Les vacances-la premiere partie!

Vacation!!! We wrapped up our last couple days of classes with our Gtown professors, which was kind of sad, because our group really liked our prof, Prof Sobanet. We definitely are gonna keep in contact with him, cause he's a great guy, and will be the head of the French department this year, even though he is the youngest and most junior member of the department, however that happened. We also took the first part of our placement test on Thursday, though we had to start over during the middle of the test because the power went off in the whole city during the test, and as we were using the computers for the exam, we were kinda outta luck. However, it actually helped us a bit, because the directions weren't really clear on how to do certain things, so we really got a dry run. We have our oral exam next Monday to place us into one of the nine levels at the Institut.

Saturday, we went to Chambord (pic above), a hunting retreat house built in the 16th century by the famous Renaissance king, Francois I, and redecorated by Louis XIV. This one was probably my favorite so far, and it was huge compared to all the other chateaux we had seen! Definitely some cool experiences and trips! After that, we were officially on vaca!!!

Sunday, a group of five of us left by train to Nice in Southern France on the Cote d'Azur (French Riviera). We had a 4.5 hour ride to Marseille on a double-decker train (and ya, we were on top!) and then a two hour trip to Nice, all the while checking the score on the American game against Brazil, and slowly sinking into disappointment once we lost...

However, we've had an awesome time so far in Nice. We got up this morning and went meandering around the city, along the beach a bit, and up a hill that was an old Greek acropolis and Roman fort, and later a chateaux, with some beautiful views (more pics to come later!) The water here is soooooooo blue and sooooooo clear, it's incredible and really beautiful! We went to the beach in the afternoon and went swimming for a while, but not for too long, because it started to cool off in the afternoon and actually rained a bit :( We plan to head to Monaco and Monte Carlo tomorrow, and hopefully hit the beach again with some better weather and more sunshine! After that, we'll be heading to Paris til Sunday, meeting up with some other Gtown students-it's gonna be a lot of fun to be in the city of lights!

Tchao/Peace!

Le deuxième semaine (The second week)

So, I've made it thru one week, though that's not to say anything bad, cause it's been a blast!!!

After I posted on Sunday, I went out with several other students to celebrate the Fête de la musique, a European festival originating in France in the 60s where there's music in the streets all day and especially at night, and where everyone pretty much parties in the street the whole night. While we didn't stay out the whole night, we did have a pretty good time watching the different musicians perform in all the major streets and squares, and we even got to dance some salsa for an hour or so (yes, very French!). The top two pictures are from my phone from that night. It's really quite a unique experience, with nothing like it in America. It actually reminded me of the night we celebrated our victory over UNC my frosh year to go to the Final Four when all the students were celebrating in the streets. Not as crazy as that, but close...

Tuesday, our class went to a shopping center to visit a "hypermarché" called Carrefour, which was basically a Super Walmart/Target, but with much stricter security. When we tried to go in, they made us use special twist ties to lock our bookbags shut so we couldn't steal anything, and they also wouldn't let us enter with our worksheets out into the open because they said it was "industrial espionnage," until our profs presented them with a fax allowing us permission to complete our worksheets. Apparently, this is something very French. I bought a big of French chocolate and other goodies for our train ride next week, as well as a couple of Astérix comics in French to add to my English collection.

Today, we had some time to visit different places on our own in Tours for our homework. I went to the Musée des Beaux Arts with my friend Stephanie to see lots of art from the 15th-20th centuries. The prize piece of the gallery (which reminded me of the Portrait Gallery in DC) was a Rembrandt, "La Fuite en Egypte," depicting the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt after Jesus' birth (last picture). There were also works by Monet, Rodin, and Delacroix, so overall, not a bad collection!

Tomorrow we've got our placement test for the Institut, so I'd better go study! Tchao!

Peace

Les Châteaux!!!

So it's been a busy end to the week! After wrapping up classes (which also included an intersing visit with some French students preparing to apply to the big business schools here in France, Wharton-esque), we've spent the last two days visiting the châteaux.

Saturday, we first stopped at the Caves of Vouvray for another dégustation du vin (wine tasting-middle right). It was incredible to see how many bottles of wine they store there-almost 4 million! After that, we had a nice pique-nique outside, and then made our way to Amboise, a château that dates to the 15/16th century (middle left) and is the burial spot for Leonardo da Vinci (bottom). After that, we were all pretty exhausted, and we headed home, but not before buying some delicious chocolates at a famous chocoloatier in the little village at Amboise. I was then fortunate enough to be invited to the birthday party of one of the nephew's of my French family-it was a blast playing with the little kids and speaking French with them and their relatives, but there's still nothing like my own cousins ;)

Today, we went first to Langeais (top), and after that, on to Blois. We had guided tours at both places with the same guy who did the wine tasting at the Institute, and I must say, he knows his stuff!

