I looked out the window and what did I see: Paris!

   I woke up and it felt so surreal to realize: I was in Paris! It's something that I've wanted to do for so long that it is just so strange to have it actually happen. I had loved doing the little prelude trip and all, but to actually comprehend that I will be living here for the next two and a half months was ineffable. Was I crazy? What am I even doing here? To go to a place where I couldn't communicate with a massive portion of the population was scary in South Africa, but to live a semester in a place where I can't communicate is somewhat terrifying. Not because I can't get by with my lame French, but because I'm here for awhile I feel compelled to move from tourist status to someone who is trying to get immersed in the culture. And I don't know if I'm brave or smart enough to do that. I desperately want to take all that I can squeeze out of this experience, and I'm really worried that I'll just be lazy and passive and miss out on a lot of potential opportunities. I'm terrified that I'll actually find out that adventure repels me more than it excites me, and that I actually don't like museums or culture or discount shopping and just want to go back home and live a pedestrian life with a white picket fence, Walmart, hamburgers, and romcoms. Yep, so there's my secret--the cat's out of the bag and running around town soiling everyone's sand boxes. 

    However, I feel that if I fake it, I can make it (?) and so I'll not think upon it again, and let it moulder here in the endless void of the internet. Instead, I plan on doing as much as possible and appreciating every French moment! Because as of right now, I really love museums, culture, language, discount shopping, and of course: adventures! Although I must point out that adventures are usually only fun after the fact. 

  So, after that little inner-dialogue-that-has-an-official-literary-term-that-I-can't-remember-and-no-one-would-know-about-anyway, my roommate and I got on the "auto-bus" and went to the Eiffel Tower to have a little picnic with our group. 

  Afterwards we went up the Arc de Triumph! It was indeed our lucky day because it just so happened that this weekend all national museums and monuments had to provide free entrance! Its some francy-pants Jour du Patrimonie that only occurs once a year and we happened to be in France on that weekend! Yeeehaw!

So we climbed lots of stairs...

....and then saw a magnificent view:

...it was a lot more impressive in person...I couldn't figure out the panoramic setting on my camera (it's not really mine, it's my parent's, cause mine broke-- remember?).

    Then we went to the residence of the British Ambassador, just because we could. It was fancy, and used to belong to one of Napoleon's wives...I'm too lazy to Wiki which one it was. There was a modern art exhibit there too! I liked this especially:

   Then we walked some more and saw this famous Egyptian object:

     Then we went to go and see Notre Dame in hopes of going up the bell tower...but it closed about 5 seconds before we got there. So, we went around the back of Notre Dame and stumbled upon a concert in the park! I love live music so much! The band doesn't really even have to be very good, I just like the atmosphere. The band playing was called Marshmallow...they have a page on facebook that I was going to give you a link of, but there are quite a few international bands called Marshmallow. Why, I cannot say...but the name does sound significantly cooler in a French accent.

Then we walked around Notre Dame

Hung out by the George Pompidou center (no, it wasn't free--lame!)

    Then we went to eat at an Italian restaurant that I didn't take a picture of or remember the name of on purpose because the server was so rude to us. We didn't even do anything touristy! We came in, spoke to him in French, and then when we asked to share a platter he almost spat at us! Sheech, you can tell someone "no" without being a meanie-pants about it! Also, while we were talking, he whisked away the plates without asking if we were finished--I totally wanted that burnt pizza crust and the remains of the bolognese sauce! Humph, I am still irritated by it. Then the tip was included so I couldn't even express my dissatisfaction. The food was good though. Then it rained like mad and we ran to the metro, returned home, practiced our French comprehension with our host lady, and passed out. 

Return to Paris

Bye bus!

    We got up early, had fresh warm croissants, and caught the train back to Paris. Today is the day things really start up: we get to meet our host families! From our info sheet---wait! I just read over my blog and I’m pretty sure I never told y’all exactly what I’m doing over here, I just sort of mentioned here that I was going on a study abroad! Haha, sorry about that!
So here it goes:
 I’m on a study abroad program with Brigham Young University, which means that I get to take classes taught by a BYU professor who has come out to Paris. I really want to become fluent in French, and thought this would be a great opportunity to not only have a lot of fun, but also get some good immersion without getting too much out of my comfort zone. There are 24 other girls on the study abroad (no boys signed up) and the director’s family. So it is pretty much like a constant party. The program lasts until the end of November, so it is a fairly short semester, but lots of fun! We started out the trip with a 2-week trip around Southwest France to not only get to see some awesome sights, but also to get to know each other, and slowly get exposed to French culture.

