Francophile in the West

I'm in the SeaTac airport, listening to the Kings of Leon whilst waiting for a flight to Portland that's been delayed. Thanks for the holiday gift of free WiFi, SeaTac; you're giving me something to do. So, what was the first thing I bought when I got back to the States? A grande green tea lemonade from Starbucks. Terrible and typically consumer-ish, I know, but it's been a long 36 hours from Paris to London to Seattle and soon to PDX. Looking forward to a heaping plate of Mom's homemade Chicken and Rice Casserole when I get home. Commence Opperation Gorge-Yourself-on-all-the-Delicious-Foodstuffs-that-don't-Exist-in-France. GO! Hot damn, it feels good to be back on American soil!

It's my last night in France, it's four days before Christmas, and I'm in Paris. Amazing . I checked out of my room this morning without any trouble, met up with Jessica Wilbourne (she's a student from Georgia who works with the Seattle-Nantes-Jacksonville Association; she's been decently involved in a lot of the city-organized activities that the UW kids have participated in) and her boyfriend Sebastian and had a late breakfast in downtown Nantes, then I headed to the train station and caught my train to Paris. It was sad leaving Nantes. As I was on the train (listening to Elliott Smith, Yann Tierson, and Damien Rice, appropriately enough), I was internalizing once again just what an incredible time I had there and how much I love that town. It's so familiar to me, like another home, and I really hope I get to go back and stay again for a while later in life. Checking into the hostel and everything here in Paris went just fine. I'm qutie surprised, but ...

Check out some of my favorite / most hilarious photos from France. Enjoy!! :) Best Sneaky Photo of a Frenchman "in the Wild" This cute old guy was digging for clams at La Baule. Best Quote from a French Children's Book This was in a book about potty training, found at FNAC. It reads, "Poop, it's good for nothing!" Personal Best "WTF" Pose This took place at Iain's flatwarming party. I was having fun. Not exactly sure what else to say, haha. Best French Dog EVER This prize goes hands-down to Poupette, affectionately called 'Poo-poo', the wonderful dog of Anne-Marie and Andre. Best French Protest This manifestation was seen on the final stretch of road leading to the Mont Saint Michel, the most visited tourist sight in the world. Silly Frogs and their mauvais protest placement! Best French Signage Found this one at the Picasso Museum in Antibes (near Nice) Best On-Campus Graffiti Photo courtesy of Mari Lindstrom ...

I haven't wanted to write anything recently because I don't feel that I could do the last four months justice with a quick wrap-up blog post. Classes are finished, grades are in, the majority of my American and non-French foreign friends have all returned home for the winter holidays, and I remain, almost alone, until Monday the 21st. Nantes has been a dream come true. In a way, I'm happy to leave now because I have had the four best months of my life, I have hundreds and thousands of memories that I can look back on and laugh at, smile about, or reflect on, and I have nothing that I regret about my time here, and nothing that I wish I would have done. I (fortunately) also have so much to look forward to when I return to the Northwest and to my family, friends, and school. At the same time, I don't want to leave - I've come to adore France and its people and its language beyond any way in which I thought I loved it before. It's so normal now to hear French and ...

Ahhhh, finals!! I had a full day of tests yesterday, starting at 9h and ending at 17h30 (with a three-hour break for lunch, luckily). Wow, that was a heck of a day! I had a reading comprehension test, a listening comprehension test, and a written expression test. The listening one was the absolute WORST!! Completely atrocious, I couldn't believe it. Luckily, the entire class of 60-odd people was ready to kill whoever created the test as well, so I wasn't alone. Why is listening comprehension always the hardest?? I can understand French juuuuuuuuuuust fine when I'm having a conversation or listening to a professor or something, but when they stress you out and give you a random news segment with little to no context and five minutes to fill out 20 answers, it sucks. Oy. Oh well, it's over, and all I have left is my oral exam tomorrow morning! Talking about a subject for 7 or 8 minutes and then answering questions for another 7? I can totally do that. This weekend was...