Tomorrow, we start up classes again, and we'll head to a supermarket to see how that all works here in France!

A bientôt

Peace

Une dégustation du vin!

So we've finally started our classes, and they've been excellent so far! I really like our professor (Professor Sorbanet, from Georgetown) and all that we've been able to learn and improve upon in only three days!

We also had a crash course in the production and tasting of wine with one of the professors from the Institut. It was really interesting to here about how it's all made and all the other little intracacies, combined with my background in yeast biology (yes, France has not made me any less nerdy :) And of course, the wine was delicieux!

I have some pics I want to post, but I'm still working at a computer at the Institut, so it's a bit difficult, but I'll try and get some up soon!

Peace

Les premiers jours

I'm gonna have to keep this one a bit short, because I'm typing on a computer at the Institut de Touraine, where we have begun to take our classes, and the keyboard is in French, so every time I want to type an "a," I end up with a "q," so it's a bit painful.

We traveled to a goat farm yesterday and got to see lots of cute baby goats all over the place-soooo much fun playing with them. But of course, we also learned how they make goat milk and cheese, and had some with a bit of wine-c'était très bien! We then had a little lunch of excellent crèpes in the quaint little town of Chinon, home of Rabelais. We ended the day at the castle/dungeon of Loches-lots of pictures were taken, and I'll try and put them up soon!

I also met my family last night too-they are all sooooo nice and helpful. The first thing I did once I met the kids when they came home from school was play the guitar with Jean-Baptiste, who plays the bass. We had dinner then with one of their aunts and two cousins-9 persons at the table was a lot! I listened a lot, and its a bit difficult talking sometimes with the kids, since they speak a bit fast, but its been ok so far. More on them to come!

A quick funny story about some vocab I learned today. Apparently, I made un petit erreur when I wrote the email to introduce myself to my hostfamily a few weeks ago. I told them that I was very excited to stay with them: "je suis très excité de rester chez vous." But, as I've been told by my friends here that the right word is actually impassioné; excité, which we looked up in the dictionary, actually means horny-oops. But my host mom has been extrmely nice to me-haha, just kidding. This seems to have happened to me a few times in the past year, but I don't know why...;)

Peace

Je suis ici!

So I made it! After two flights, from Cle to Det to Paris, worth about 15 hours of travel time, I arrived in Paris at the Charles de Gaulle Aeroport. Ctown to Det was pretty short, only about 20 minutes. While I was waiting for my flight to Paris, I thought I'd try and see if I could pick out Americans vs French waiting for our Air France flight. I must admit, I failed miserably. The only people I successfully picked out (after seeing people's passports upon boarding), were a middle-aged couple, with the man dressed in a hawaiian shirt and the woman reading a Rick Steve's book on Paris-obviously American.

I was pretty impressed with our flight to Paris too-not too bad food, and we each had our individual tv sets to watch movies on demand-quite different from what I experienced when I was little, and you can obviously tell I'm a bit nerdy and easily amused by cool new stuff!

Everything was simple at CDG too-just a simple stamp of the passport and then I headed down to the train station to catch the high speed train to Tours. I ran into three other girls from our program there, so we all stuck together and made it on the train, after composter nos billets!

We then had to catch a connector train (about 5 minutes) from the outside station to downtown Tours, and we almost missed it-I had to get pulled on by one of the girls as the door closed in on my backpack-just made it. We saw more Hoyas from our group at the station, and a bunch of us wandered down to our hotel, asking a bunch of people for help along the way, many of whom didn't know the streets we were talking about (which is NOT a sign of how well we speak French, I thank you!).

Sleep ensued, a bit of dinner and intro, and then a bunch of us walked around the city and got some drinks. Lots of fun, and I could write a ton more, but more sleep is upon me, so I must go...

Peace and love to all!

Allez à la France!!!

Hey everyone, and welcome to my blog. I'm going to be keeping track of my adventures in Tours, France this summer as I go for a summer study abroad program run by Georgetown University at the Institut de Touraine.

First off, I have to give credit where credit is due. I must recognize my buddy Ed for giving me the inspiration to do this! Thanks Ed! We miss ya and can't wait til you get back from Argentina!

Thanks also to everyone who is following my blog, as well as to everyone who has helped make this trip possible! (wink wink Mom and Dad)

Anyways, I'm super excited to be heading out tomorrow evening! I really hope to get a lot out of my trip: lots of new experiences, learning about French culture, and hopefully a bit of improvement on my French! I have two flights worth about 15 hours of travel time to get me to Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport, and then take the TGV (a sweet high-speed superconducting train-expect nerdy posts like this-haha!) down to Tours on Friday. I'll head to a hotel to meet the rest of my group, check-in, take the language pledge, and then get going. I won't be meeting my host family until Sunday, so I probably won't post again until then. So for now...

Bon voyage!!!