Now our trip is over and we are going back to Paris to truly start the semester, get classes rolling, and actually speak French! We get to live with host families who provide room and partial food throughout our stay. My roommate is super cool, and we are ready to have a rockin’ semester!

    Okay, back to the info sheet: according to my host family info sheet my family is an elderly woman who lives in the second metro zone of Paris (so right in the city!) and used to restore old paintings. It sounds like my roommate and I will share a room, and a bathroom and basically have the time of our lives. Because our host family provides breakfast every morning and dinner 3 x’s a week I really hope she’s good at cooking, and not weird about us using her cooking and laundry facilities! We get to meet her tonight! I am so nervous!

     On that nervous note, I just found out that we didn’t have enough BYU instructors or something, so we have our French language classes at the Institut Catholique de Paris. That means we will actually be on a French campus with a bunch of other foreign language students and...the natives!  I find American university scary enough, let alone a foreign one! I’m not really worried about the classes, I’m just dying to figure out French culture, and people my age are so scary! Social life is just so full of intricate complexities and niceties, and I don’t feel like I’ve really figured out the American youth culture yet, and I’ve had 19 years--so a new French one sounds super scary! My spoken French is about a toddler’s level and my reading a 2^nd grader’s…so social interaction is definitely going to be interesting. I can get by, but expressing complex ideas and such is a bit beyond my abilities at the moment. I guess it’s good because I’ll be super motivated to study hard and really improve my French!  


A couple hours later...


  We arrived in Paris, went to our director's apartment to pick up the rest of our, caught a taxi--and arrived at our new housing!
   Our host is so nice! She's the typical everyone's favorite quirky grandma! I am so happy! She doesn't speak any English, so we are going to be totally immersed--hurrah! I had thought that I was going to share a room with my roomie (Samantha), but I get my own room! It is huge and has the biggest closet I've ever had access to! Here it is:

   It's like a princess room! 

    Our host lady is great and is constantly correcting our grammar and teaching us all of the little nuances of French, which is just what I was hoping for. I probably only understand about 50% of what she is saying, but can guess about 25% more of what she's talking about through context...so I have about at 75% comprehension, which is better and worse than I was expecting. I can't speak at all, but hey as long as I can somewhat understand I'll be able to get along with baby talk and sign language!

Sarlat: Day 2

    Our last day of our little pre-semester trip we went canoeing in the Dordogne! It was so beautiful! The river is very slow and sleepy so it looks like glass, with masses of trees surrounding it, and the sunlight on the water that’s so clear you can see all of the fish swimming on the bottom—heavenly!  We went for 14 km (approx:9 mi) and because we were in no hurry to row--it took about 3 hours. It was so peaceful and nice to have our massive group broken up for a bit…because as much as I like non-stop giggle fests, I was very ready for some peace and quiet. 

    

    After we finished we drove back to Sarlat for some lunch and to relax a bit before heading over to the Chateau de Marqueyssac to see the fantastic jardins (gardens)!

  I was surprised to see that all of the gardens consist of are hedge arrangements. 

In my mind I had pictured the gardens at Versailles, however, it was still wonderful to explore all of the fun wiggly paths! We found some pretty exciting things:

Some disembodied heads

A magical tunnel

...and a couple other great things that I forgot to take a picture of--oops!

   It was great to be perched up above the river and see where we’d canoed earlier. The chateau is on top of a hill and the view from the edge was fantastic! We were all pretty tired out by the end of our visit so we all snoozed on the ride “home” to the hotel St. Albert.

    We had dinner at St. Albert and I think the best way to eat out in this sort of group situation is vegetarian. I don’t usually eat very much meat in my normal, non-traveling life and I was feeling very overwhelmed by how much meat we’d eaten this trip. So when the first course was fois gras, I felt terrible for wanting the mushroom omelet thing the vegetarians in our group were served, because fois gras is supposed to be a delicacy that you should be very excited to be served…but I really don’t enjoy more than a taste of it. It tastes like a very rich butter/fat spread, and that doesn’t really appeal to me. The next course was pork with potatoes and green beans swimming in gravy, meanwhile the vegetarians got a massive amount of green beans with tofu and other veggies. Sad day, huh? That’s not to say the meat and potatoes wasn’t good, because it was, but I would never choose a meat option over a veggie one, and was just really wanting to eat a French specialty that wasn’t solely meat-based. On a more positive note the dessert was walnut ice cream with a raspberry sauce, which was quite nice. I think it will be super nice once we get settled in Paris and have more control over what we get to eat. I cannot wait to have a massive bowl full of just vegetables!

