Bon voyage!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm departing on my next adventure. I'll be spending two weeks exploring France with my friend Carmen.

Brief Itinerary:

4/23-4/28: Guernsey-a small island between France and England (we will have to switch our money to pounds) where we are staying at a cheapish resort and relaxing for 5 days. We plan on exploring the island by bus and by bike, and we are excited about taking advantage of the plethora of museums. Of note are the WWII museum and the postal museum (?).

4/28: Night Train to Antibes (South of France)

4/29: Day exploring Antibes, Night in hostel in Nice.

4/29-5/2: Nice-decent-sized city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. We will be sun bathing and swimming, exploring the city and its ancient ruins, and braving a hostel with possible cockroach inhabitants. Should be fun!

5/2-5/5: Train to Bayeux, a small town next to Caen, that is the only city in Normandy to have escaped the ravages of World War II bombings. We will be visiting the beaches of Normandy and being very American. As for lodgings, we will be trying out Couch Surfing for the first time with a very nice 50-something French woman who is picking us up at the train station and feeding us. Yes!

5/5-5/6: Caen- home of one of the most epic WWII museums in Europe. Rick Steves gives it 3 stars (absolutely must-see!). Do you see a theme here? Couch Surfing some more, this time with a young and hip 30-something who enjoys sky-diving and other extreme adventure sports. Should make for good conversation.

5/6: Return to Rennes

5/7: Versailles. I will see it now in full bloom with fountain shows. Plus my architecture prof is taking us so she should provide us with oodles of good information. So excited!

So that is the trip. I will be without internet for the next two weeks, so I will update with some anecdotes and pictures when I get back.

Tombée amoreuse de Bretagne or Falling in Love with Brittany

In the last two months or so, I have come to the conclusion that Brittany is a pretty wonderful part of France. Two years ago when I first discussed study abroad with my advisor and French professor, Madame Barjasteh, I was somewhat disappointed by the options available to us. We could, of course, go to Paris, but that was more expensive and did not offer a very good program. Our second option was Angers, a city I vaguely knew, and that, again, did not offer a good program. Rennes, she told me authoritatively, was the place to go. All French-majoring Oles went to Rennes, after all. The program there was fantastic and the city was young and vibrant. Rennes? I thought. Where the hell is Rennes?

Boarding the plane in January I knew almost nothing about Rennes or Brittany (Bretagne). What little I knew was exclusively related to student life in Rennes. I had looked at a map and found my future French home, inland of the north-western arm of France that reaches out into the Atlantic and the English Channel. But beyond these small facts, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Since that day on the plane I have learned quite a lot about my home city and the region in which it is located. Between my history of French architecture course, cultural enrichment run by the program, and my daily interactions with the people of this place, I have gotten a taste (literally) of what Breton culture is all about. Because Brittany remained independent from France all the way up to the end of the 15th century, Brittany developed its own culture completely separate from the rest of the country. Also, because of its role as a trading port and its connections (both peaceable and warring) with England it has a slightly Celtic and even multi-cultural flare.

Voilà my encounters with this unique culture:

1. Language: Breton is a language with Celtic roots that is spoken in small pockets of Brittany. The region insisted on maintaining its own language long after it became part of France, but modernization has slowly deteriorated the popularity of the language (which is absolutely bizarre and is hardly related to French at all). Still, it is 200,000 strong today.

2. Food and beverages: I have recently fallen in love with palets bretons au beurre and galettes bretons--or as they say in Breton: Bretonse koekjes--which are little shortbread cookies that come in varying thicknesses. Another Breton classic is cidre, apple cider that (I believe) is brewed somewhat like beer only with apples so that it is slightly alcoholic. Cidre is traditionally served in little clay bowls (this is how we drink cidre in the Berthaut household), though I also like drinking it from the glass in my bar of choice at the moment, O'Connel's Irish Pub.

3. Dance: A couple of weeks ago I had the fabulous opportunity to attend a Breton traditional dance. At Fest-Noz, Celtic-sounding music is played on harps, wooden flutes, and fiddles of some sort and the gathered population (a mixed bag of old, fiercely Breton couples who cruise around the dance floor with confidence and young, crazily dressed hippies making up the moves as they go) link pinkie fingers to form huge circles and chains that snake around the room. As far as the steps go, I choose to just hop from one foot to the other to the rhythm of the music, which seems to work pretty well until one of the intense Breton dancers breaks into your chain to teach you the moves: "Non! Gauche, droite, gauche, droite (left, right, left, right)."

