L'étranger

Je suis très fatiguée mais je voudrais ecrire dans mon blog.

My mind is absolutely reeling at all times. Whether it is struggling to keep up with my host mother's patiently slow French, allowing me to watch Amelie while typing in English on my blog (that's what I'm doing now), or taking a complete break from the language to skype with my friends at home in English. It doesn't matter what I'm doing.... French just keeps creeping in. Some words just fit better and I find myself speaking with a certain air of Franglais even without meaning to (my friends here can attest to la même situation). My vocabulary is intensifying.... but I find myself learning an assortment of very odd words like scholarship and bottle opener that are not always the handiest. I'm also making a habit of asking my host mom "Comment dit-on....?" at least 27 times a day. The nerd in me is realizing it doesn't matter how many times I hear a word, I really need to read it and have a visual representation to remember new vocabulary. This makes it difficult to learn just through conversation.

All of the mind-reeling aside, Tours is a very relaxing place to visit. I am just constantly consuming food (fromage fromage fromage fromage fromage... et beaucoup de pain) - but also art, music, architecture, people (consuming people?). There is just no end to the beauty in every day activities. A walk to school involves walking by building older than anything in the United States (everything is just SO old - in the best of ways). Family dinners mean conversations on politics, education, healthcare, art, books and life lasting hours. The sight of a castle hardly phases me anymore but I have also consumed enough wine to actually start having an opinion on it. So much consumption is both expanding my pallet as well as transforming the extraordinary into the merely mundane.

Enough of my ramblings - I'm sure you dear readers are looking for some specifics. Every day is exciting and new and very French. Language classes continue to improve my French and I am becoming closer and closer with my comrades. It's hard to be friends with 70 new people - but I'm finding I enjoy everyone I meet in the Sweet Briar program. Every day my friend Katherine and I finish class, decide that having another crêpe with nutella might be excessive, and then have one anyways. Every morning I speak French for three hours and every afternoon I go to an art museum, a castle, a wine tasting. The evenings are topped off with some of the best meals of my life with some of the most enjoyably conversation possible. The night life in Tours is enjoyable but in such a small town we Americans seem to overrun it a bit - and we frequent the same two places every night. I can't complain too much however - where else can I get a fruity drink the size of my head?

This afternoon was quite enjoyable. My host mother invited Amara and I to go to a wine tasting in Vouvray - an area right outside of town famous for their wine - similar to Champagne. I am learning quite a bit about wine and am enjoying sampling certain kinds, comparing. It's quite exciting to actually know what I'm talking about a bit (kind of... okay I'm faking it)

I think of this scene of The Parent Trap every time I swirl my glass around, smell it and take a sip (fyi - the swirling around thing is to figure out how sugary/not sugary the wine is for white wines and how old it is for red wines.... cool right?) Just watch 1:07-1:40 though.... or all of it because The Parent Trap is one of the best movies ever made.

Anyways it was a very enjoyable day. We went through the winery's museum which was HUGE and all in French (duh) but I managed to learn a bit about how wine is made. Then we took a little drive, somewhat against the rules perhaps (je ne sais pas??), through the grape fields. It went on forever - I've never seen so many grapes!!- and was probably one of the best things I have experienced here so far.

Well I'm going to finish watching Amelie. Merci for reading and Bientot!

Clara

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La Vie Touraine

Hello Dear Readers,

Today was a great day. We had class for three hours which went by SO QUICKLY and I actually did really well. The first hour was just pronunciation and speaking and my classroom legitimately looked like a mini-Versailles (even my teacher told us - ) with a chandelier, paintings on the ceilings, floor length windows, super ornate. Yeah def makes one wanna speak French. Then we had two hours of writing which was mostly speaking anyways. There are 8 people in my oral class, and then 16 for the rest of the day. It's a perfect size.

Then Katherine and I went and got sandwiches and went to this BEAUTIFUL JARDIN that's right next to my house and sat for a few hours in the sun.

