one thought:

When people ask me how I spent my time in France, I'll tell them I feel like I was constantly eating and didn't accomplish anything.

I’m falling behind on this blogging thing.

 

Since last we met, many things have happened, some eventful and some not. This will be pretty short because I need to go to school soon.

After more than three weeks in France, I think I have returned to a normal sleep schedule. I’m not sure if this is good, because when timing permits I have slept until 1 p.m., even on the bricks I’m using for a mattress.

I got a bike from the city, a big cruiser with 3-speeds and an internal-hub. It’s pretty fun for riding around the city. Angers is extremely flat compared to Austin, so riding is easy. One of my neighbors rode the cruiser bike to Nantes last semester; it took him about nine hours. I want to bike out into the country, but probably not anywhere as far as Nantes.

We took a trip to a vineyard, Le Château des Vaults. The same family has run the winery for really longtime, the exact number escapes me now. On their website, they trace the history of the vineyard back to the goddess Pomona.  The woman who is currently in charge gave us a tour of the grounds and explained the growing process. This was very interesting, but then we had a tasting and I learned the method for determining the quality of wine. Now I can look super pretentious at parties in Austin, swirling wine in a glass and smelling it before drinking. The wine we tasted was pretty good, but expensive, so I didn't buy any. 

I think I had a dream about Chile Rellenos and Dos Equis a few nights ago.

Fontevrault Abbey and the restaurant underground.

I’ve begun to settle into a seemingly nice routine here in Angers. I only have class on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. This allows for a lot of free time, which I have been trying to fill with studying French, reading about linguistics and other things to keep myself from freaking out about being so far from home for so long. 

Our film class has been given the task of making a documentary about our semester abroad.  This will be very interesting because (1.) some how I’ve been charged with doing most of the filming and (2.) none of us, myself included, really knows anything about making movies.  The school is offering us free Final Cut Pro certification classes, which I am sure would be valuable but I don’t want to give up every Friday afternoon in March to take the class. This is fine because I don’t have to do any editing of the film.

Yesterday we went on our first day trip. We were picked up in two vans and taken to the town of Saumur to see Fontevrault Abbey. The abbey was built in the twelfth century and once housed an order of both monks and nuns until the French revolution. In addition to vows of chastity, poverty, etc… the nuns took a vow of silence. There is one bench near the courtyard where they were allowed to speak. The architecture of the abbey was pretty cool too. Given my limited lexicon of architectural terminology, I’ll leave it up to you to look up pictures.  

The abbey holds the grave of Richard 1 (the Lion Heart), king of England, and his family. For some reason Richard’s brain and (lion) heart are buried at two other sites, respectfully.

Since I was made videographer I reluctantly spent most of the time at the abbey holding the camera. I’m pretty sure all of the footage is useless because it was so cold that I was shaking profusely. At one point, just to have some stable shots, I set the camera down on a ledge where most of our group was walking around and left it running for 6 or 7 minutes.

After the abbey we drove back through Saumur. Near the river there are many houses that are built into the hillside, like caves. The residents of these caves homes have affectionately named themselves the Troglodytes. Every year they have an annual Troglodyte day on which they all open up their homes for people to tour.

For lunch we went to the Restaurant Troglodytique, which, as you might have guessed, is in a cave. Being the borderline claustrophobe that I am, I was not very excited about being underground for a long period of time. The cave was pretty spacious, though, and there was a lot of wine so I made the most of the situation and tried to put thoughts about the candles burning up all of the oxygen out of my mind.

The food was amazing. Saumur is the mushroom capital of France, and our meal consisted 90% of mushrooms; different varieties prepared in different ways. The wine was from a local winery. They served us five courses, including a peach tart for dessert. Unfortunately the video camera’s battery died at the abbey, so I had to charge it during lunch and did not get the ten-minute, low-angle shot of the table lengthwise that Dr. Flynn wanted. I did, however, manage to shoot some probably unusable, wine saturated, interviews in the van on the ride home.

Today I have to write an explication about Malcolm Cowley's  book Exile's Return.