4. Music: Maxime is taking piano right now in school and he has to learn a Breton song called "Tri Martolod." I LOVE this song--it's very catchy and very Breton-y.

Here is my version of choice on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJwI2INm92M

It is a must hear! And I believe the flag being waved in the crowd is the Breton flag of old, but I haven't confirmed this yet.

I had a particularly warm and fuzzy moment when the song came over the bus loudspeakers as we were driving from Carnac to Vannes over the Breton countryside two weekends ago.

Rennes is the capitol of the region and as almost as old as Rome. The remnants of the Roman wall that used to surround the city can still be seen near the canal. Rennes was then a medieval stronghold and village, and now is a bustling city of some 200,000+ inhabitants. It is the smallest city in the world with a métro, which runs on one line between the north and south of the city in about 18 minutes. As a thriving college city, it is rather gauche (left/liberal in English as liberal means that you're conservative in French). It's not very touristy because, as I myself proved, no one knows it exists except for the French and maybe some Europeans in the know, so it is truly what a French city would be if tourism wasn't its number one industry. Despite the lack of tourists, Rennes boasts hundreds of restaurants, bars, and cafés, a few good museums (which I have yet to visit), parks, move theaters, an opera house and theater company, and lots of government buildings. Translation: it's a pretty awesome place to be, and I'm glad I listened to Professor Barjasteh and followed in the footsteps of my fellow French-majoring Oles. And, if I do decide to return to France to teach, I will be more than happy to be in Rennes again.

Reflections on Dominant Culture and the Mother Tongue

First of all, here are the photos as promised. I hope this works: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=110741&id=1013408537&saved#!/album.php?fbid=1866210767682&id=1013408537&aid=110741

Today the météo promised a sunny day in the 20s (Celsius--about 70 Fahrenheit), but alas, it is gray and a tad chilly. Carole and I were outside on the patio enjoying reading the newspaper and completing a Sudoku respectively when rain drops began to fall on our heads, and we retreated indoors. What a bummer.

Saturdays are always very relaxing for me. I sleep in late, then do my minimal homework to the sound of Maxime playing King Kong on the XBox. Carole and Manu make a nice lunch which we enjoy together before the kids have swim practice. We spend the afternoon relaxing, reading, and playing games before we have yet another nice dinner, sometimes in the living room during the nightly news, other times in the kitchen. 

Last weekend we decided to mix it up a bit: we went to play laser tag as a family. The laser tag place was just like laser tag places in the States. We entered the maze and suited up in our flashing vests, and Maxime declared that since he and I were both on the yellow team we should stick together and help each other. So I followed Maxime through the dark, twisting corridors of the labyrinth, aiming my laser gun at all moving lights which signified that a person was lurking there. We especially enjoyed running into Manu, Carole, and Charlotte (all on the red team) and provoking a bit of a family battle. Maxime and I won every time.

What shocks me most about this experience, and indeed about my experience in France in general, is how much English I see and hear everywhere. When I got tagged by a laser in the maze, my vest would chant "Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up." Instead of having "les équipes rouges, bleus, et jaune," the labels "Red Team," "Blue Team," and "Yellow Team" distinguished the battling parties. The sign next to the counter in the lobby advertised "Bachelor Party" and "Birthday Party" deals. In Paris, one of the most visited places in the world and an international center, English is only to be expected. But in Rennes, a rather small city in the heart of Brittany, the dominance of English comes as somewhat as a shock. While most of the menus here are solely in French (though it's definitely not uncommon to have a bilingual menu), the Rennais (people from Rennes) themselves know a lot of English. The other day I was in the grocery store and gave the clerk incorrect change which she took without comment. When she didn't give me back the 10 centimes I had overpaid her, I blubbered in French that I had given her incorrect change. Smiling at me she said, "Oh, are you English? You can speak English to me, ok?" Once they figure out you're a foreigner, the French speaking ceases immediately.