So tomorrow we are headed for Paris—I can’t wait! It sounds a bit scary though, now the real exposure and learning starts! I hope I’ll be able to do well and become a lot more comfortable with my French…or else I’m toast.

Sarlat

      We left Figeac and drove to Sarlat la Caneda where we would be spending the next couple days and were given a couple of hours to explore the local market and city. 

Like I said earlier I love markets so much! There’s just such a fun ebb and flow of people, delicious food, great distractions, I wish I could shop at an open-air market all the time! For lunch I got together with a group of 6 other girls and we had a picnic with lovely fresh food from the market: nectarines, strawberries, grapes, tapenade, walnut cake, and (of course) baguette.

 It was so amazing! I love how much more food tastes like the food it is here…does that make sense? For example, the grapes we ate had a lovely dark grape flavor that bloomed into a perfume when you pressed them onto your pallet! I now understand how grape flavoring came about, I had never thought that American grapes remotely tasted like the flavor that’s in candy, etc. but after these grapes I can taste the resemblance.

    We then went to the Musee National de la Prehistoire (Prehistoric Museum) where we learned about the history of the human race, and all of the cool pre-historic bits of civilization that have been found. I think that prehistory is a really interesting subject. It sounds like most of the science and studies about it have just had to make up answers to answer questions about ancient civilizations. I find that to be a bit scary—who got to decide exactly how wide the Neanderthal’s nose was? How do we know that they worshiped animals? People just stuck some evidence together and guessed. That’s a lot of power to have, and I suppose that’s what a lot of things are based off of. No one has proven anything to be false, and so we’ve just accepted things as facts. Hmmmm.

Then we drove to the Lascaux caves where lots and lots of perfectly preserved cave paintings from the …..era were found fairly recently(check facts). Unfortunately, because the carbon monoxide from people breathing damages the paintings, it is no longer open to the public. So if you are dying to see the paintings you’ll have to be a fancy cave-painting studier of science. To remedy the massive public demand to see the paintings, a set of false caves have been made with a super accurate replica of the paintings. Great time and research was put into figuring out how to authentically replicate the paint ingredients and techniques of the original paintings, and although I haven’t seen the real ones, I think it would be pretty hard to tell the difference.

    We drove back to Sarlat where the program provided some ice cream for our attentiveness at the museum (yes, we are in college). I got pink grapefruit and chocolate—just incase you were wondering. The grapefruit was very convincing—it had the sweet and acrid taste all in one—success! Then I shadowed some people to a pizza place (because I was super full) chatted, got to sample some (and by some I mean maybe half of it) of someone’s left-over potato pizza, and then we walked around town.

On our jaunt we came across some magical lights! I didn’t get a very good picture of them, but it was super romantic (theoretically….of course). Then we practiced our shufflin’ moves in the street and had over 3 people mock us (alas for trying to blend in--yay goofy teenagers) and enjoyed Sarlat a nuit! 

Padirac et Figeac

     Today after a lovely country breakfast (yep baguette or pain au chocolat) in the morning sun, we went to some really spankin’ awesome caves called Gouffre de Padirac in—you guessed it: Padirac. It was almost as fun as Kango Caves, you start out climbing down a massive staircase and then queue for a bit then get to be rowed along in a boat in the subterranean river to the main tour of the caves. The caves look like a mixture of a slot canyon/ Kango and were incredible! The tour guide had been told that we were learning French and so he kindly spoke slow French to us the entire time. I have to say that I probably only understood about 50% of it, partially because I don’t know very many scientific/ geology terms en Francais.

    Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures, but here’s a link. I like caves! We even saw a bat! Then we got to climb all the way back up the stairs!

We then had a group lunch starting with some duck giblets avec salade… I had no idea what giblets were until I looked them up right now…and kind of wished I hadn’t. They were a very tender, flavorful dark meat that was nice and flaky…and here’s the definition of what a giblet is: giblets |ˈjiblits|plural noun

the liver, heart, gizzard, and neck of a chicken or other fowl, usually removed before the bird is cooked, and often used to make gravy, stuffing, or soup…yeag, I probably wouldn’t have eaten them if I had known, I’m not super into eating filtering organs of any animal. Then just to be adventuresome I tried some fois gras-- which is a goose liver pate-- it was actually pretty good. Kind of like meat flavored butter spread—super rich though! Then we had mooore duck, and finished off with a walnut tart (pie sort of thing), which was super yummy! So after that I was definitely not wanting to eat any more duck…or anything—j’ai bien mangé! (I have eaten well/I’m full)

     Then we drove to the city of Figeac and went to the Musee Champollion (the guy who translated the Rosetta Stone) which is all about the development of written language. It was very interesting, but all of the explanatory signs were in French, and like I said, I don’t know very many technical terms in French, and consequently didn’t understand much. We had little translator devices, but the recordings really only told about the history of certain items instead of presenting the full story of the translation of the Rosetta stone…so I’ll be lookin’ that up shortly.

