Bonjour tout le monde!
I know I've been gone for over a week already, so I'm a little slow at getting this message written, but with all the things I've been doing in the last week and a half, and the fact that hotmail is extremely tempermental here, it's been hard to find time (or a working computer!) to write!
So, where should I begin??
I'll spare you the boring details of the flight, since you can tell by the fact that I'm writing you this e-mail that I made it safely across the Atlantic Ocean :) We spent about 4 days in Paris, and while we were there we saw the usual tourist sites, most of which I'd seen before, but some of which were new to me. We also had free afternoons to see the sights on our own, so Shelley and I managed to figure out the Paris metro system by ourselves without too much trouble. Despite what you may have heard about unfriendly Parisians, I found them to be quite friendly for the most part. On two occasions I even had people start a conversation with me on the metro. People seemed to know instinctively that we were Americans :)
Last Tuesday we took a train from Paris to Caen, which is where I am now and where I will be for the majority of the next four months. Last week was filled with placement tests and orientation activities, and classes started yesterday.
My host family doesn't speak any English, but they are very patient with me so I'm managing to understand. They have three adult daughters who visit sometimes, and they speak some English, but I still talk to them in French most of the time. My family is very nice, and they only live about 20 minutes from the university so I walk every day.
I'm learning my way around the university and the city, and for some reason people keep asking me for directions or help. I don't know why they seem to think I have any idea what's going on :)
The people in my classes are other foreign students, mostly from China and Korea, but also from other countries.
A few observations about the life in France so far...
-People really do walk around carrying long loafs of bread. I've seen it on several occasions. The funniest thing I saw was a college student who had the loaf in his backpack yesterday. It was too long to fit, so he just let it stick out the top :)
-Nearly everyone here wears a big heavy scarf, even though it's usually between 40 and 50 degrees.
-It rains a LOT in Caen and Paris. Like almost every day. This is probably why the grass is VERY green here.
-If you go to Paris, go to the bathroom BEFORE you get there :) Public toilets are impossible to find, and once you manage to find one, it will either be out of service, or you will have to pay to use it! This charge could possibly be for the use of their pretty pink toilet paper; I'm not sure :)
-Don't try to sit on one of these toilets if you do manage to find one. Chances are, you will fall in if you try. It's necessary to "perch" on the edge of the seat. Remember, perch, don't sit. :)
-Things close very early here, and if you need something on a Sunday or at night, you are pretty much out of luck.
-Don't say "I'm full," when you've had enough to eat. It translates as "I'm pregnant." :)
-Keyboards here are different from ones in the United States, so typing can prove difficult. To illustrate this fact, I'll type a sentence to show you what I mean.
This is ahqt I ,eqn: The keys qre not in the sq,e plqces:
That says: This is what I mean. The keys are not in the same places.
Hello everyone!
I had some free time this afternoon, so I thought I'd update you all on my latest obervations on life in France.
Last week the French students hadn't started classes yet, so there wasn't much going on on campus. Now that they're back (and always in line in front of me for computers and lunch!) things are more interesting around here. This week I have homework, projects, and sports (dance, kung-fu, aerobies, etc.) to keep me busy, and it's going much faster. As of yesterday afternoon, I have been gone for three weeks!
Tonight I want to go climbing, but there's a gathering at another American student's house, and if I go I have to meet some friends at 6:30 so I can't climb. But the gathering doesn't start until 9, so I think I might just skip it. I'd like to hang out with the group, but I'd also like to sleep :)
I just learned how to find books in a French library, and let me just tell you that you should go to the library and just stand there and admire the Dewey Decimal System. I plan to do so when I get home. I never realized how easy it is to find stuff in the US. A lot of things are easier there... computers for one. Explaining myself to people, for another. But I went and talked to one of the receptionist ladies and she helped me out... it turns out I had to get the books from the "magasin" so I had to fill out a form, and she stuck it in the wall and then a few minutes later it buzzed and out came my books :) So it's a good thing I asked or I would have been wandering around the library indefinitely :)
Hmm, what else is different here that I can tell you about?
-I haven't seen a window with a screen yet. It's either open it and let the bugs in, or close it and suffocate. But so far it's not a problem because the temperature is comfortable, and I haven't seen any bugs. I wonder how it works in the summer. But I'll be gone by then.
