Saturday I went to Normandy. Sunday and Monday Brussels and the EU Parliament. Details to follow (test and dossier due tomorrow, eek!).

In the meantime, here's the real news. So I got home last night around midnight after having been gone all weekend. I open my door and there's a neon green note on the floor, clearly slipped under my door. It reads something to the effect of: You have a new neighbor. His name is Nicolas. I believe he knows you. Tuesday night we will eat together.

Actually, I think that's a pretty good translation. I only know one Nick and according to him, he did not move into my house while I was gone. This mytery man's toothbrush is in the bathroom and his Camembert is in the fridge, so this is lookin' pretty serious. I'll meet him tonight at dinner. In the mean time I've got a bit of jealous sibling anxiety, i.e. I was here first, nobody asked me, I don't wanna share. However, at the same time, I'm really excited to hopefully have another student to practice French with. I guess the metaphor holds up then because I was really excited to have someone to play with when I first heard I was gonna have a little brother, and later, a little sister.

Also, met some French students today, music students, through our professors. As I consumed an infinite number of brownies, they spoke to me in English, I responded in French. It was a lot of fun.

Alright, homework time!

castles revisited

I don’t think my heater is working today, my room has been cold all day (which I hear is the norm here, but heretofore my chambers have been nice ‘n’ warm).  They probably turned off the heat period on account of the weather.  I think this is slightly premature.  This is just my opinion.  Also, someone used my bathroom and left the seat up, which is fine, its not my house, but I had some things drying in there that I’d rather not have shared with the general public.  Oh well.  Also, my room smells of bananas.  I don’t have any bananas. Mysterious.

 

In other adventures, Saturday I visited Chateau Brezé and the abbey Fontevraud with SUNDEF.  But to keep things chronological, I’ll finish the story of the chateau excursion from the Saturday before.

 

This puts us back at the 21^st of March. 

 

EXT – DAY. Place de Lafayette.  ISABEL and SHANNON are running through an open-air market, darting past shoppers and weaving through produce stands.  They make their way through the market, cut through a garden, and dash down a busy street, clearly in a hurry to get somewhere.  They turn a corner and stumble toward Place André Leroy to see a bus up ahead.  Out of breath and sore from the run, they pause, take a deep breath and continue running, reaching the bus entrance to find MR. MELIN, their Translation professor and the director of their program.

 

Mr. Melin

Vous êtes interdites!

 

Isabel

Quoi ? Quelle heure est-il?

 

Shannon

7h27. Qu’est-ce que c’est ça, Mr. Melin?

 

Mr. Melin (smiling)

Interdites.

 

Shannon

Pas encore ! Pas encore!

 

Laughing, he let’s them on the bus.  They stumble on out of breath to find seats together at the back of the bus.  A few minutes later the bus departs and Mr. Melin picks up the microphone and addresses the bus full of students.

 

Mr. Melin

Bonjour tout le monde!

 

Tout le monde

Bonjour.

 

Mr. Melin

Shannon ? Je ne t’entends pas!

 

Brief pause, and then from the back of the bus

Shannon

Bonjour!

 

It was one of those days.  Isabel and I take Translation with Mr. Melin.  We sit, along with our friend Ryan, in the first row.  We also make a lot of silly mistakes.  For example, I have a tendency to make up words and perpetually misconjugate the second person singular. In addition, Isabel and I are always together whenever we run into Mr. Melin outside of class, and thus that day he decided to name us le couple.  Although, about three quarters of the way through the day he changed his mind and decided to go with les jumelles (the twins).  Somewhere between the first and second chateau, he decided to tell us that he would continue giving us a hard time all day.  Just us.  His reason?  He found it amusing.  Luckily, he’s actually a pretty nice guy so this only involved his constant threatening to withhold our (mine and Isabel’s) tickets and brochures everywhere we went. 

 

So where did we go?

 

We started off at Chateau d’Amboise.  It’s a beautiful castle that sits above a picturesque town at the edge of a river.  The castles was used by kings and princes, most notably by François I who liked to pal around with Leonardo da Vinci.  Da Vinci got all the invites to all the cool parties and got to hang out and make cool things.  This happened so often in fact, that da Vinci’s ashes are buried in the chapel at Amboise. 

 

Next we visited Chateau du Clos-Lucé, the small castle down the road from Amboise, where da Vinci lived.  It was built in 1471 on the remains of an 11^th century castle.  The castle had a few royal residents before da Vinci moved in, in 1516.  Basically the king, François I was like, “hey da Vinci, you’re a cool guy, you should live and work in France for a while.” And da Vinci was like, “Well, that’s all well and good your highness, but where would I stay?” And the king was like, “Don’t even worry about it da Vinci, you can totally move into the castle down the street, I’ll take care of the whole thing” to which da Vinci surely replied something to the effect of, “Sweet!”

