Espagne!

    So the day has finally come! I am going on my first vacation of the semester and my friends and I are all going to Spain! We are leaving tomorrow on our ten-day trip and I could not be more excited.  We have an early flight out of Beauvais which is a sketch city just outside of Paris so we are leaving tomorrow (Friday) afternoon and spending one night in Paris.  After that we fly to Barcelona for four nights, then a flight to Malaga for three nights, a bus to Madrid for two nights and then another flight and train ride back up to Bordeaux.  I am so excited for my first real trip with just friends! It is supposed to be in the upper sixties when we get there which means (for those of us who have acclimated ie: me) beach weather!!! Malaga is in the south of Spain and has some nice beaches, so I think I am looking forward to that the most.  

A break from school and a break from Bordeaux also means a break from my blog! Adios mes amis, see you in ten days! 

St. Valentine!

      Today is Valentines Day! While not very much is done differently to celebrate here, it was kind of fun to spend it with my girlfriends.  Before school Lea and I picked up some heart shaped macarons to give to our little friends at school for Valentines Day, little did we know that they were the absolute best macarons that we have had yet! (for those of you that do not know, macarons are not macaroons, they are little colorful cookie-sandwich things that come in a bunch of flavors like pistachio, chocolate, and raspberry, they look a lot like pretty patties when they aren’t heart shaped (spongebob? anyone?)).  After school, Emily and Sandy wanted to get Lea and me macarons as well so we got chocolate and vanilla and made a noir et blond.   

After that we went to a brasserie (soon to become our regular place) for monacos (beer and grenadine and sprite-perfect for a single girl on Valentines day I think). 

When we were walking back down Rue St. Catherine, some people were handing out roses and we each got one-which definitely made all of us feel the Bordeaux lovin'!

 This is us being super cute...

 ...and this is what we are actually like

Le Vendredi

         I absolutely love Fridays, they are perhaps my most favorite day of the week.  Fridays are the days that Sandy, Lea, Emily and I get together to make lunch, watch Audrey Hepburn movies/Glee, take naps, drink tea and then who knows what.  The first time we did this was when we made French-Mex, and that was so fantastic that we decided it needed to become a ritual.  We made soup the following week and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s (well, pseudo-watched it, we all ended up falling asleep in my bed! It was so relaxing!).  Later that night we ended up going out and hanging with friends and making some new French friends at a bar called Sherlock Holmes.  This Friday we all came over again and made the most delicious open-faced sandwiches ever.  We used 6 cériales et abricot bread (from Paul, our favorite bakery), fromage (chèvre et brie) and fruits (pear, apples, and figs).  After we toasted them in the oven, we drizzled a little bit of miel (honey) over the top.  

 They were to die for!  After we ate, we had tea time (with the tea that my parents sent me, thank you mom and dad!) and watched glee.   

After that, everyone left until after dinner when we met up at Lea’s house to bake cookies and then we were off to a concert.  I don’t know how we do it, but Fridays are the days where we make the most out of our lives here in Bordeaux!

by the way: yes, that is a bowl of cookie dough next to the giant cookie and yes, we did eat it by the spoonful.

I was writing a letter and this is what came out :

Life for me really is going absolutely wonderfully.  Today I just had such a fantastic day from the time that I woke up all the way until now, right before I go to bed.  I woke up this morning in such a good mood, I got ready had some tea and when I left I just felt fantastic: about myself, about the day, about being where I was, just about life.  On my way to the tram stop there is a little flower shop and I saw that they had daffodils and I got so excited that it's daffodil season! I think I got so excited because that means that spring is coming soon, or it could be because I just love daffodils that much.  I bought some knowing that I wanted to give them to someone, plus it meant that I got to spend the whole 30 min. tram ride holding a small bouquet of daffodils (jonquilles en Français).  When I got to school it wasn't cold and the sun was shining (I think it got up to 60 today! It was so nice, all I had to wear was a shirt, cardigan, and sweater).  I ended up giving the daffodils to my two friends from ILP that I hardly see anymore and it was fantastic. I met up with my friend Lea who hasn't been having a good week and I wanted to cheer her up, but I wasn't sure how.  I was still in a really good mood, so after class we decided to get lunch.  We ended up going to the grocery store and made a salad out of lettuce, mushrooms, tomatoes, cucumber, corn, avocado, and smoked salmon.  It was so good plus she whipped up some mustard/balsamic vinegar dressing that was delicious.  We were supposed to go see this show that her host mom was in but ended up getting lost and walking for four miles around Bordeaux, it turned out to be such a lovely afternoon though.  The sun was shining all day and the wind wasn't harsh, it was so soft and barely warm, but it made all the difference in the world.  When we were very close to home we stopped at an epicerie (which is like a small market) and found strawberries.  They were so good for it being February.  I cannot wait for spring, I know it is going to be beautiful, but I also know that there is still a lot more rain and coldness to come.  After I got home I did some homework, ate dinner, and now I am here writing this!  It was just such a fantastic day for no other reason than the fact that I am just so happy.  I can't remember a day when I have been this thrilled about life.  I love being here, I love the people that I have met and will meet.  While there are a few things that I miss, I know that I am going back to them in a few months so all that I want to do now is just enjoy being here and being separated and wonderfully solo.  I guess that is what my life is right now.  Yes there are stresses, yes school is school, money is money, friends are friends, but in the end, I am one happy girl, and I am just trying to not let the weight of those stresses attach to me any more than they have to. 