Well, folks, we've made it to (almost) the end... Today was the last day of classes! Holy crap!! I just can't believe how quickly this semester has gone by. Luckily, I have a couple of weeks left in France yet (and plenty of adventures on the to-do list before I go!). Last night was also the UW group's final dinner at Anne-Marie's. It makes me so sad to think that I won't be able to get in on more traditional French dinners with such wonderful people! Andre took the group to the Casino Supermarche down the street before dinner and gave us a brief lesson in wine, and everyone bought a bottle (or four, in Michael's case! Yikes.) to save for themselves, to use to celebrate the end of the semester, or to give to their families. I have yet to figure out exactly how I'll get my 10-euro 2007 Chablis home without it getting destroyed, but I'm plotting. I want to save it for a special occasion, to be determined in the future. A big group of us got together ...

Op la! This week has been really busy, but really fun. The excursion to Normandy on Saturday was informative and quite eye-opening, but wow, I was mentally and physically exhausted by the time I got back to my room. It was a long bus ride up there and back from Nantes, and it was difficult at times to take in the scope of everything. 10,000 graves in that cemetary! Unbelievable. It's innately very hard to grasp what what happend on and after D-Day, seeing as it was 65 years ago and I didn't experience any of it, but I'm really glad that going to the museum and visiting the cemetary was one of our daytrips, even if it was kind of an emotional Debbie Downer. Monday was my 21st birthday, and I had a great day! I didn't have class until 16:00, so I slept in and took my time waking up and getting ready for the day. I went downtown for a while, did some homework, made myself lunch, and even took a nap! After class, I Skyped with Kris for a bit and then headed downtown to ...

... now with a hint of cinnamon!! I finally got smart and bought cinnamon at the grocery store to add to anything and everything. I had Herbs de Provence, Garlic and Garlic Powder, Salt, and Pepper, but no cinnamon?? I fixed that up quick. :) Oh gosh, I am SO behind on this thing!! I AM alive and everything is still wonderful. I put Kris on a train back to Paris on Tuesday (the 17th) and things went right back to normal for me here in Nantes. He and I had a great time together and I'm really glad he was able to fly over here and hang out for four weeks! We spent his last weekend exploring Nantes (as opposed to traveling all over creation as we had on the three previous weekends) and we wound up discovering things I didn't even know existed! I finally went inside the actual exhibit at the Machines d'Ile and was able to see all of the other amazing animatronic animal creations they have there, besides my favorite elephant friend. :) We also got in on an absolutely...

... it's just really difficult to get online when your boyfriend's in town for four weeks and you're traveling throughout the five corners of France!! We are having an absolute blast. We've visited La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Nice, Antibes (close to Nice), Monaco, Ventimiglia, Itlay (!!), and we just got back from a weekend in Paris. Fan-freaking-tastic. I am thoroughly enjoying all of the new cities I've been exploring. I'll update this thing sometime next week when I don't have anything fun to do because Kris will be back in the States. :( For now, some pictures from each of our weekend adventures... At the Jardin de Luxemburg in Paris Can't go wrong with Sacre-Coeur The view of Nice at dusk from an awesome hilltop fortress High rollers in Monaco! Place des Quinconces in Bordeaux

I'm enjoying quite the relaxing evening over here! I have no homework except to study briefly for a petit test in my Culture class tomorrow, and I'm all warm and cozy in my room, drinking hot chocolate and enjoying the rain outside of my window (I find it funny that 90% of my milk consumption goes to making hot chocolate, haha). Today was a pretty laid-back day, as far as classes and my always present To-Do list go. Kris arrives tomorrow, so of course I'm eagerly counting down the hours until I pick him up at the train station! Lucky for me, I don't have class until 16:00 on Mondays, so I had plenty of time to clean, do laundry, run some errands, and get things all prepped for his arrival several days in advance. I recently discovered that I can stream 98.1 KING FM online, so I've been drowning myself in Seattle's choice of classical music anytime I'm hanging out in my room. It's wonderful to have a never-ending supply of fantastic music, and I don...