 

While living and working there, da Vinci designed the gardens.  The grounds were beautiful as they were, but I hear the time to visit is a little later in the year when the flowers have bloomed.  I’d like to go back at some point, because even without the flowers I kept walking around thinking about how cool da Vinci must have been and how if I had a party in the 16^th century, I’d totally invite him.

 

After that we drove to Chateau de la Blois which, aesthetically, was my favorite castle.  It was comprised of several buildings, each built in a radically different style. 

 

I decided that, first of all, I ought to buy a castle at some point, and second of all, if I had my choice of castles I’d probably take this one, just based on the courtyard and the staircase. 

 

As we left Blois, my camera battery died, but it went peacefully, having documented Blois to my heart’s content.  The last chateau we visited was Cheverny.  Le Chateau de Cheverny is definitely what I think of when I think of rich French people hanging out playing a game of polo.  It reminded me a lot of the property from the The Rules of the Game, a French poetic realism film (I gave the translated title) about some rich French people who don’t want to deal with an impending war and all the problems of the world, so they haul up in a big house that looks like Cheverny (for all I know it is) and throw themselves a big party for a few weeks.  Intrigue ensues.

 

Cheverny was the most modern castle we visited, built in the 17^th century.  It is notable for its legion of dogs that are used for racing…and maybe hunting? I was told in French over a week ago, I can’t quite remember.  Anyway, the grounds were beautiful, they reminded me of my favorite magazine ad, I saw it in America for a French jeans company.  So I guess it was unfortunate that I didn’t have a camera.  Also, another thing that made Cheverny notable, Isabel saw the world’s most beautiful Italian man with another tour group.  She was smitten and said something in English to that effect.  Turns out he spoke English.  She never actually spoke to him, but he knew. Oh he knew. 

 

And those were the adventures of just over a week ago.

 

This most recent Saturday I went with the Notre Dame group to Chateau de Brezé which was fun because it had extensive underground fortresses.  There were extensive warnings for claustrophobics and the disabled before we entered so we were excited.  And we were not disappointed.  It wasn’t half to tricky to negotiate as the Spider Caves of Yosemite, but they weren’t exactly easy either.  There were several steep, worn steps, and small underground hills.  It was fun.  My favorite part was that underneath the chateau’s distillery there was a light show with slides projected onto the dark walls of the caves with music in the background.  It was cheesy, granted, but I liked it anyway. 

 

Oh! And Cardinal Richelieu used to live there for a while.  I was on the tour, minding my own business, when the tour guide lets it drop, “Oh by the way guys, this is Cardinal Richelieu’s room.”  Oh sure Mr. Tour Guide, Cardinal Richelieu, no biggie, sure, let’s just glide on through. 

 

Then we ate lunch at the castle. I didn’t end up eating dinner until 10 hours later, at which point I still wasn’t hungry.  Needless to say, lunch was good. 

 

After lunch we visited Fontevraud, the abbey where Eleanor of Aquitaine is buried.  By her second marriage, she became Queen of England briefly, but she was a great patroness of the arts in France that she became the first and only British queen to be buried outside of British soil.  The abbey was beautiful, I took pictures.  

...pictures to follow....

castles and exams, this was my week

It's been a busy week and it's not quite over, but it's getting progressively less busy, which is good.

Saturday I went and saw some castles, which was way cool. The rest of the week has been spent trying to keep up with work. Perhaps I should grève. My purpose? More castles, less homework.

In other news, I'm seriously considering adding "own a castle" to my list of life goals. I'm not half so interested in living in a large and luxurious home as I am in having a really awesome castle where I could throw really awesome dinner parties and maybe a few courtyard barbeques here and there. Or all the time.

I'll post some pictures pretty soon, but in the meantime my computer has decided to grève and won't let me load pictures at the moment.

Speaking of grèves, there was one today in Angers.

Ok, so, out of time, more later.

today is a very good day

1. I woke up early to do some homework, this worked out very well.

2. I had a left over baguette from yesterday's voyage to Geant Casino. it was still fresh. I ate the whole thing this morning.

3. My microwave had been broken, my host dad fixed it. I had time and heat enough to drink hot coffee this morning.

4. Yesterday I came home around the same time as my host parents, they invited me to have some hot chocolate with them. And then they busted out my favorite cookies. Because they know they're my favorite cookies. I love them. And then we talked for two hours. I love them.

5. The weather is FANTASTIC.

6. I get to eat both lunch and dinner for free today.

7. Thanks to Thomas, we totally just made some French friends; totally gonna hang out with them this Friday (this is the plan).

8. Just found out I'm going to the Cannes Film Festival, I got the accredidation to get in as a film student.

Today is a very good day.

