A Typical Day with Katherine and Clara

Hello Readers!

I haven't written in a few days. I was attempting to update on somewhat of a schedule, but when wanderlust sets in it's difficult to have the time to just sit down and write. And who really wants to hear about me wandering the streets of paris, eating baguettes and taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower? oh... you do? Well in that case.....

To understand my life here in Paris you must first be introduced to my dear friend, and fellow Trojan, Katherine. This is she:

(smoking can cause a slow and painful death, by the way.)

Katherine and I spend practically every day together wandering the streets of Paris. We usually start out the morning with "so... let's not walk very much today...."...... 6 kilometers later and we're both left wondering where the day went, how we managed to take so many pictures, visit so many landmarks and spend so much money on coffee/sandwiches/perrier (Paris is très cher!!!) ,and when we're going to find the next comfortable place to sit down.

View What we did today in a larger map

However with so much to do in Paris and so many incredible monuments, museums and parks around every corner.... we often get so distracted we forget to rest. Nothing a spoonful of Nutella (now a permanent fixture in my purse) can't solve!

Katherine is the perfect tour guide of Paris (she has been here three times prior). As a French History major she knows who built what, who died where, and how many hundreds of years ago it was. I can merely point at something old and ask "what's that?" and promptly be given a riveting and informative narrative in return. It's like having a personalized Wikipedia in my pocket.... really who needs an iPhone anyways?

Now for a string of pictures with me and various monuments in the background... get ready.

Me and some tower

Me and a crèpe and the Moulin Rouge

Me and Sacre Couer

Me and one of Napoleon's mini arcs that was not the Arc de Triomphe (he had three built, according to History-Major-Katherine) on the way to the Louvre.

Another important monument, per se, in my life is my new sister Alice.

Alice (pronounced Aleeeeese) is 14 and very much obsessed with Gossip Girl, Glee, and getting on my nerves. Okay that might sound like a bad thing but in actuality I'm loving it. It's been awhile since I've had an adoring punk kid following me around repeating every word I say in a sing-songy voice. Also helps that she's a sucker for grammar and correcting my every mistake. Okay... maybe I'm starting to miss my little brother (way to nevvver be online Gabriel). I've also never had a sister before which is a wonderful thing to get used to. A few nights ago I was getting ready to go out and she came into my room. "Clara, that purse does not match your outfit. Here take mine. It's my favorite purse in the entire world, but you may borrow it. If you lose it you're kicked out of the family." After defying my protests of not being the most responsible person on the planet she promptly added herself into my cell phone as Alice La Plus Belle (Alice The Prettiest) and kissed me on both cheeks. I'm basically obsessed with her.

Well this is my life so far. My French is horrible, I'm spending too much money, and I miss California and Washington terribly.... but besides that I do indeed aime Paris.

Bonjournée!

Clara

I'm in Paris

The Lonely Forest |MTV Music

I'd like to start with this video. It's of The Lonely Forest, one of my favorite local bands from Anacortes, WA (represent!). Basically this video is quintessential Anacortes -- like there is no better way to visually describe it. And now it's on MTV which is weird... but anyways.... watching that today made me feel a million miles away from something that was so familiar to me for 18 years....

but now I'M IN PARIS! Yes it's true. I'm sitting here in an incredibly spacious apartment located in the 15th arrondissement. It's a half hour walk to the Eiffel Tower (which I intend on doing today). I have two cats named Madam Ouchka and Monssieur Picasso. I'm really happy about this! My host family is lovely : Mom (.... don't actually know her name?), sister Alice who is 14 and very hip, and Michelle (a student from UC Santa Cruz studying here for the semester. We're the same age and I look forward to having someone my own age). There are also two older siblings (21 and 24) that don't live at home but are coming over this weekend. It's interesting for me living in a house full of women - I miss my brother!

The apartment is very airy and bright and there is a lot of art and books around. And I have a little terrace attached to my room AND a tv covered in Heineken labels. This is all rather luxurious for me.

Well I'm going to get started with my day - which will include buying a map, figuring out the metro, and walking walking walking exploring avec mes amis.

Love, Clara

La Fin De Tours

Bonsoir Mes Amis,

I'm going to try writing in this more often. There is just so much to say here.