I'm giving myself a writing schedule. I had planned to do this before I arrived in Angers, but Dr. Flynn has encouraged everyone in the writing workshop to make, and hopefully stick to, a writing schedule.  I've been writing what I think are vignettes but might actually just be really short stories that aren't very good (or even worse, it could be 'microfiction').

So I am awake at 8:30. There is petites pains au lait and strawberry jam and coffee brewing in my french press-- the other day I made a dumb joke about how the French just call it a press, and someone told me the actual word for it, but I do not remember. I also made a dumb joke a few days ago about how the coins here are called Eurocents. Upon further investigation, it actually does say Eurocents on the coins. Instead of speaking French I make dumb jokes in English.

I think so far my homesickness has decided to manifest itself in the form of my being unable to walk more than two blocks away from the residence without having to back to my room to make sure it's locked.  This has happened every time I've left the apartment in the past three days. Some times I get lucky and decide to turn around when I'm in the lobby. It's inconvenient when I'm at the crosswalk at Rue de Boisent and can't shake the fear that all of my important possessions will be gone when I get home. 

On the first Sunday of every month all the museums in France are free. I went to the Musee de Beaux Arts this week. They are currently having a Rodin exhibition. The woman who gave me my ticket told me the Rodin exhibit was closed until later that afternoon, but I could come back I wanted. The exhibit will still be there on free museum day in March and I've been to the Musee Rodin in Paris anyway, so I decided I would just see the gallery downstairs (which was supposed to have works by a french video artist) and leave. The gallery downstairs had nothing in it but Rodin sculptures, sketches, letters and portraits. I was so confused. I never found the video art.

Last night I ate an entire baguette and un pain au chocolate by myself. I'm going to be so fat when I get back to Texas.

Après la première semaine en France…

It’s been a week, and I think I’m adjusting well. Without the distractions of Austin I have had even more time to work on my French, read and write. Somehow between spending an astronomically higher amount of time on facebook and getting lost in a new city I have found time to write a lot more than I was in Austin. It might be because I’ve woken up at 8 a.m. every morning without an alarm. I was right about the subway being downstairs. I haven’t eaten there yet, but the whole building always smells like subway. This has been pleasant so far, but I think I might start to be grossed out by it.

The buildings and streets in the center of Angers are all very old. The Château d'Angers, the original Ville d’Angers, dates back to 1204. It’s right down the street from my apartment. As you go further and further away from downtown all the buildings seem newer and newer. 

I’ve been doing a lot of walking, which is beneficial for working off all the pastries and crepes I’ve been eating. I took pictures of the crepes I made, but I forgot to bring the cable that connects my digital camera to my computer. 

I had my first classes yesterday. I am very far behind the (only) other two students in my French class. I’m trying to converse with French speakers as much as I can, and I feel like even little things like ordering lunch in French is slowly helping me feel more confident in my speaking abilities.

Dr. Flynn’s film class seems like it will be interesting. Yesterday we watched a documentary about the first films made by Auguste and Louis Lumière, all of which are silent and 50 seconds long but extraordinarily well composed.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YviZri3fbv4).

Last night we planned on going to a club. I was nervous about this because I don’t go to clubs in Austin, where I imagine they are exponentially tamer than clubs in Europe. Unfortunately (read ‘to my relief’) the bus that was supposed to take us to the club was delayed so long that our group decided to give up. A few of us went to the James Joyce Pub, which was very expensive, and then to another bar near the city center.  There are a lot of Irish themed bars in Angers for some reason. Last night was the first time I had stayed out until the bars close. The night ended with a group of people standing on a table singing a song in French, which I'm told was about men showing their asses to each other or something nonsensical along those lines.

After I returned from the bar I Skyped (somehow this is an acceptable verb, even to the French) with Corinne, Lisa, Rachel and Jake for the first time. It was good to see their faces (and Ernie’s). I’ve been talking to Taylor everyday. I hope he is staying sane in the house by himself and not letting Hollister rule his life.