I cannot wait for Spring!

         During the first Sunday of every month in Bordeaux (and maybe throughout France) the museums are open to the public for free.  It is really a nice way to spend a morning or afternoon particularly on a day like last Sunday.  My friends and I went to the Musée de Beaux Arts which houses many early renaissance paintings and a whole impressionist exhibit featuring Matisse (I think it is impressionist).    After we went to the museum we walked all along the quai (the boardwalk next to the river).  We found an amazing farmers market and ended up eating Spanish food for lunch.  My friend Lea and I shared this amazing couscous dish, but they also had paëlla (sp?) and shish kebabs that looked fabulous.  We found some unpasteurized apple juice and petites cannelés too as we were walking around! Cannelés are like baked flan…almost, they are really hard to describe, but once you have had a fresh baked warm canellé you just can’t go back.  After we ate we walked down farther along the boardwalk and got ice cream and simply ambled down the quai in the sunshine.  It was so warm, it got all the way up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit! I was walking outside in the sunshine in a dress and a cardigan and it felt marvelous! Thank goodness for acclimation!

 

This is the giant glass crocodile sculpture outside of the museum

Lovely ladies on the boardwalk! (courtesy of Emily Mertens)

Dinner Parties!

         One of the reasons that I LOVE living in my homestay is the fact that in the past month that I have been here (ya I have totally been here a month, what the what?!) there have been at least one dinner party a week.  Two birthdays, a few friends here and there, they are a lot of fun and give me a lot of insight into the French culture ie: champagne, wine, cuisine, and cheese.  The parties start when everyone gets there at around nine.  We all sit in the living room eating little hors d’oeuvres like baked croutons with jambon et fromage (ham and cheese) or other little salty finger foods and we drink champagne…lot’s of champagne.  My host dad usually has me finish the bottle saying that, “you are in France, you need to drink real champagne!”.  At around ten o’clock we sit down for dinner, for the appetizer we have white wine and then for the main meal we have red.  After the main course comes salade et fromage, and then dessert.  I really like these dinner parties because it makes me talk to strangers and even though it can get really awkward at times, I know that life is awkward and that these experiences are so good or me in the long run.

The Mundane...

     My dad made a good point that I haven’t really described what my daily life is like either in a post or in pictures, so here you go dad, here is what regular life is like:

I get up in the morning in my room that is the same size if not bigger than my room at home.  I get my own bathroom too.  The room is kind of weird though because I have two random chairs not including my desk chair.  I like them and I use them it’s just weird.  

 

After getting ready for school I leave my house and meet up with my friend Lea to walk to the tram stop.  It takes about ten minutes to get to the tram and then another twenty-thirty minutes on the tram to get to school.   

Our campus is really not that pretty, but whatever, most of my time isn’t spent there anyways.  This is Lea again, she posed for me to make the shot prettier.

 Once we get to school we usually have just enough time to grab a café au lait before it is time to go to class.  

I only have classes Monday through Thursday and both Wednesday and Thursday I only have one class each day. 

Here is my schedule:

Lundi: 8:30-9:30 phonetics, 8:30-10:30 lit lecture (it is not obligatory for the exchange students, so it’s okay that there is an overlap, don’t worry dad, I am still going to class!), 13:30-15:30 history lecture

Mardi: 8:30-10:30 history section, 10:30-12 communications, 15:30-16:30 honetics section, 16:30-19:30 methodology

Mercredi: 10:30-12:30 literature section

Jeudi: 10:30-12 compte rendu

My classes are all pretty interesting except for the lectures.  During the two-hour lectures the professeurs literally sit on stage with a microphone and talk for two hours straight.   We sometimes get a five minute repose (break) but that is barely enough time for even a bathroom break.  For lunch we usually eat at a cafeteria, or grab a sandwich at a café.  After school there really isn’t anything mundane about my schedule.  I never know what I am going to do for lunch or until dinner, usually it involves a lot of walking around doing who knows what.  I have dinner at around nine most nights.  Some nights we have dinner parties but I am very rarely notified of these so more than once have a gone downstairs for dinner in my pajamas only to find out that there are a bunch of strangers there for someones birthday or something.  

This is my host family-from Left to Right: Me, Fanny (Pierre's wife), Bago (new foreign exchange student from Spain), Jean-Lucien (high school student who goes to a private school in Bordeaux), Pierre (Maylis and Patricks' eldest son), Patrick (host dad), Maylis (host mom), Andrea (same as Jean-Lucien), Romain (Youngest son, pseudo-lives at home with his GF), Caroline (Romains GF), Jean (always around but works at a potato/fry company)