Not much to report on the front. Isabel and I have been looking up youtube clips of Gilles dancing on Dancing with the Stars. Last weekend Isabel, Sarah, and I went to see a French film, Le code a changé. It was a good film, pretty straightforward and not too difficult to follow, although it's about several affairs so it took me a little while to figure out who was sleeping with who, but once I got past that, not too much trouble. This, I believe, was Saturday, the same day Isabel and I spent three hours at a brasserie for lunch, luckily we had the time to spend, so it was a very pleasant experience. Other things of note... I made spring break plans! Barcelona, Madrid, Rome (for Easter), and London, over the course of two weeks.

In other news, I'm gonna go see some castles this weekend.

Notre Dame above
Below, look closely, it's the "myspace forever" graffiti

Sacre Coeur below

Paris!

Went to Paris this weekend with Isabel.  We stayed with her uncle and his family in Garches, a pretty suburb just outside of Paris.  We arrived late Friday afternoon exhausted from rolling suitcases of dirty laundry up a large hill.  Then we spent the evening eating pasta and clementines, skyping, doing laundry, and watching a 17.5 minute video of Tessa single-handedly eating an entire pie (yes!).  And then we went to bed.

 

I went to Paris to do laundry…don’t judge.

 

After a good night’s sleep we made our way into Paris to meet Stephanie (!!!).  Thanks to wireless internet access, that morning we found out Chris Brown and Rhianna were back together. Baffled, bewildered, shocked, and 8 kinds of disappointed, we were missed our train and were late meeting Stephanie.  I blame Chris Brown.  I think Rhianna should too. 

 

Anyway. We get to the city around 11:30am and we’re finally ready for our big adventure.  Our first stop?  A giant statue of a thumb just outside the metro station at La Defense.  It was great, I swear, I took pictures.

 

Then a brief lunch.

 

And the real day begins.

 

Around noon.

 

Don’t judge.

 

We started off at Sacre Coeur where we were verbally harassed several times over in both English and French on our way up and down hill to get to the basilica.  However, it was a gorgeous day, the sun was shining, birds were singing, and tourists and natives alike were picnicking as far as the eye could see, so I forgave the world.  Sacre Coeur itself was beautiful, although it was strange to be inside a basilica so heavily toured.  The walls of the churches were covered in the usual relics, religious statues, tombs of the religiously important, etc, but they were interspersed with dozens of posters and trip tics in various languages elaborating the practices and beliefs of the Catholic church.  I get the idea, share the faith, spread the faith, but it felt more like a museum than a basilica, plus there were multiple gift stores where chapels used to be.  That kinda stuff tends to bother me.  It’s like when Jesus was at the temple and they were selling all kinds of things and he was like ‘not cool guys,’ that’s sorta how I feel.  I don’t have a problem with pamphlets, an explanatory sign here and there, heck, I don’t even mind guided tours.  But when a church ceases to be a church and instead becomes a man-made spectacle for tourists, it makes me uneasy. 

 

Anyway.  It was beautiful.  And I did enjoy seeing it.  So on to other things.  After Sacre Coeur, we milled around a nearby park to decide what to do next.  The park was so uneventful, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it EXCEPT someone had tagged a wall with the phrase “myspace forever;” and it made me wonder what the world had come to.  It also made me wonder if myspace will really last forever.  I hope not.  (Go Facebook!  Just kidding…mostly) 

 

Next we went to the Eiffel Tower.  We took a lot of pictures; I was not in very many of them because I was the only one with a camera who also insisted on human subjects in my pictures. This became something of a theme for the day: “Isabel and Stephanie see Paris! …oh wait!...wait for it…wait for it… There’s Shannon!”  (No worries though, I laugh through the tears)  There was one really awesome shot, however, that Stephanie took of me and Isabel in front of Notre Dame (where we went after we wandered from the Eiffel Tower, down the Champs-Elysées where we got crepes after a long and arduous search).  I think we looked photo-shopped because I turned the flash on.  I will partage apres this post (ps-I’m now totally fluent in franglais).

 

After Notre Dame, we strolled toward Boulevard St. Michel and stopped at Shakespeare and Company, an awesome English-language bookstore above which, according to Stephanie, artists can live in exchange for their work. I was a fan.  There we met up with Liz, who is studying in Rome for the year along with Stephanie, and walked a few blocks to get waffles (about an hour after crepes, it was a day of wild and reckless abandon).  After a bit more wandering, Isabel and I said goodbye to Stephanie and Liz, and made our way back to Isabel’s uncle’s for a fantastic dinner followed the next morning by a wonderful brunch in which I ate, among other things, too many fresh-baked, home-made muffins, if that’s even possible.  With a quick hustle, a few metro stops, and a mad dash or two up several flights of stairs, Isabel and I made it to our train with a few minutes to spare and had a smooth ride back to Angers during which I summarized the plot of Slumdog Millionaire, which, in classic Shannon fashion, took the better part of an hour.