A lot of my time here is thinking about my language acquisition (or sometimes lack of acquisition). My host mother has taken to, instead of willingly answering my "Comment dit-on...?" questions, feigning ignorance and forcing me to explain which words I needs to learn - in French. Last night I was setting the table and there were only three placemats. "Uhhhhh Madam, est-ce qu'il y a un..... comment dit-on? uhhhh... uhhhherrrrrmmmm?" I began pantomiming placemat (someone affectively, if I do say so myself) but she just stared at me with an amused smirk. Eventually I explained "erremmmuhhhhh quelquechose pour protéger la table??"... "Ooooh oui un place de table, c'est la même en anglais, non?" Oh yeah, I guess it is the same in English. Basically this can be frustrating in the moment, but it is really an incredibly affective way to practice the language and really learn the language through the language.

My French abilities are dramatically improving. Every day in my conversation class we talk about "social issues" so I now have an immense vocabulary for talking about road access and my feelings on gay marriage - but I still fail to remember the word for earlier. My host sister has the same issues - yesterday at dinner she tried to convince us that her coat was made of "wood". I did feel like I made a major accomplishment a few nights ago when I explained The Borgen Project and my summer internship to my host mother. We had a very rousing discussion about the developing world and I feel like I managed to convey some very complex ideas IN FRENCH. Things like this bring me such joy.

It is also really fascinating for me to learn a language while entirely immersed within the language. There are certain words I have learned that I don't realize until days later that I only know them... in French. It's kind of hard to explain so let me give an example:

When I came to France I imagined I would be saying Bonjour more than anything else. This is not the case. There is actually a very precise process for greetings and it goes something like this -

Bonjour - This is said when first greeting a person, usually in the morning but it can bleed well into the afternoon as well. Technically one should only said Bonjour to a person once a day - this was never explained to me, but it's just how things seem to work here.

Bonjournée - When saying goodbye for the day one says Bonjournée. It is less "good day" and more "have a good day".... a farewell of good wishes for the rest of your journée

Rebonjour - I learned this a few days ago. Instead of saying Bonjour Bonjour Bonjour people say Rebonjour... it's like "hello again". It's actually rather amusing and I don't know if I will be able to say this with a straight face.

Bonsoir - This is the same as Bonjour, except in the evening. The transition seems to start around 5 pm, but 4:45 seems to work too. I spend a lot of the afternoon psyching myself up to start saying Bonsoir and not Bonjour - and then when I wake up I have to retrain myself back to saying Bonjour. Walking down the stairs to breakfast I often mutter to myself "Bonjour Clara, it's Bonjour... it's morning now you can stop remembering to Bonsoir."

Bonsoirée - Bonsoirée is much the same as Bonjournée, basically a wish for a good rest of the evening. It does have a sense of "you're going out and doing something enjoyable tonight and we might see each other later or we may not."

Bonnuit - In cases where one is most definitely going to sleep and not doing anything beyond that Bonnuit is appropriate. There is much a sense of finality and an understanding that we won't be seeing each other until the morning..... when the process starts all over again.

This is something that has been rustling around in my head the past two weeks, in French. It's just so interesting to be thinking in French and understanding things without having to translate them word by word into English first.

Beyond that my days in Tours have been filled with sitting in cafes, reading books, walking, shopping, eating (and eating and eating and eating), dancing, scaling the gate when our host sister locked it and forgot to give us the key, sleeping, laughing.... it has been wonderful.

Here are a few pictures of the last few days.

Tuesday there was a strike in all of France. The current age of retirement is 60 but the government is trying to raise it to 62, so all of the public transportation, teachers, etc. striked for what seemed only like 2 hours? It must have been settled very quickly? I really should be reading more about this.... I have been awful about keeping up with the news here.

Typical

My classroom in Tours

Some friends and me at Le Loire celebrating John's (on the left) birthday

As for now I am currently on the bus headed to PARIS! I'll post this as soon as I have internet again, and will most likely follow up with an I'm In Paris post later this weekend. Leaving Tours was a bit bittersweet. I am beyond happy to officially start my new life in Paris, but I am going to miss my host family and life in this simple, quiet town. Mme Crespe (ma mere d'acueil) practically begged us to come visit her again in Tours and assured us that we would always have a place to stay - so hopefully I will be able to do so before the year is up. She really was one of the nicest women I have ever met and assuredly made my transition to French life better than I could have ever expected. I think she really enjoys hosting students too and it got me thinking that someday I would like to do the same. It seems to be a great way to travel the world without even leaving your house.

Well I am now going to sleep a bit on this 4 hour bus ride (oh mon dieu!!!!) to Paris.

Bientôt mes amis! Vous me manquez beaucoup.

~ Clara

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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View This Is Where I Live in Tours in a larger map

Scroll out to see all of the places I frequent in Tours, France.

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