Before coming to France I was determined to prove to myself that the United States is not the center of the universe like it thinks it is. The world is much bigger than the stretch of land between New York City and Los Angeles. In some ways, I was right: the French would be horrified by the thought of America at the center of the world. They have their own ways of being, thinking, and doing, and we have ours. But the fact remains that the music I hear in the métro belongs to almost exclusively American artists; the French news, when it's not obsessing over the nuclear disaster in Japan or the upcoming election, focuses on American pop culture and what Obama's been up to lately; the majority of French students, beginning as early as seven years old, choose English as their second language; The Simpsons is Maxime and Charlotte's favorite show, and Gladiator, E.T., and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer sit on the movie shelf in the living room; most of the information that pops up on the computer is in English, as are nearly all the prompts for the new XBox. What I have discovered here is that the United States is a cultural and political super power--though I'm not sure that's necessarily something to be proud of. Quite to the contrary, I find it a little frightening. If there's one thing that history has taught us (to follow the French method of always looking to the past), it's that power is a dangerous thing. To me, the most terrible thing about the United States' power is its ability to transform hundreds of years of cultural creation into the somewhat homogeneous product of a single nation--not that this has happened yet, but it is definitely inching that direction. I understand now why France has a language committee run by the government to keep French safe from the claws of the American English mainstream.

Speaking of the English mainstream, I think it's time for me and Charlotte to play a game of American Guess Who? (Qui est-ce?) or maybe some Life (Destin). We'll see what she chooses...

Adventures and Homecomings

Well, I guess I took another nice vacation from my blog. I feel like this happens with most ventures such as this: you start out really strong and then somewhere along the line you cease to see the adventure as something to write about because you begin to LIVE in the adventure. It becomes your day-to-day, and as your day-to-day, you get caught up in it and (unfortunately) stop writing so much.

At least that is my excuse. My life in Rennes, while it still has an aura of unrealness, has become my actual life. I am living in Rennes. When I returned from Venice two weeks ago I had a sudden realization that Rennes felt like home. As I ascended the escalator from the métro station (after 18 hours on a train) and the sunlight showered me with warmth, I got to the top and looked around at the great stone buildings, the canal stretched out before me, the buses and people passing to and fro--and I finally felt some familiarity, that feeling of knowing a place so well that it's become a part of who you are. All the unfamiliarity around me--the language, the foods, the etiquette, the architecture, the stores, the brand names--is what makes being in France so hard at times, so it's wonderful to finally feel the sharp strangeness of it all ebbing away and slowly transforming into someplace that feels a little closer to home.

I survived my adventure in Geneva and Venice (yay!) and had a great time to boot. Carmen and I departed Rennes on a Saturday afternoon (Feb 26) and arrived in Geneva that evening. We spent about 36 hours roaming around Geneva before we hopped another train and road through the Alps to Venice. After a full day in Venice having the time of our lives getting lost in winding maze of the sinking city, we met up with two of our American friends who are on our program and spent another lovely 24 hours with them. They and Carmen went on to Florence, but I (frugally) decided to return home to recuperate. So I took a night train on Thursday evening, and after some train drama, arrived "home" on Friday afternoon (March 4).

Here are some highlights:

- Geneva is the financial capitol of the world. It consists of about a billion banks with some international relations buildings sprinkled in there somewhere (the seat of the UN is there), all back-dropped by the Swiss Alps. We were in Geneva on a Sunday so what was there to see wasn't really open, including restaurants, and making matters worse, everything was SUPER expensive. One of the shining moments of our trip was being turned away from a restaurant because we arrived too early (5pm), buying a loaf of bread to ease our hunger pains, and then devouring it in the rain in front of the cathedral in Geneva which just happened to be closed. We did manage to make it to the Red Cross Museum, which was pretty legit, and we took a nice walk around the large lake near the city.

- Another of my favorite memories of Geneva is our search for the green space on the map. Carmen loves walking around in parks, so when we saw a good 4 inches of greenness on our map, we made a beeline for it...except we couldn't because there were about 100 constructions zones blocking our path. When we finally untangled ourselves from all the jackhammers and concrete, we found ourselves facing a gigantic, gray-ish brown hill. This was supposedly the green space. So we climbed to the top and found a "park" without any living vegetation except for the brown grass and some sad looking trees, some graffiti-ed-on park benches, a menagerie with almost nothing but roosters, and a sketchy community garden. After some exploring there, we crossed a train trestle (yes, a train came of course, but don't worry; we are on a walking/biking path) and descended a vertical hill into...a sewer plant. Oh yes. This little failed attempt to find beauty in Geneva is actually one of my favorite memories. Carmen and I had so much fun failing in Geneva.