Today is a perfect Fall day in France. As I type, I'm in my dorm room with the radiator on, drinking piping hot chocolate and listening to classical music while it's in the low 50s outside. It's so lovely. I saw the most beautiful pastel sunrise while walking to my 8:30 class this morning, all wrapped up in my big wool peacoat and a scarf, watching my breath condense in front of me. So wonderful. I love all the little moments every day that make this experience so unforgettable. I'm finally wrapped up in living in the moment and taking everything in instead of being so busy planning for the future that I miss all of the amazing things happening around me! It's a lesson I've needed to soak up for a long time, and I'm glad that it's here in France that I'm finally matriculating it. I went to the Symphony again last night with several friends, and oh boy, was it fantastic. Although the program and the conductor were wonderful when I went last month, t...

Last weekend was great! I had a great time with lots of friends at Iain's flatwarming party on Saturday night. It's so awesome to be able to hang out with people from all over the world! I adore all the foreign people I'm meeting and it's wonderful to be a part of something so all-encompassing as studying abroad. It's such an amazing experience to be over here on my own at this time of life! (The picture to the right is me goofing around with Iain (from Scotland) and Juan (from Spain). They're awesome!) Sunday was slightly less fun because I wound up coming down with a cold! Yesterday was pretty bad, as well. I took it really easy most of Sunday and Monday. Luckily, I'm feeling much better today, and I'm looking forward to going to the Symphony again tomorrow night!! There is so much to do and so little time!!! P.S.- I've come to the solid conclusion that France has the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. I have the...

All continues to go well! As of today, I've been here for 5 weeks already. Wow, I can't believe that! It's been going by pretty quickly. Not fast enough that I feel it's passing me by, but it's definitely going by faster than I'd like it to! I absolutely love living here. I really hope life brings me back here for a year or two sometime in the future, but we'll see. :) Not too much craziness to report; I'm still having a great time and enjoying every day. A couple other UW people and I were in the local Nantes newspaper at the end of September, which was super cool!! We've also all been invited to a party at the Mayor's office on the 19th of this month. I love being a sort of 'foreign diplomat'! They are so welcoming to foreign students, it's great! This is without a doubt the perfect time of life for me to be over here; still under the protection of the University umbrella, yet adult enough to have the opportunity to do and see som...

Another fantastic day!! This whole week has been really busy for me with homework and other things to take care of, and tonight was a much needed change of pace and time to relax (and I received a wonderful package from Kris today, which made my day even better!!). My friends Hannah, Jessica, Iain, Iain's friend Bianca, and I met up downtown in Bouffay and went to dinner at a creperie, where I had a DELICIOUS gallette filled with cheese, sausage, mushrooms, and onions. OH, it hit the spot. The first picture is from the restaurant. The waiter offered to take our picture, but he didn't know how to work my schwanky SLR camera, and I was trying to tell him to use the viewfinder, but I didn't know the word in French (I looked it up when I got back- it's viseur), so I told him, "Regarde avec les yeux!" (look with your eyes!), and he said, "What else would I look with?" and laughed. OH MAN. It was hilariously embarrassing. But mostly hilarious. At least I b...

My favorite part of every weekend is going to the Talensac market on Sunday mornings and buying all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables and meats. Today, I bought potatoes, cherry tomatoes, an avacado, nectarines, a mango, and some fresh salmon. I had the mango for lunch, and it was easily one of the best I've ever had in my life. For dinner, I sauteed the salmon in butter and lemon juice and had it over white rice. It was SO tasty!! I must say, I'm feeling pretty confident with my cooking abilities over here. It's great to have so many fresh ingredients to work and experiement with. The UW group went to Saint-Malo and le Mont Saint Michel yesterday and they were both just gorgeous! It was the perfect day; in the 70s and sunny with hardly a cloud in the sky. We couldn't have gone on a better day. Just yesterday, I took over 350 pictures! It was so much fun to just hop onto a giant tour bus and head out of town for the day, and have breakfast and lunch paid for. Tha...

I had such a wonderful day today!! I spent the day exploring by myself and I got a lot of fun things done. First, I went to the Talensac market downtown and bought a bottle of Cabernet Franc, an avacado, some nectarines, some cherry tomatoes, and flowers! After I dropped all that back off at my room, I went back downtown... This weekend was what the French call "Les journées du patrimoine", where all the museums, galleries, and places of cultural interest in general are open and free to the public. I found out about it in my Society and Economy class and decided to take advantage of it. I first went to the Planetarium and got to sit in on a narrated tour of the solar system and Milky Way Galaxy, in French, bien sûr! It was awesome because along with loving French, the astronomy classes I've taken at UW have been my all-time favorites, so it was perfect to see planets and constellations and stars and hear about them all in French! :) After that, I went through the Musée ...

Man, it's pretty hard to keep up with this thing when I have so many things going on!! Everything is wonderful and all is going swimmingly. Classes have started and are going well, I finally have internet in my room, and I'm actively booking my trips to Nice and Paris with Kris! I'm so excited!! I adore everything about this country. I absolutely LOVE hearing French every day and being able to speak it whenever I want to. The language feels so comfortable. Even though I'm definitely not a native as far as speaking ability and grammar and things like that go, I feel like I'm doing very well, and it feels as right to speak French as it does to speak English. I'm thinking in French a lot now! I'll be in my room between classes and I'll be thinking of what I need to do to prepare for my next class -in French-, or I'll be talking to my boyfriend and I'll think of something in French before I can think of it in English. It's great!! I really don...

This is not my normal life, but I love it!! Every moment is a new experience and a new adventure, it’s so wonderful! Last night, several of us met up with Ian, this Scotsman who’s in my friend Jessica’s classes, and we met up with a bunch of his friends at this bar called “Le Chien Stupide”, where everyone had a drink and got to know each other. There were probably 15 or 16 of us in the group. After that, we went to this semi-seedy underground bar called BMP, which is well behind Bouffay, where this French punk band called “The Curlee Wurlees” played a couple of sets. Oh my. It was so awesome!! French punk music, sweaty, semi-slimy French people, everyone’s chatting at a shout over the music and bopping around. It was such a blast!! We left between sets after all the Europeans in the group had had a cigarette (WOW, can those people smoke! Yikes!), and then we wandered around back in Bouffay and wound up at this late-night kebab place, where most of the group got something to eat. The...

Another great day here in France! Got up early and met Helene and the gang at the Place du Cirque tram station, and we walked around town for a bit, then went to breakfast in this gorgeous old restaurant called “La Cigale” (The Cicada) that’s located right across from Nantes’ opera house, which is also spectacular. We had the Nantes version of the typical French breakfast of orange juice, hot chocolate, and fresh croissants. Delicious as usual. Helene showed us a good chunk of town after breakfast, and we finally ended up at the Orange store, where most of the students in the programs bought cell phones with SIM cards, while myself and two others already had unlocked cell phones and just bought the SIM cards for them. I’m really glad my mom sent me over with an old phone! I saved 24 euros on that today. Win. After all that, we mosey’d into the bookstore at the Place de Commerce called Fnac, where I bought a French-language copy of Pride and Prejudice, as well as a book from the Petit...