     Afterwards we headed to our hotel, relaxed, and then went to go and feed at the amazing La Puce a L’Oreille. I thought that I would be violently ill if I ate again after such a massive lunch, but the food was so excellent I had quite forgotten the part where I wasn’t hungry when the first course arrived. We started out with a carrot mousse with some pate:

 then had a puff pastry with tomato, goat cheese, and olive paste:

 then for the main course we had some sort of white fish with a veggie puree and a bit of cheese quiche and steamed veggies...

...that was so yummy I finished it before I had thought to take a picture...

the grand finale was a raspberry mousse with a almond wafer. Wow, it was fantastic, and I am probably going to be charged at the airport for all of the extra weight I gain when I come back…but it was so lovely!

    Then we disrupted the sleeping town with loud American voices and incessant giggles on our way to the hotel. Disrupted the other hotel guests with much stomping up the stairs, more giggling, and went to bed with very full tummies. P.S. I’m trying to blend in with the local night-life and not be super American (culturally—tis a good country that I feel patriotically about) but with everyone else being so noisy one quiet person doesn’t make a difference…so I think I’m going to have to give that up to avoid being angry at everyone and having them not want to be with such a high-strung-bossy-pants, so here’s to being a tourist * cheers *

I just can't wait to get on the road again!

   We started out the day at Albi cathedral and actually got to go inside it this time! It was so beautiful--just so solid and tall and magnificent! I could have just stood in the entrance and stared agape for hours.

  The inside was just as magnificent as the outside! Unlike the other cathedrals that we'd visited and felt inspired into admiration, this one demanded reverence and respect. So much finery and boldness!

   We then visited the Toulouse-Lautrec museum which was originally the bishop's palace, and has recently been renovated to house all of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's art. The reason all of this famous artist's work has been gifted to this somewhat obscure museum is because he was born in Albi and his mother felt it would be fitting for it to stay in Albi. 

   I personally had never heard of Lautrec before, but recognized several of his works. He is famous for painting horses and prostitutes, lithograph prints, and revolutionizing advertising with his posters (especially his commission for the Moulin Rouge). He died super early (36) but left behind thousands and thousands of art pieces. I really love his poster work--mostly because it influenced art nouveau, and that's my favorite style! We then left Albi to go to the countryside!

   The drive was absolutely gorgeous!

   We arrived at a Bed and Breakfast in a town so small that it doesn't even have a real name, it's just super close to the pilgrimage city Rocamadour.

We got massive rooms and there was a massive swimming pool and a lovely field of wild flowers!

  After a little rest we went to Rocamadour to walk down a hill with little shrines and such, to a cave where a perfectly preserved hermit man had been found. Pilgrims traditionally climbed this hill on their knees...we didn't.

  We then had dinner at a restaurant called L'Esplanade, ate some duck, goat cheese, and pate (pat-ay), and some ice cream that I can't remember the flavor of. 

On the road again!

   And we are off! We left Basque country and headed for Rocamadour (about 4 hours away), stopping in Pau to attend church and look at the lovely chateau there. Pau is an interesting historical city with the most charming old bits perched on the top of a hill. It is the capital of Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Béarn and was where King Henry IV the prince of France and Navarre was born. I was very excited to learn about Navarre because I once was in a play by Shakespeare called Loves Labors Lost and one of the main characters rules over Navarre, so that was just fun to know that it was a real place...yep!

   The chateau was sooo pretty! I think that the French chateaux may be prettier than the British stately homes...or at least the ones I've seen are quite blocky compared to the more magical French ones (I know there is for sure an official architectural word for this...but I don't know it).

   

       I also stumbled across one of those cool public toilets that automatically disinfect themselves, and so I tried it--just to say I did.

 It was pretty exciting, but  I would be hesitant to use one in a crowded place because on the outside there's a button that if you push it it starts to sanitize the loo...and I could definitely see some cheeky prankster pushing the button whilst some poor unsuspecting tourist was inside.

   We drove past so many beautiful places that I didn't catch the names of:

    But I did recognize Lourdes from a movie I had watched (also called Lourdes). Lourdes is a pilgrimage site for those who want to be healed.

  We also drove by Toulouse and a whole bunch of other places...which I didn't get any pictures of.

   We stopped in Albi for the night and had enough time to explore a bit! The group I went around with went to the magnificent cathedral:

and of course chatted up the local lads: