How to pass the election results day in France in 15 easy steps

1) Wake up early to see if the results are in yet.
2) First news comes from FranceInfo app on the iPod: "Obama est réelu President...." and that's all you need to know. 
3) Make breakfast, feed the cat, give the cat insulin, and head to school.
4) Wait for four metros to pass before one comes that isn't too stuffed with people and you manage to squeeze on.
5) Manage to be on time to French History class. Give your other American friend a small high five without saying anything. Then the teacher talks for an hour before giving you your test results back.  
6) Find out you got a 15/20 (the equivalent of a pretty solid A) when you were expecting no better than a 10 (a C).
7) Do a little dorky happy dance during the break.
8) Go to class number two.
8) Hear the Italian guy say "Obama won!" and reply with a little "Woo!"  Then hear the other obnoxious American shout "OBAMA!" as he walks into class late as usual. Give him a small thumbs up but also roll your eyes because he's so obnoxious.
9) Find out you didn't do quite so well as you would have liked on the Language Study test.
10) Eat a mediocre lunch since you have to wait until 1pm on Wednesdays to avoid the crowd, but all the food is gone, instead of 11:30 when everything is fresh and no one else is in the RU.
11) Study for your phonetics lab exam.
12) Take said exam.  Feel like you did at least ok.
13) Go home.
14) Wait for host mom to return from Paris and hope she's in a good mood.
15) She wasn't but you watch the news, eat not-so-good corn on the cob, drink two glasses of pink wine, and eat ice cream together anyway to commemorate Obama's reelection.

I'd say it was a pretty average day.  Yes, everyone else in the rest of the world was for Obama.  The Italians were happy, the Colombians were happy, the French were happy... everybody's happy here.

Llyfergell and llefrith

Which means "library" and "milk" in Welsh.  Ask me to say them out loud when you see me next, it's hilarious. =)

So after London, Megan and I caught an 11:30pm train to Bangor, Wales!  Not after a 4 hour connection in Wolverhampton, though... starting at 2am.  Haha.  Oh well.  Now I can say I've slept in a train station!  Or tried to at least.  

Megan and I at 2am in Wolverhampton. Oh joy!

We finally made it to Bangor around 8:30am and went grocery shopping.  Then we didn't have anything better to do, so we took the train to:

This place.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.  Which translates to "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave" or something like that.

I almost fell on to the tracks... not really.

And of course we had to participate in Chi Delta Monday together.

There wasn't much else to do there, haha.  But now I can say I've been!!!

Tuesday Megan had her outdoor pursuits class all day, so while she was out climbing mountains and stuff, I took the bus to Caernarfon.  To signal a bus, you do not wave at them, you stick your hand out straight. I may have made the bus driver mad, but hey I'm a newbie. Cut me some slack man.  Anyway. Caernarfon was really neat, it's a freaking old castle where the Prince of Wales has been crowned since forever. Meaning Prince Charles was crowned there!

Eagle Tower, supposed birthplace of Edward I. I think.

That round thing is where Prince Charles and the Queen stood!

Pretty view.

Then I wandered around the city for a while, but it was getting rather chilly so I ended up heading home around 1pm and waiting for Megan to get back.  Then we made dinner and just hung out the rest of the night.  Then Wednesday it was rainy and gross all day so we just stayed home and played Nancy Drew. Which was fine.  

Thursday we went to the pier for fresh scones and hot cocoa!  And when I say fresh, they were still steaming when we were served.  So delicious.

After that, we climbed a huge hill to get to "Roman Camp," where we had a nice (if somewhat foggy) view of the straight. 

That little building is where we had the scones!

And fish and chips for lunch of course!

After lunch, I sat in on Megan's Welsh language class, where I learned such useful phrases as "Dw i'n licio nofio efo dolffins" - "I like to swim with dolphins." and "Ga'i beint o lager plis!" - "I'd like a pint of lager, please!"  Hahaha it was really fun though. Welsh is a crazy language.

Thursday night I finished Nancy Drew and Megan and I had hot chocolate with real marshmallows! Since she got two bags of them in two care packages haha.  She ended up sending me home with popcorn (SO HAPPY)!

Friday I went home.  I was nervous about getting between the train stations in London and Paris, but it ended up being really easy. Thankfully. I made it home on time and went straight to bed!  

It was great to be away and see a friend from my "other" life back home.  She's having a great time in Wales, too, but we're both excited to get home.

Now I have to actually go back to school and face my exam results... yikes!  Cross your fingers for me!

London

So I spent the weekend of my Toussaint break in London with Matt, Sally, her friend Helen, and MEGAN, who also goes to Doane and is in my sorority!  She's studying in Wales, where I am currently staying with her. London was super fun. Exhausting. But fun.

Matt, Sally, and I left Rennes at 5pm Friday afternoon for Paris.  We arrived around 7:30 and left to find something to eat.  We returned to the train station to find that we had missed our train to London. Panic ensued.  For one, I had no way of telling Megan we would be late to the hostel. For two, if there were no seats left on the last train out, we'd have to stay overnight.  Luckily, we were able to get on the next train.  Quite an adventure that was....

Me and Sally on the train to London.  Our car was full of loud, drunk French students.

 

Thankfully, the hostel was easy to find, and I found Megan!!  After a long wait to check in (at midnight, go figure), we were able to get into bed and try to sleep.  Keyword being try.  We slept in a tiny, tiny room with 20 beds all crammed and stacked together (which I forgot to take a picture of, unfortunately), and it was kind of loud all night.  People coming and going and trying to find their stuff, etc...  I probably slept two hours or less.  Oh well.  That's a hostel for you.  I've decided I'm not cut out to be a world traveller since I'm so paranoid about having clean sheets...  but I didn't contract any diseases so we're all good.

 

Saturday we all took a bike tour of London which was really fun.  Our tour guide was great and I got to ride a Fat Tire bike named Alexander Graham Bell!  We saw all sorts of things, including Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Westminster Abbey (where I'm still convinced I saw the Queen), and the Houses of Parliament.  Our tour guide told us about a guy who succeeded in breaking into Buckingham Palace, and made it all the way to the Queen's sleeping chambers, where it had a conversation with her at four in the morning.  He also gave us a delicious description of being hung, drawn, and quartered (because of Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up Parliament once. V for Vendetta).

 

Will and Kate weren't home.

 

After all that, we tried to find an Indian restaraunt down in Chelsea but decided not to eat there since it was take out only.  After four hours of walking in the cold, rain, and even a little random hail, we found a place to sit down and eat basically right by our hostel, where an American couple bought the five of us beer and extra rice to go with our meal.  How crazy is that!  It was all very good.  Then Sally and her friend left and Matt, Megan and I went back to the hostel and watched the Adjustment Bureau before bed.  Thankfully I slept a lot better.

 

Sunday was a random day of walking and taking the tube.  We saw the changing of the guards and walked across Tower Bridge.  We also saw Big Ben and Parliament, and went to the humungous British Museum. (I tried really hard not to geek out.)

 

I'm wearing that hat because I hadn't showered in three days... no way was I getting in the shower at that hostel after I forgot a pair of flip-flops.

 

MUMMIES

 

Then we left Matt to catch his train and Megan and I tried to do a Harry Potter walking tour I found.  We ended up spending more time lost than actually seeing things, but it was a good try nonetheless.

Supposed to be Honeyduke's. =)

 



See ya at Hogwarts!

 

Then Megan and I decided it was cold and we were tired and it wasn't going to be very much fun wandering around London aimlesslessly in the dark.  So we spent the next four hours in the train station waiting for our 11:30pm train to Wolverhampton, where we would spend another four hours in the waiting room there, trying to sleep until our train to Bangor came at 6am.  Except there was a little kid there too, who spent the whole night shouting about wanting to go home and/or wanting an apple.  What a typical college world travelling experience, haha.  It was the cheapest train, so of course we took it.

 

Finally we made it to Bangor around 8:30am, where I took immediate advantage of Megan's shower, which RUNS CONTINUOUSLY and has a CONSISTENTLY WARM TEMPERATURE.  I was so happy.  Won't have that again for another two months when I leave here... sigh.

 

I'll write more about my Wales adventure this weekend when I get home and have a chance to upload the pictures from my iPod. =) I'm so happy I'm here with my friend!  I was needing something from home to help me get through the last two months.  I think it will go a lot faster now.



 

 

 

Mont St. Michel - without an omelette

Hello!  I'm feeling slightly better now.  I'll feel even better once all my exams are over and I can be in London and Wales with one of my best friends and sisters... but I gotta get through four more days!

