bit more traditional (read: upwards of 8 layers).

A couple days after that, I tried my hand at fried cheese pancakes, Syrniki.  Despite adding more flour than was called for when the dough turned out to be too sticky and burning myself on the melted butter I was using for frying, they ended up a tasty, puffed success.  After setting them on a clean plate, I made a batch of (unfortunately flattened but still delicious) Russian tea cakes with chopped nuts.  Now I have all of this Russian food and I don't think Kathy is going to help me eat any of it.

I've also made chicken pot pie from scratch but it was ugly.

When I don't go to see the ballet, I go to ballet classes, which have basically turned what I thought was going to be a boring semester full of largely theoretical coursework into something fully enjoyable.  I've found my second home at Elephant Paname, an arts center with five studios, just a block from the Opera Palais Garnier.  There are classes Sundays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and if I am not at a production, I go.  The studios are beautiful--the main one has a full windowed ceiling and they are all mylar-floored.  The teachers are supportive and the students are welcoming.  For Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I will have to check out other studios, but so far I am very happy with Elephant Paname.

Un week-end à Nantes

After a week of frozen Paris weather and deathly boring methodology classes at Sciences Po, I found myself looking forward to my weekend trip to Nantes with more enthusiasm than I would usually feel for a train trip.  I was up at 7am on Saturday to catch my 8:42am train, and after pacing around the apartment, I headed off to Montparnasse station, which is thankfully on the metro line closest to my apartment.

Two hours later, I arrived in Nantes, and it was like coming home--even more so than arriving in Washington DC.  The train station smelled like home and the wait at the warm and sunny bus stop and subsequent bumpy ride was familiar as anything.  I arrived at Dany's place and was warmly welcomed and invited to a concert that evening with her before I raced back off to catch the bus within the hour so my ticket was still valid.  Once I arrived at Place Graslin, I headed off to meet up with Sydney for brunch at Tabl'o Gourmand--the usual of a Chocolat Inca and all of the bread and butters and jams I can eat.  The rest of the afternoon consisted of hitting up all of the best Nantes stores--bookstores and paper stores and clothing stores and that bookseller who sells out of crates in his van outside of the cathedral.  We finished our wanderings at Sophie Bakery, where we both picked up pecan pies and I took a slice of chocolate devil's food cake to go.

"And your other host family?"  Sydney asked as we walked through Place du Bouffay.  "Did you ever make contact?"

My reply of no was just on the tip of my tongue when the door of the Lestang's apartment opened and  my high school host mother Pomme walked out.  I nearly sprinted away from Sydney and wove through the people on the sidewalk to suddenly surprise Pomme, who admittedly did not at first know what to say.  She greeted me and then called down my host father Jean-Philippe, who bought me a coffee and demanded I not only tell him what I had been doing for the past two years, but also why I hadn't emailed more.  I tried my best to describe Morocco, George Washington, and Nantes and now Paris.  Meije showed up and we were soon walking up to the flat.  I saw Raphael and met the two new cats and listened to a family friend sing opera while Jean-Philippe showed me pictures of the family's excursion in Morocco.  He informed me that Pomme was going to be playing viola at a concert and after some sleuthing, I found that it was the same concert that Dany had invited me to.

The concert was in a tiny cold church, where a local group performed Bach's Missa Brevis.  I walked back to Bouffay with Meije after to join the operatic soloists and some intrumentalists for galette des rois and clairette.  I made it back to Dany's apartment at 12:30 in the morning, exhausted and full of marzipan cake.

Sunday, I woke up and headed off to brunch with Sydney again, who had finally coaxed me away from Tabl'o Gourmand to Shefferville Cafe.  After a short wait, we were seated and I ordered the fixed brunch menu.

Brunch at Shefferville consists of two plates.  Sweet: fruit salad, two pancakes, and two slices of French bread dusted with powdered sugar.  Savory: two sausages, half a tomato, three slices of bacon, two eggs, a green salad, and two cheeses.  A bagel was served on the side, and the brunch came with coffee and orange juice.  I ate everything except one slice of French bread and one pancake, which I handed off to Sydney.

We walked after lunch to let our stomachs settle, and found a church and I was so happy to be in Nantes that I bought a candle for Mary and sat in the church for a few minutes.

Our visit ended at the Jardin des Plantes, where we walked slowly and found the petting zoo full of goats, where one of the goats made an enthusiastic effort to eat Sydney's dress.

I got on the TGV back to Paris with my huge suitcase, two bottles of local wine, and cakes from my favorite bakeries, a weekend well spent, and feeling rested in preparation for starting my classes at Sciences Po.

L'arrivée

I arrived in Paris two days ago at 7 in the morning, landing in Charles de Gaulle airport.  I've spent a lot of time in CDG, but I've never actually stepped out of the airport (it's always the connection hub for Nantes and Rabat), and the other three times I was in Paris, I arrived by train or car.  After explaining to the surprised program manager that my big suitcase was in Nantes and I was not going to be living out of a carry-on, I was tucked away on a shuttlebus and ferried through Paris morning traffic from the airport to the 13th.  After about an hour commute, I got to the apartment and was met by two American Comforts of Home workers, who kindly introduced me to the apartment.

I paid the extra deposit for a single and I ended up with one roommate, Kathy, and we also ended up with an apartment meant for four people.  Alongside two enormous bedrooms, we have a dining nook, a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room with too much extra space.  Since I showed up first, I got pick of the two bedrooms, and chose the dark one with the large closet.

I slipped downstairs after unpacking so that I could hop over to the tiny grocery store just to the side of our apartment building.  I bought the basics, namely tea and puff pastry, and then tried to get back into the building.  I got past the front door easily enough, but right when I'd arrived, the Comforts of Home staff had switched out the key I'd been given at the airport for one in a brown envelope.  It turned out to be the key to the old lock, and after struggling with the key for about twenty minutes, I finally called the staff.  Quite frankly, I'm glad I had this issue so early in the visit.  Also, Comforts of Home arrived almost immediately and helped me back in and were so sweet that I didn't even mind.

Our welcome program at Sciences Po started today, and instead of allowing us time to adjust to Paris and explore the city, they herded us into a lecture hall and managed to find thirty dozen different ways to say "we're so happy to have you here at Sciences Po" and spat business hours and email addresses at us without offering corresponding papers.  We finally made it through a frankly useless tour with a guide whose words barely left her mouth and sprinted off to Monoprix to stock up on supplies.  One electric kettle, a collection of green teas, a hairdryer, two laundry baskets, and a whole bunch of food later, we walked out and braved the metro.

With the mushrooms, ham bits, eggs, creme fraiche, and a sheet of puff pastry, I tossed together a little quiche in our new pie/cake pan and Kathy boiled up some ravioli and we felt especially grown up and plan on continuing our cooking adventures.

Paris so far has been limited to an odd tour and a lecture hall, but I know that after a few weekends I'll discover a few gems.

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.