Then I had this orientation thing for school. I'm in Paris 3 at the Sorbonne which specializes in PolySci, International Relations etc. It was boring, but it was all in French and I understood 80% and it was nice because the lady told us to not worry AT ALL about school because you basically cannot do badly and she also made a point about that this is a year to just experience Paris and travel and see everything and live your life and she's like "don't worry about a bad grade, it really doesn't matter, just have fun". C'EST EXCELLENT!!!!!

So then we (Amara, Katherine, Natasha, Jarrett, Rebecca, John) went and got crepes. It was my first crepe (avec nutella!!!! omnomnom) and it was delicious and the guy that made them was singing these french songs and was super nice and funny. And we said we would be back tomorrow and he said to "come on Wednesday, there's a flower market right here, all day"...... Crepes. Singing Man. Flower Market. All Day. THIS IS MY LIFE. It doesn't get any better. Then we walked across the river and explored the other side a bit and walked back.

I was feeling bad because I spoke a lot of English with the other students this afternoon but dinner was soooo good! I understood probably 95% of what she was saying and we had this really excellent conversation for an hour about Paris and nutrition and prostitution and security and windows and green beans and everything imaginable and I didn't feel as self-conscious as I usually do and it was just really fun. And the food was delicious!

French dinners are quite the experience. This is what we eat:

1. Les apertifs- usually these meat slice things with some sort of fruit and bread (j'adore France because they treat butter like it's cheese... as in they cut slices of it to put on bread. it's awesome and the best butter I've ever had)

2. The main course - tonight it was something similar to hamburger and green beans (I explained to my host mom how they are called green beans in the US, I still don't really know what they're called here, and she thought it was really funny)

3. Cheese and salad (just lettuce with dressing - ma favorite!) and more bread with butter.

4. Dessert - there is always dessert, which is very different for me.

This takes at least an hour, but it's really nice and we have a lot to talk about. Then we go downstairs with all the dishes but it's bad manners to do our own dishes or help clean up too much. Though we always ask if she needs help and she always insists that she doesn't. Basically I adore my host mom - she is just so sweet and I will miss her after these two weeks.

Here are some pictures from le chateau (castle) we went to this weekend. It is in a town called Ambroise where Leonardo Davinci lived for the last three years of his life and finished the Mona Lisa. Basically the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Tomorrow we are going to visit another chauteau (Chenonceau) which is supposed to be even more beautiful - C'est possible??????? (fyi click on the pictures to see a larger version, I'll also post way more on facebook eventually)

A view of Ambroise and the chateau from the others side of the river. Look at those clouds!

A replica of Da Vinci's tank in le jardin de Clos Luce avec mes amis (Amara, John, Katherine et Nora)

Le Chateau et moi

Another view of the chateau. It had the most beautiful gardens ever!

Bientôt!

Clara

J'adore Tours

I was planning on writing a big I'M IN FRANCE AND HERE ARE ALL THE DETAILS post but.... sitting at dinner today I thought a story might be more appropriate and descriptive of my experience so far in Tours, France. (Though, for those of you who have just tuned in - I am staying two weeks in Tours, France about 3 hours outside of Paris taking a French language class before I head to Paris for the rest of the year and a new host family).

Amara, a fellow Trojan, and I live in an itsy bitsy apartment (4 stories tall, two rooms and "une petite escalade" wide) on the top floor with Mme Crespe and ta fille Sybille. Sybille is 18 and I know she would be absolutely hilarious if I could understand a word she was saying. Today at dinner was especially strenuous in the understanding department because Sybille had a friend over for dinner, Alix (??), who talked soooooooooo fast. She had red hair and freckles and zero awareness of the fact that my French is très limité. So for dinner we had this meet thing and cantaloup and bread and there was salad which was passed to me so I started to take some and then my Mme Crespe said something about the salad and I.... just nodded and took some. Moments later I realized I was the only one with salad and then deciphered that this meat cantaloupe thing was not really the actual meal and that the salad was... for later. I then second-guessed myself and wondered if maybe I was the only one that liked salad? Maybe I should put it back? Maybe this is a major faux-pas? Maybe it doesn't even matter? I then figured that the only option would be to just stuff the salad in my mouth as discretely and quickly as possible.... the sooner it was gone the sooner everyone (mostly myself) would just forget about this salad incident. Then we had this fish thing and some pommes de terres (potatoes) with which Sybille had salad.... then other people had salad... then Mme Crespe offered me more salad. Basically I had French salad and French meals.... it's stressing me out.