- If Carmen and I had fun failing in Geneva, we had fun succeeding in Venice. Venice is hands-down one of the coolest places I have ever been. Venice is made up of a series of islands which are riddled with canals that run through the interior of each island so boats can pass through. No cars are allowed and new construction is almost impossible, so Venice has been preserved in its 15th century state with a few modifications--like the Disney store. The streets are medieval alleys with no names that wind in all directions, so it's almost impossible to navigate with a map. You just kind of have to start walking in the general direction of your destination and hope you find a bridge somewhere. Making things even better, we were there right before Carnivale (Fat Tuesday), so everyone was dressed in full Venetian-masked glory in celebration.

- I saw and did the following in Venice: Piazza San Marco; Palais des Doges (palace of Venice's pointless political leader, the doge); Venice Naval History Museum, which had a random Swedish military exhibit; a small art museum in some aristocrat's old manor; the Museum of 18th Century Fashion and Fabrics which boasted about 8 garments but was cool nonetheless; visited the Galeria dell'Accademia (famous art museum); ate lots of gelato and pasta and had white wine with almost every meal; went to the old Jewish ghetto part of the island; watched people riding around in gondolas (it's about $100 per ride); chased a group of priests-in-training down the street to get a picture and then ended up running into them two more times; wandered around a lot in the streets to the point where I could go places without even glancing at the map (though I should mention that sometimes there are signs pointing you to the touristy destinations, so maybe I cheated a little).

So that's my Geneva/Venice adventure. When I returned to Rennes, my host family announced we were headed to Pornic for the weekend to visit Carole's sister and husband who have a house on the coast. We had a great time there. It was so beautiful! We balanced our time evenly between eating and walking off our meals along the rocky shore and in the little village. I ate sardine paté and beef tongue and the most delicious apple crumble I have ever tasted in my life but rejected the freshly-found oysters sloshing around in their own goo. I think I made a good decision as my poor host dad got sick on the way home.

Last weekend my friends Zoe and Bjorn, who are also here for the semester at Oxford and the organic farms of the South of France respectively, and I surprised Carmen for her 21st birthday. They arrived secretly on Thursday afternoon and surprised the unsuspecting Carmen in Ste Anne square. Happily reunited and with our German friend Rhea in tow, we went to a "Mexican" restaurant for dinner and then met some other American friends from our program at a bar called the Funky Munky for after-dinner drinks and conversation. Zoe, Bjorn, Carmen, and I then had a 4-day-long sleepover at Carmen's house and had a fabulous time exploring Rennes (Saturday market day is soooo cool), cooking, and laughing.

Well, I think that about gets us up-to-date. Today I went to Carnac and Vannes with the American group. Carnac is a collection of Stonehenge-esque rock arrangements dating back 6,000 years; Vannes is an ancient port-town with very well-perserved medieval ramparts and wooden houses. Now it's time for dinner with the Berthauts and some relaxation.

Pictures to follow.

Un jour près de la mer: Adventures in St. Malo and Dinan

Last Saturday I journeyed with the CIREFE group (international students) to St. Malo and Dinan, two ancient maritime trade cities located about an hour or so north of Rennes. We met Madame Galbrun, our guide and my history of architecture professor, at the métro stop by the university early in the morning (for a Saturday, at least) and were all loaded on the bus and ready to go by 9am. I spent the hour-long bus ride to St. Malo talking with my friend Rhea, a student from Germany working as an au pair (nanny) for a French family. Rhea is trilingual--she speaks German, French, and English fluently--but we stuck to French, since we both agree that while in France our goal should be to speak French.

Scale model of the old city, or the walled city. The château is the four-sided structure to the far right; Cathédrale St-Vincent is in the center; the ramparts enclose the city.

We arrived in St. Malo a little after 10am. After driving through all the "new" parts of the city (those that have been built in the past 300 years), we stopped in front of the oldest part of the city, a fortified village nestled into the rocky coast. We were greeted by gray, cloudy skies and a nippy wind that made us grateful that our first stop would be the St. Malo museum. The museum is inside the 14th century château which marks the beginning and end of the ramparts which encircle the old city. The château is also home to the Hôtel de Ville, or city hall. Madame Galbrun, a veritable fountain of French historical information, gave us a quick briefing before each place we stopped.