-Because of this lack of screens, people can shake their rugs out by waving them out fourth floor (or what ever floor they happen to be on) windows. I saw that trick this morning. I hope they check to make sure there are no pedestrians first :) I've also seen it done out the front door of a house, but that seems logical. I think next time I come home with muddy shoes, I will solve the problem the French way... and I'm on the fourth floor- which is equal to what we'd call the fifth in the US. :)
-Oh yeah, that's another thing... here, if you want to go to the main floor of a building you either have to press 0 or RDC in the elevator. Pushing 1 will just leave you confused:) The RDC is the rez-de-chausse, or ground floor. Then they start counting at 1 on the second level. This is useful information, if you are ever in France :)
-Things here close early, open late, and people take long lunch breaks. I don't know when French people shop... or use the library (closes at 7 p.m. weekdays and noon on Saturday)... or check their e-mail (closes at 6:45 weekdays and is not open on weekends)...
-In a lot of stores, clothes are actually much cheaper here than in the US.
-People here (or at least my host family) like warm milk. At breakfast this morning they (again) asked me if I was sure I didn't want to warm it up. The other day there was no milk in the fridge, so my host mom pulled some out of the cupboard for me! I don't know why it doesn't spoil... but they do refrigerate it after it's open.
-People smoke in buildings here, but luckily not in the classrooms. There are "no smoking" signs all over Vissol (the building where I have most of my classes) but people will stand right in front of them and smoke. The fact that there are ash trays outside the classrooms probably doesn't help to enforce the no smoking policy.
-Speaking of smoking, there is a smoking area in the cafeteria, but people like to sit in the non-smoking area and smoke too.
-And speaking of the cafeteria, you can buy alcoholic beverages there, out of the same cooler as the apple juice. It's quite the contrast to Winona, which has a dry-campus policy even for those over 21.
-All the dorms here are single rooms. I haven't been in one, but that's what people have told me.
-In the cafeteria they serve burgers and pizza, among other things... the French seem to like their meat a bit more rare than most restaurants in the US serve (like, pink!), but other than that the burgers are fairly normal. The pizza, on the other hand, is quite creative. They put things like tuna or potatoes on it as toppings. I've tried both, and believe it or not, it was good :)
-French people eat later than Americans, so the cafeterias here have "weird" hours. At Winona State, the cafeteria closes for the night at 6:45. Here, it doesn't even open until 6:30!
Well, this e-mail is getting a tad long so I'll e-mail you again sometime with more news from France :)
Hope all is well there!
Talk to you later,
Kelly
Ok this is really weird... I accidentally set up the
keyboard (don't ask how) so when I type in hotmail
it's the French key placement system, and when I type
in Yahoo it's American... I'm so confused :)
I somehow accidentally put the keys in the American
system when I tried to type a capital W! Now I don't
know how to put them back to the French version, and
I'm having trouble remembering where the English
letters are because the keyboard still looks French
but when I push the Z I get the good old American W
instead, and when I want an A I get a Q! And I can't
type a smiley face becuse I don't know where the keys
are! I have to copy and paste smilies from hotmail!
This would have been so nice for my first days here,
but now that I'm used to the French keyboard I'm
having a lot of trouble typing!
Well, in other news, I was supposed to go to Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo yesterday (Sunday) but the trip got canceled due to... SNOW! Can you believe it? I was actually quite amused by the whole incident, even though I didn't get to go on my trip. By yesterday afternoon, almost all of the snow had melted :) It was snowing when I woke up, and by the time I got to the university at 9 a.m. I was pretty much covered in snow. People here use umbrellas for snow, which is probably a good idea since the flakes were huge and wet. It was pretty funny to watch the cars... they were all going very slow. One couldn't make it up the hill, and another kept sliding back and forth. When I got to the university, someone asked Xavier, the international student director, if the French know how to drive in the snow. His response? No. When the bus driver finally got there he said there were a lot of accidents and it was too dangerous to try to go on our trip, so I got to walk back home in the snow. At home I'm sure I'd hate it, but here, snow is a big deal. My host parents told me it only snows like that about once every four years here! It wasn't even that much snow! :) (After re-reading that section, I realize how many times I used the word 'snow'! Oops!)
My weekend was rather interesting...
Friday night I was supposed to go to a gathering at another American's house, but I decided to skip it. I ended up going to a "discotheque" with Shelley and her host sisters... that was quite the experience! We got there around 11 or 11:30 p.m. and there was hardly anyone there, but around midnight people started to show up. Back home, I'd probably never dance, but we were there from like 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. so I wasn't going to just sit there all night... it was interesting... French guys are obnoxious at 4 in the morning. They'll get right up next to you and start bumping into you while dancing and if you move away they'll follow sometimes. I found myself turning my back every time a guy even came close to me :) It was crazy... two guys got Annelise in between them and one of them picked her up... if that happened to me I wouldn't know how to say "put me down!" in French :)
People kept trying to talk to me, but I could barley understand Shelley when she talked to me in English due to the loud music, so I didn't have much luck holding a conversation in French :) One guy tried to tell me in English that I was pretty, but he said the wrong word... actually it wasn't even a real word... so when I didn't know what he was talking about he said "agreeable to look at" instead. I was amused by that :)
Saturday I got home around 5:30 a.m. and went to sleep until noon when my host mom came in to make sure I was still alive :)
It was a rather entertaining experience, but I don't think I'll try it again!
Hello again :)
It's time for part 3 of Life in France :) Nothing too interesting happened this weekend because I stayed in Caen while most of my friends went to Grenoble (in the Alps), but I haven't been getting as much e-mail lately, so I figure it's because I'm not writing often enough... so here you go... write back!! :)
I went climbing again on Friday... that was amusing. I climbed with a girl from Finland, and we saved each other's lives (in a way) because we each fell off the wall! Luckily, the other person was paying attention so we didn't fall too far... we just sort of swung around until we could get back on the wall and climb back up :)
Friday night I went to a little cafe with two of my friends who didn't to go Grenoble for the weekend. The waitress refused to speak French with us... I guess she wanted to practice her English or something because even though we were speaking French to her she was answering in English! :)
Saturday I went to a "total body" fitness class. A lot of the terms she used were in English. Every now and then she'd start singing along with the music (in English as well). It was pretty amusing :)
"Goldeneye" was on tv here last night. My host family was trying to tell me it was on, and they said something about jemzbun. I was like? jemzbun? what's a jemzbun? They said "0-0-7" (in French, of course) and started going singing the little theme... I was like, oh! James Bond! They were like, um, I guess so... :) Then they tried to tell me it wasn't with jeancnry. That meant Sean Connery :) I said (in French), "oh? So it's with Pierce Brosnen?" (spelling?) and they were like, um, um, um... and they finally went and got the tv guide to show me a picture of the guy. It was, in fact, Pierce Brosnen :) I was amused :)
Another amusing incident occured Sunday morning when my "pain au lait" got stuck in the toaster. I was trying to get it out, and my host mom told me to use a knife... that reminded me of how back home parents always tell kids never to stick knives in the toaster if their bread gets stuck :)
Another thing that's different is that at kickboxing at home the instructor always tells us never to put our hands behind our heads when we're doing sit-ups. Here when I go to fitness classes, they tell us to do just that!
To top off my amusment, there was a girl in my French history class who was supposed to give a presentation today. It's almost a third of our grade. Well, she had no clue that she was even supposed to do it today! The instructors response? No big deal, do it next Monday! I couldn't believe it! My presentation is tomorrow and I spent almost all of Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday working on it! Crazy :)
Well, like I said, I didn't do a whole lot this weekend. But there's your update about my life here, so now you can all write back and tell me what is going on in the United States. Keep in mind that I haven't read an English newspaper, heard an English radio station, or watched an English tv show for a month... so even if you think it's something I might have heard about, chances are I don't have a clue! So tell me everything :) I'll appreciate it :) And keep me posted on what you've all been doing for the last month, too!
I hope to hear from you soon!!
~Kelly
Hello all!
It is a beautiful day here, and I don't really want to be inside, but I have a paper to type, so there's not much I can do about it. And since, in order to recieve e-mail, first I must _send_ e-mail, here I am on this beautiful day, in the basement computer lab, typing to all of you who probably aren't really all that interested anyway :) Despite that fact, here we go...
It's one of those days where everything seems right. The computers are working, I only had to wait about 20 minutes to get one, the sun is shining, and they're finally starting to mow the "green space!" That last comment probably needs an explanation... you see, Caen was about 80 percent destroyed during World War II, and afterward they rebuilt the city in what I am told is an "American stlye." Based on Xavier's description of "American style," that means straight streets (hahaha yeah right!) and lots of "green space" on the campus. Those of you who go to Winona State know all about the American university obsession with green space :) Well, here they overdid it a bit. If you think it's crazy to take out a parking lot to put in grass at WSU, you should see this place. The campus is situated on a giant hill... a hill of the sort where you can walk for fifteen minutes to the left from the top of the hill and arrive almost at my host home or you can start at the bottom and walk for fifteen minutes and arrive at the top. The entire center of this hill is grass, and it hasn't been mowed at least since I got here, and probably not since fall. It's not weedy, just long. And today, they mowed part of it! Granted, it was only next to the sidewalks and around the trees, but I'm hopeful that this sudden display of mowing-motivation is only the beginning and someone will decide to finish the job :)
Probably part of the reason for the mow is that the student carnival is tomorrow. I see people setting up for it, and I've heard about it for weeks, but I am still not exactly sure what the deal is. I will let you all know :)
So yeah, where was I? Oh yes, I was talking about what a great day it is here :) It's 54 degrees right now, and partly cloudy, but this morning there was barely a cloud in the sky. It was so clear that I even thought I could see the countryside from the top of the hill on the way to school. It's the first time since I've been here that it has been clear enough to see that far. There's actually a horizon beyond the city, I think :)
When you can actually see for a distance, you can see things here that you'd never see at home. Rooftops of French homes are mixed with modern buildings like those you might see in Madison or maybe New York City... but in the midst of all this, you see the pointed steeples of the old cathedrals which managed to survive the war. My description doesn't do it justice... it's one of those things you just have to see for yourself.
Just to put this into perspective, it is supposed to rain every day for the rest of the "extended forecast" (until Thursday). That's a bummer, but for today, I'm very happy to be in France :)
Anyway, I'd better get started on that paper. Write to me soon!
~Kelly :)
Subject: more like a riot than a carnival -OR- life in France part 5
Hello all!
I had been planing on sending an e-mail about the student carnival last
week, but I never got around to it... sorry about that. I haven't been in
the e-mailing mood lately I guess! This week is midterms, so once it's over I should be better about writing. And two weeks from today I will be in
Barcelona, so when I get back from spring break in mid-April I'm sure I'll
have a lot more to write about. For now, here's the info on the student
carnival...
The carnival last Tuesday can best be discribed as a university-sponsored riot. It was crazy. The "parade" involved mobs of screaming, dancing students taking over the streets of Caen, blocking all traffic and spraying people with silly string, water, flour, you name it. If something like that happend in Winona, the police would be there in a second, but this was university-sponsored! Crazy. It looked like halloween. We had superman, grapes, smurfs, sheep, clowns, girrafes, the Jackson Five, ghostbusters, people covered in pink toilet paper, LOTS of men dressed like women... I don't even remember what else! And half of them were drunk or working on getting drunk, I think. (Not me, don't worry!)
It was all very amusing. I didn't dress up because I had no idea what to
expect, but there was face painting on campus so I got my face painted and my hair done for free :) It's one of those things you have to see to
believe. The parade lasted about an hour and a half, and just as we were
almost back to campus, what do you know, it started to rain. Big surprise.
But that's expected here, so most people never go far without their
umbrellals :)
The amount of rain they get here is crazy. Remember that day last week
(Monday) when I wrote that long e-mail about how nice the weather was and how great it was to see the sun? Well, I spoke too soon, because when I left the computer lab for my next class that day the sky was dark, and pretty soon it was pouring. I remember that my first two weeks here it
rained every day, but then we had six days in a row without rain and I
thought, "Ah, this must be what it's really like around here!" But no, I
was mistaken. The first two weeks were accurate, and the six days must have been a drought to the people here because I don't recall a day since then that it hasn't raineed. Even if it looks nice in the morning, it's just a
trick because it WILL rain before the day is over.
I found that out the hard way on Saturday when it looked nice in the morning and I went downtown without my umbrella. I ended up walking around for three hours in the rain, and by the time I got home I was soaked. Weathermen are more accurate here, I think, because all they have to do is predict rain every single day and they will still have 99 percent accuracy. :P
Sometimes you don't realize you miss things until you discover they aren't
there. Do you know what I mean? The sun for example. I didn't mind the
rain at all during the first month I was here because I didn't expect
anything else. Then last Monday I got a glimpse of how beautiful this city
would be if it were sunny, and now I am sick of the rain. I didn't know I
missed the sun until I finally saw it again :)
I saw a truck this morning too... that's another example. I hadn't realized
(until this morning) that I hadn't seen any trucks since I've been here. It
took seeing one to make me realize that I hadn't seen any. Strange how that works, eh?
If you have any questions about the carnival, ask me, because it's really hard to figure out how to describe it. (I did take pictures, and I got them developed on Saturday... that was an expensive mistake. It cost 72 bucks for three rolls of film with doubles for one hour development. I will most definitely be taking the rest of my film home with me and developing them there!)
I hope everything is going well there. Write to me!!!!
~Kelly
I'm still enjoying life in Caen despite the rain... especially wall climbing :) After spring break we get to climb on the outside of the building instead of just inside, so I'm hoping that means that by the end of April it won't rain so often! This could be such a pretty place if the sky would just stay blue for more than five minutes!
Last weekend I went to Rouen and Honfleur on Saturday and on Sunday we saw Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo. I really liked the old area of Rouen. I imagine that was what Caen looked like before the war. The only bad thing about Rouen was that two tourists wanted my friend and me to go for a drink with them, and we lied and said we had to meet our group. Then we ran into them about four more times throughout the day! I think we could have seen a lot more of the city (and enjoyed it a lot more) if we hadn't been constantly trying to avoid them :)
There's supposed to be a train strike tomorrow, which worries me a little bit because I am leaving for Barcelona on Saturday, but hopefully it will all work out!
I'm finally done with midterms, which is a relief. I was supposed to give an oral presentation today but the professor was not here, so either I will have to do it tomorrow or it will be after spring break. I hope I can do it tomorrow and get it over with.
Well, that's all for today, because I have to leave the computer lab now! I hope everything is going well there!
~Kelly
Hello all :)
I really meant to send this sooner, honest! I had good intentions of going straight to the computer lab after my last class yesterday.... but my friend was going downtown... and it WASN'T RAINING(!)... and I couldn't make her go all alone... and I had to buy Shelley a birthday card... and... well, the computer lab just didn't seem like the most interesting place to be at the time. I know, I know... excuses :) But I'm finally writing, and that's what counts, right? :)
So here it finally is... the "spring break" e-mail.
Sort of.
I've been thinking about everything I did on spring break, and I realize that most of it, while extremely interesting and amusing to me, might be the "you had to be there" sort of story. With that in mind, I'll try not to bore you to death. That's what's great about an e-mail-- you can skim or skip the parts you aren't interested in :)
So with that little "disclaimer" out of the way, here we go...
I guess the best place to start would be at the beginning:
Shelley, Nick and I took the train to Paris on Saturday the 31st. It's ironic that Paris has become just a place to change trains for me rather than an exciting city. We figured out that by the time we go home in June, I'll have been to Paris 9 times, and the majority of those trips will have been just to catch a train to somewhere else :)
I could fill a whole e-mail about the people we met on our trip... it started on our very first train when the guy I was sitting next to asked me in English if I'd like to switch places. I must have given him a really strange look, because he laughed at me and said, "You look really surprised that I'm English." Well, when you're used to hearing a foreign language, hearing your own coming from a stranger can be starteling :) Talking to him proved almost as difficult as understanding French-- he had a very strong British accent.
So anyway, getting to the point...
We got to Barcleona Sunday morning, and it was scary to get off the train knowing we had no where to stay for the next three days! Our lodging problems were quickly resolved when we ran into a little old Spainish lady who had a "pensione." With my limited Spanish vocabulary and a lot of gestures, we had somewhere to stay :)
We walked basically everywhere in Barcelona, so we got to see a lot of the city. Some of the stuff we saw inclueded the olympic stadium, the Sagrada Familia, the botanical gardens, and the BEACH! It was so nice to lie in the sand... it wasn't quite so nice when I couldn't lie down or sit comfortably for several days due to sunburn :) It was rather amusing to be wearing shorts when the "natives" were wearing jackets :)
Spain was also our first experience (of many) with the weird European guys. Most of the time it was in a language we didn't understand, so it usually went something like this:
Guys: Blahblahblah
Kelly: Were they talking to us?
Shelley: I think so.
Kelly: Do you know what they said?
Shelley: No clue.
Kelly: Me neither...
Once, I caught the word "guapas," but other than that we just pretended they weren't talking to us :)
We had many strange attempts at conversation during our trip... bizarre mixes of English, French, Spainish, Italian and German. Remarkably, we managed to make ourselves understood by just about everyone. More on that in a later e-mail :)
I could go on and on about Barcelona and the weird things that happened to us there, but for fear of boring you to death, I will stop now. If you'd like to know more about Barcleona just ask-- it was my favorite city on the whole trip (probably because of the weather, but also for other reasons). Next week sometime I'll write about my adventures in Venice. Until then, adios!
~Kelly :)