Saturday I went to Mont St. Michel with CIREFE.  I was in kind of a poopy mood, there was a lot of ugly construction, and the weather wasn't great, but it was still a good way to spend a day.  The abbey was amazing... and huge.  It's the main attraction there.  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the inside right now, but I did touch a 1200 year old stone wall.  It felt old!  The top of the tower has a gold statue of the Archangel Michael, which should protect it, but really just attracts lightning and causes fires.  The rest of the place was basically tourist shops and little restaurants... not too exciting.  I ate some pretty good ice cream though (not an omelette, like Rick Steves told me, oh well).

Buy ALL THE T-SHIRTS.

Me and Kelin. We found a little tiny quiet chapel behind the village and sat on the wall there for a long time because it was calm.

Don't wash your feet!!!!!!!!

Someday maybe I'll go back on a nicer day with less construction.

Honesty

Ok hi. This post won't probably be one of my happier ones but I feel obligated to share my true experience here.

At this moment, I just want to go home.  There are tears rolling down my cheeks as I type. I miss my parents and my dog and my family and my friends and my sorority and my Relay.  I'm starting to feel like I'm imposing on my host mom (even though I know in my heart that's dumb because she chose to have a host student).  I don't know how to keep myself busy enough and I'm having trouble taking my classes very seriously (due to a significant lack of homework).  Time seems to be crawling by and two months seems like it's going to be forever.  Not to mention I have a mini panic attack when I even think about Canadian / Chicagoan / Omahan snow at the end of December.

So here's what I think I need to do:

• Limit my contact to home via Skype / text / Facebook.
• Force myself to study more.
• Take walks (if it's nice enough).
• Read.
• Figure out a way to get out of the house, or not come home right away after school.
• Try not to count down the days so much.
• Focus on things I can look forward to doing here.

So that's what I said. Hopefully I can do it.

Here are things I should be looking forward to:

• Mont St. Michel (tomorrow)
• Angers in the Loire Valley (Sunday maybe)
• Intercultural Soiree (next Wednesday)
• Carnac (next Thursday)
• LONDON AND WALES (starting next Friday through the following Friday)
• Nantes (sometime)
• Thanksgiving dinner with CIEE (November 22 - exactly one month from when I'll be flying home)
• Strasbourg for the Christmas market (maybe hopefully)
• Transmusicales festival (2nd weekend in December)
• End of the year party with CIREFE (December 14)

Look, that's something almost every week I have left.

Ok, now I need to say something happy.  Today wasn't ALL a bad day.  Before lunch, I sat in the CIREFE cafeteria with Kelin and Matt, Laura from Columbia, Leandra from Germany, and Zhen, Tsing Tsing, and another boy from China.  We were all laughing really, really hard talking about the different random vocal sounds each culture has. In France, it's "Baah-ouais," for example.  We talked about "Uh-uh" for no and "Yuh-huh" for yes, which are American things.  And we all laughed REALLY hard because the universal sound one makes for an attractive person is "Mmmmmhmmmmm."  And it was extra awesome because this was all in French.

Plus, last night I went to the most fun concert I've ever been to. =)
See... I'm doing OK here.

Best Concert Of My Life

I saw these guys tonight! IT WAS SO FUN!!!!



http://mamarosin.com/

Proof I go to school here

Some of you have expressed doubt that I'm actually going to classes here. Well I'm about to prove to you that I do, in fact do school work!

Those are just a few of my notebooks and a couple assignments I've done.  And yes, they are all in French.

But the good news is, I usually have about three hours to kill in between my TWO classes a day.  Part of that time is spent eating.

Here's a not very good view of what part of the cafeteria (called an R.U. - Restaurant Universitaire) looks like.  I usually eat a salad or pizza (yes, I'm lame like that... you can only eat so much chicken though, too.)

Then I spend the rest of the time doing homework or reading in the cafeteria at CIREFE (they have vending machines for coffee and candy, so it's a cafeteria).

And when I leave, I laugh at this graffiti on the library:

It's Midterms time here, so wish me luck!  I've had two so far, and I already know one of my grades. I got a 20/20 on my oral expression test!  The other one (written comprehension) I'm pretty sure I did pretty well on too.  I'm super, very, incredibly nervous for my civilisation and history tests though. Those are next week.

 THEN IT'S FALL BREAK AND I'M GOING TO LONDON AND WALES!!!

This weekend I'm going to Mont St. Michel and Angers (that's in the Loire Valley... to see a chateau).  We're trying to plan a trip to Strasbourg too, in December, but who knows if that will happen.  

Until next time!