In front of Château/Hôtel de Ville/Museum.

Figurehead

Lit clos

Inside the museum we found lots of maritime relics, some interesting, some not. Of interest to me:

-A 8-ft tall figurehead (the wooden figure that juts off the front of a ship) next to a scale model of a ship, the ship being about 1.5 ft tall and the same figurehead measuring about a quarter of an inch. That's one BIG ship.

-A lit clos, or enclosed bed, the traditional bed of Breton homes before the 19th century. It looks like a linen cabinet, but people actually sleep in it. The theory was the enclosed space would provide warmth and privacy to its inhabitants, who, interestingly enough, slept sitting up on the little benches found inside. It was believed during the Middle Ages that laying down completely was a position reserved for the dead, so people slept sitting up. Comfy.

-Ships called "pouquoi-pas?" or "why-nots?" were used by explorers in the late 19th century on voyages to the icy waters of Greenland. The ships were so called because the voyages had no purpose other than pure adventure in unknown and dangerous waters.

After leaving the museum, Rhea and I joined up with Iulius, an Erasmus student from Romania (also trilingual: Romanian, French, English), to explore the rest of the city. We visited the Cathédrale St-Vincent and walked on the ramparts for a couple of hours, soaking in the St. Malo-ian goodness. We even found a traveling carnival, which prompted a long conversation about theme parks in the United States. St. Malo has this great feel. It is so classically French yet so fresh at the same time: the salty sea air, the waves crashing against the ramparts, the mussel searchers (a.k.a. the local St. Malo-ians on the hunt for dinner) in their bright yellow rain jackets and rubber boots, the crumbling walls of the château and the ramparts, tinged yellow-orange and green with growing things, the little village with its winding streets and maritime architecture, the ships, sail boats, and kayaks docked in the harbor, the colorfully bustling carnival full of excited children...it's so nice to be by the sea, in France!

Interior of Cathédrale St-Vincent

Rhea and Iulius exploring the island.

Me on an island accessible by foot only at low tide. Old St. Malo and one of the forts are behind me.

View from the ramparts. The sky finally turned blue!

Rhea checking out a canon on the ramparts.

French fun house, very similar to the one in Grease.

View from château; harbor with 18th century ship.

Around 3pm, we got back on the bus and headed for Dinan, an inland port on the Rance River which begins in St. Malo. While St. Malo and Dinan are almost the same age, St. Malo was almost completely destroyed during World War II and was rebuilt to model an 18th century sea port. Dinan, on the other hand, has maintained its medieval look over the centuries.

Medieval center of Dinan. Note how the buildings seem to be in danger of falling into the street.

Statue of medieval knight. This space, which is now used as a parking lot, was once used as a list, or jousting arena.

Rhea and I on the ramparts of Dinan which overlook the Rance River Valley.

We returned to the university at 6:30pm, tired but exhilarated. I'm hoping I can return to St. Malo for a weekend--attend an orchestra concert, go kayaking in the ocean, spend a day searching for the perfect seaside ice cream shop, collect shells on the beach--and perhaps also to Dinan, if I can find the right bus. I'm really enjoying visiting other, little-known parts of France that hold all France's magic but not its tourists. As I found in Paris, it's those small, simple moments, usually enjoyed with friends, that truly touch me. All those little, everyday, unexpected treasures are the substance of my feeling for a place, more so than its famous monuments, must-sees, and Kodak moments.

On to adventures in Geneva, Venice, and the European train system.

Bienvenue à Rennes!

Well, now that I've had a nice little vaycay from my blog, it's time to catch everyone up, using photos:

Life has continued to follow the format I mentioned in my previous post, with a few changes here and there. On Mondays I am student teaching English to a class of French 8th graders. They are rowdy but nice on the whole. My observations on French authority issues continue to line up with all of Madame Allen's theories on the subject as well as the classroom atmosphere presented in Entre les murs (The Class). The teacher I'm assisting is a native Michiganer who seems to be not so fluent in French. She confounds the French students (who are used to the iron-fisted, discipline-driven methods of their French teachers) with her laid-back, creativity-inspired, positive-feedback, totally American teaching methods. I introduced myself to the class this past Monday, and overall things seemed to go well. After my presentation the kids asked me questions about my life using the past-perfect tense (Have you ever been...?, Have you ever gone? etc.), an interesting exercise in which I was asked 5 times if I had ever been to Los Angeles (evidently this is a popular destination?).