I’m in Nantes!!! I’m hanging out in my adorable little European dorm room. Lots of storage space, tiny bathroom, hard bed, crappy pillow, great desk space, and linoleum everywhere. That sounds about right. I’m so excited to be here. It’s going to be a good quarter. My voyage over to Paris went just fine; all the connections went smoothly and I wasn’t too stressed at all. The best part of my journey actually occurred in London! As the plane was coming in for a landing, we passed right over the Thames and from my window I could see the London Eye, Big Ben, and the Parliament building! The last time I was in London was 2007, so it was exciting to see something that I was familiar with and enjoyed. I made it to the MEC (Maison des etudiants canadiens) late last night and managed to call my mom, my boyfriend, and get online and check my email. I had a hard time sleeping, but hopefully it was just because of jetlag. Got up at 7:30 and got ready, then we all met with Helene, our program coor...

I picked up 500 Euros from the bank today in preparation for my departure tomorrow... It looks like Monopoly money!! I guess I pass GO when I make it through French Customs on Wednesday night? :)

Pack, think of and write down things for the To-Do list, pack, stress about something, problem solve, calm down, pack some more, accomplish To-Do list items, pack. ^ That's basically what's been going on the past couple of days! I'm almost there, though. My dad's been helping me pack and we're doing an awesome job! I'll only be taking a decently-sized backpack and a large suitcase. WOO! I am going to be totally set. Anything else I can buy over there and then ship a box back when I leave. I'll thank myself later for packing so light. I've been having super-crazy dreams lately, it's weird. I hardly ever have striking dreams, but recently they've been off-the-charts weird and vivid. I know my subconscious is exhibiting the stress that I'm trying to avoid in daily life, but it's still strange to wake up and think, "So, I fell off the Empire State Building last night...", haha. As soon as I get settled in Paris for that first ni...

Only 6 days left!! I've been having a great time hanging out with my family and my friends and getting some good visiting in before I leave. Yesterday afternoon, my sister and I roped my mom into being our official photographer! My sister and I are ridiculously close and we love getting "Sister's Pictures", so we decided to get a solid photo shoot in before I leave. They turned out wonderfully and we had a fun time. :) I'll be the photographer tonight, taking pictures of my sister Lydia and her husband Eric, then we're going to try to get some family photos. Glad I have my awesome camera that can keep up with all of us shutter-happy Tylers ! Still haven't started packing, although I'm formulating a list of things I need to do and a list of things I need to buy or pack before I take off. I'm thinking I'll take my credit card on an adventure to Fred Meyer this afternoon to obtain all the required bits and pieces- vacuum bags, 4GB memory card f...

I love love love bidding my farewells to people until January and having them be excited for me! It makes me all the more giddy to get over there. It's like I'm moving away, never to return! Kind of a crazy sensation because I will get to start over when I get back, in a way. Fresh off of my French adventure, I'll be ready to have new adventures back in Seattle. As far as taking advantage of things goes, my boyfriend has convinced me to go all-out while I'm there. I'll only get to live in France once (probably), so why not do anything and everything I can?? This will be the experience of a lifetime, I shouldn't let anything hold me back. Sound advice, n'est pas? I've been feeling like I need more adventure in my life, so here's my perfect chance to start. A co-worker suggested traveling to Barcelona for a wild weekend while I'm over there, but I looked into it and it looks like my time (and money!) would be better spent if I went to Toulouse ...

Okay, so I'm two weeks away from the start of my epic adventure to France, and I'm busily trying to meet up with my friends one last time before I disappear for four months! I'm working full-time at the UW, so lunch and dinner are basically my only occasions to catch up with people. Whilst trying to arrange a lunch date with my friend Lauren, she suggested I keep a travel blog, which I thought was a fantastic idea, so here we are! HOORAY, LAUREN!! What a genius. Breakdown: Nantes is the sixth largest city in France, located in the Pays de la Loire region on the Loire River in west-northwestern France. Home of author Jules Verne, Nantes is one of Seattle's twenty-two sister cities. The University of Washington has a direct transfer agreement with l'Université de Nantes, a connection that has provided me with the opportunity to do what I'll be doing. I'll be spending 16 weeks as a student at l'Université de Nantes, living on campus in the middle ...