I've been in France for two days now but it feels like nearly a week if not more. I've been traveling since forreevvvveerrrrrrrr. It's very nice to sleep in a bed but I wish that I was at my homestay in Paris so I could fully unpack and sit down and say "this is exactly where I am living for the next 9 months"... which is something I haven't said for a very long time. It seems like I am always moving somewhere (Anacortes, LA, Seattle, Tours, Paris..... too much). The group is very nice and I'm making a lot of new friends... though I don't know if it is possible to make 69 new ones (there are 70 of us on the trip, and 35 staying for the year by the way. Some other fun facts: there are 56 girls and 14 boys from 26 different colleges. USC and Northwestern have the most students. 20% of Americans study abroad, but only 4.5% of that go for a year. And about 90% of those go to English speaking countries. Basically I feel super isolated in this decision to do something kind of crazy.)

It's really frustrating because I feel like everyone is telling me very important information, but it's all in French so I'm only comprehending 40% of it... pretty stressful for Miss. Need-To-Be-In-Control. For example: my host mom just told me the plan as far as eating for the weekend..... and I'm like "oui, oui, parfait, merci, oui, oui, parfait, merci"..... and in my head i'm like "uhhhhh I think you said you're gonna make sandwiches for lunch tomorrow but I have a very vague idea of what time and... well this will be interesting.

Also literally all I have consumed is in the past two days is: bred, cheese, wine, fish, salad (mehhhh), water, and some cigarette smoke - but not from the French!!!! from some idiot hipster American (hipsters piss me off a lot more in France for some reason).

Well I must be going. Some girls from SC and I are going out and exploring the Tours night life. There's like a river and stuff.

~ Clara

Packing

3 Days until I leave home and I have.... just begun to pack. This is a picture of me, my cat, and 90% of my worldly possessions.

Forget every notion you have of a poverty-reduction organization....

I have been planning to write a really extensive blog post for quite some time now... the subject? Law firm websites.

Working at The Borgen Project (The BoPro from here on) has been a truly eye opening experience. I have learned a lot about global poverty (these are some interesting videos: http://www.borgenproject.org/population), spend a lot of time on the TED website (I sincerely recommend ted.com), made quite a few blog posts of my own (borgenproject.blogspot.com), and wrote a summary of the Water for the World Act of 2009 that was handed out to 70 Senators and Representatives - some of whom are now cosponsoring the bill (badass!). Some of my more monotonous, intern-y duties have involved asking businesses (with puppy dog eyes in tow) if they would please please please give us money and cosponsor our upcoming event (http://borgenproject.eventbrite.com... buy tickets from me please please please!). I have gotten a lot of hell no's but it has lead me to spend an incredible amount of time on law firm websites collecting contact information, which has been very eye opening. AND LEMME TELL YA....

There are 3 basic things that must, it seems, be included on a law firm website:

1. Seattle skylines

2. Empty office furniture

3. Creepy professional portraits

Some lawyers are named William H. Figeltaub AKA "Flig"

While some find it necessary to have an entire bio page for legal assistant, Texanna, who has a passion for mass transit:

While these realizations have not curbed my interest in becoming a lawyer someday, I have learned one thing: I don't plan on participating in Lawyerpalooza.

34 Days Until Paris.

Love,

Clara