St. Vincent, the private Catholic school where
I am student teaching, looking intimidating.

I have now done some exploring around Rennes and have a better sense of how the Centre Ville is laid out. St. Vincent is located right next to the Jardin des Plantes (yes, another brilliantly titled Garden of Plants), a rather beautiful collection of greenness in the midst of a lot of gray. Spring is well on its way, and I can't wait to see this park in full bloom. I'm looking forward to spending Monday afternoons here, reading a book under a tree and breathing in the perfumed air of life.

Carmen taking a picture of this small
fish-filled fountain in the Jardin des Plantes.

Flowers blooming in the Jardin.

The Centre Ville itself is a collection of old buildings from a variety of decades, many dating from the Middle Ages. Most of the cobbled streets look like something out of the opening scene of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, giving the ville an almost fairy tale cast.

Near Métro Ste-Anne. Buildings with wood thatches
are medieval; others date from 18th century.

A canal runs through the center of the Centre Ville.

Canal with rainbow!

Rennes is the capitol city of Brittany and therefore boasts several fancy government buildings.

What I believe to be the Parliament building, at dusk.

And, like all other European cities, Rennes is home to a good number of churches and cathedrals.

This one was built in the 10th century.

Host family life continues to be wonderful. A weekend later than planned, Charlotte and I made chocolate chip cookies. The whole family absolutely loved this exotic treat, though Charlotte was a fan of the dough in particular.

Charlotte licking a spoonful of
cookie dough for the first time.

The Berthaut family:
Charlotte, Manu, Maxime, and Carole.

I continue to be struck by the familiarity of family life which I can only assume is universal. We laugh together and tell each other about our days, good and bad. Maxime and Charlotte fight...and then Maxime and Charlotte get in trouble. On Friday nights a "fun" dinner of finger foods, pizza, and ice cream is served in the living room during the Friday night travel show, and on Saturday afternoons Maxime and Charlotte have swimming lessons, the highlight of their weekend. Life is so normal, and yet so strange here.

Next on the agenda: St. Malo again this weekend. This time I WILL bring my camera so that I can share one of the coolest places ever with you. Then the weekend after Carmen and I embark on a whirlwind journey to Geneva and Venice. A good portion of our time will be spent on a train, which is an adventure in itself. I'm nervous about traveling Europe by myself, but I'm sure it will be wonderful!

Devenir habituée or Settling In

I have now been in Rennes for ten days. I'm still adjusting and working on establishing a sort of day-to-day rhythm.

Here is a typical week-day for me in Rennes (so far at least):

07h00 Wake up, get ready, eat breakfast (bread with jam, apple juice)

07h30 Start 10-minute walk to the metro, take metro from one end of the line (La Pôterie) to almost the other (Villejean Université)

08h10 Arrive Rennes 2 campus, class, hang out in lounge between classes, grab lunch from the sandwich line or brave the chaos of the Restaurant Universitaire (scary biscuits!)

16h00-18h00 Head home on the metro (crowded!) after class ends/ I finish chatting with people

18h00 Homework, chat with Charlotte and Maxime, play Mario if there's time

20h00-21h30 Eat dinner with host family

21h30 Family heads to bed (perhaps after watching the news for a bit); I stay up and check e-mail, facebook, skype, etc. and do some reading before bed (usually around 23h00)

At this point I have done the complete rotation of all eleven of my classes. My classes in the international school all function about the same; the profs are pretty nice, as are the students who come from all over the world: Brazil, China, Russia, Germany, Japan, Cuba, Mexico, South Korea, Iran, and, of course, the United States. It's fascinating to be in a French class with students whose first language is not English. Each nationality struggles with different aspects of the French language, and we spend time in class defining words like "chronologie" and "cathédrale" whose meanings are obvious to English speakers but less so to someone whose native tongue is Chinese. The course work has been pretty easy/ non-existent so far, which is a nice change of pace from St. Olaf (I wrote over 50 papers for last semester alone).

I have a total of four classes outside of the international school, meaning at the university with actual French students. Two are part of my translation course (one being French to English and the other English to French), and the other two are English courses taught in English by French professors of English to French students majoring in English (I hope that made sense). In one we are reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Victorian-era novel North and South (of England, not the U.S. as I stupidly assumed), and in the other we are attempting William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Taking an English class at a French university is, in a word, bizarre. For one, we are spending the entire semester focusing on one novel rather than the seven plus expected at an American university. For another, the profs speak the king's English (with a French accent) so it's almost like taking a class in a third language as I try to parcel out the meaning of "molonkly" ("melancholy") and "abitrally" ("arbitrarily"). Furthermore, the teaching style is completely different. The French students are united together and sit in a large clump in the back two rows of the classroom, as far away from the prof as possible. (I made the mistake of sitting in the second row and had to move back as to not be the only person sitting within two arms' lengths of the prof.) The professor is basically the all-powerful and all-knowing Wizard of Oz who pronounces her opinions decisively. If she desires class participation, she will ask the class a leading question and then fish for the answer she wants until the French students finally break their silence and come up with a half-way decent response that she then amends for good measure (this process is extremely painful). At the moment I am struggling between my own desire to respond because I'm excited about the text, can answer in fluent English, and want desperately to end the excruciating fishing-process, and my desire to be cool with the French students by acting like them (I get the feeling the over-enthusiastic student gets kicked out of the French student solidarity circle).

My reception in both classes has been interesting as well. In the Gaskell class, the prof briskly asked me in French why I hadn't read the novel yet and sent me scampering to my seat; in the Faulkner class the more absent-minded professor-type joyously welcomed an Amercian to her classroom and demanded that I explain the American South to the class (this was before she figured out I was actually from the South--when she discovered that little factoid I think she had to suppress a happy dance). The French students tend to look at me blankly and return my timid smiles with even more trepidation than me. I don't think it helped that over-excited Faulkner prof told everyone at the end of class that they should ask me out for a drink because I am a poor, lonely American student who can help them with their English. As you can imagine, no one really jumped at the idea.

My favorite classes so far are my class on medieval architecture and my class on French phonetics. Both are headed by kind, extremely knowledgeable profs who have the same accent and facial expressions as my host mom. The architecture class is intimate and the topic is fascinating. I can't wait to go on our excursions around France and actually be able to know something about the cathedrals and castles I come across. (Cool fact: Notre Dame was once completely painted in bright colors to designate its status as a house of God. Only royalty could afford to wear colors and decorate their homes with them; it therefore makes since that God's house would be the most colorful of all--though I can't say I'd fancy a Notre Dame decked out in clown colors.) In Phonétique, as it is called, we have an hour of class time learning theory and another hour in the language lab. Today's class involved going over vowel placement in the mouth (a familiar topic from voice lessons) and a lab where we recorded ourselves speaking and got individual help with our pronunciation.

Family life has been pretty awesome so far. I can't stress enough how nice my family is. Sometimes we struggle to communicate, but overall between their effort to slow down and my semi-decent French supported by my exaggerated body-language we are able to share information. Manu LOVES Canada and especially admires the beauty of the lakes and forests, so we've talked a lot about the Boundary Waters. Tonight I gave my family the first in a series of gifts I have stashed away for them: a calendar of Minnesota. It went over even better than I had imagined. Not only did they "Oh" and "Ah" over the pictures, but Maxime went to town pronouncing and translating all the English words that he found in the calendar.

I met Charlotte last Saturday. She is such a ball of energy! She's very witty and loves teasing her older brother. She also loves everything to do with women's fashion and frequently walks around the house with Carole's shoes and purse pretending to be a grown-up. We hit it off almost instantly. We play games together and draw (another love of hers), and she is always ready to give me a hug or sit on my lap. When something doesn't go quite her way, she makes a sad face and pretends to flick away a tear while saying, "Sniff" (pronounced "Sneefe"). She was shocked when I imitated her for the first time, and now it's become a joke between us as I can now anticipate her "Sneefe" and beat her to it.

This Saturday I will have my first excursion with the American program CIEE. Because of my time in Paris, I missed out on all the American-student bonding that happened in the two weeks before I arrived. I'm hoping our ten-hour adventure to Mont St-Michel (monastery surrounded by quicksand) and St. Malo (coastal town in Brittany) will help me get to know the group a little better. Then Sunday I will dedicate to my host family. Maxime and Charlotte are battling each other over what American dessert I will make this Sunday: American apple pie (Maxime) or chocolate chip cookies (Charlotte). I'll keep you posted on the winner.