You know you had a good day when you....

1) Sleep in
2) Find really funny/inspirational videos on Youtube
3) Think about your future
4) Clean your room
5) Sweep your room
6) Go for a walk in the beautiful Fall weather
7) Find a super big grocery store and walk around it for an hour
8) Stumble across wasabi gouda cheese (yes you read that right)
9) Help a girl from Spain carry her groceries from the tram stop to the residence while having a conversation in French
10) Eat said cheese with a baguette
11) Go to a Bible study and eat apple cider cupcakes with cream cheese frosting
12) Meet new people and talk with the usual people, but get to know them a lot better
13) Think about your future some more
14) Can't stop smiling while walking down the street
15) Read a book in French

All in all, today was a good day. Oh and I found out that the Office Max/Depot of France is Top Office and the wasabi cheese is delicious and it's green!

Woah Time Change

So last night, we were able to set back our clocks by an hour. Yay for extra sleep! I made extra sure that everything was set properly before going to bed so that I wouldn't miss church in the morning. I end up getting up early just because I couldn't sleep so I was goofing around on Facebook when my friend texts me asking me where I am. I was a little confused for a second after consulting my alarm clock because it said 9:20, but then I checked my phone and computer and alas somehow I had made an oopsie! I ended up throwing on shoes, brushing my hair, and then ran out of my room. I caught up to my friend as she was halfway down the street but we made it to church!

This past weekend was a big youth event (JCroix - JCross) which I'm kinda sad I did not go to because it looked like they had a great time. The entire church was decorated for them and the worship center was decked out in black curtains, blue dividers, cut out clouds to represent the heavens, a cool entry way made from white linens, and plenty of crazy lights. The praise band and speaker from the weekend led the service, which I'm sure was a little different for some of the older people, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The main director did get up and say that this is a worship service for the youth so I hope that's cool haha (he was definitely American though because of his accent). Throughout the morning, they played several songs, the majority of which were American songs, just translated into French. Can we say cooooooool!!! I'm hoping to be able to find a CD of French worship music before I leave because it really is awesome having songs in another language. The speaker gave the first legit gospel presentation that I have heard in French. It was a full-on Baptist conversion sermon, but he handled himself very well without going overboard. He even used an example a story of two twins, where one sacrifices himself for the other (ask me about it if you're interested) to conclude his talk. At the end of the service several people ended up making a decision of some sort which is always a moving experience.

Vannes

Most people chose to go off on some extravagant adventure during our few days off from school, but I chose to stay here in Nantes. Because of this, I have been able to get in some much needed sleep, a little exploration, and some good thinking time! It is kind of weird having the apartment building so quiet though, but I am definitely enjoying the change. I did plan out one little trip for the break however, just so that I could get out of Nantes and see a little bit more of what France has to offer. On Wednesday, I got together with Sergio, my host from my first night here, and we took a little day trip up to Vannes, a little port town north-west of Nantes. Neither of us had ever been there and the train tickets were pretty cheap so we figured why not!

There were two trains that left in the morning, but we chose the later one around ten o'clock seeing how the other one was for 7 and we were not feeling motivated enough for that early of a start. I met Sergio at the train station, stamped our tickets, and we were off! Fortunately, unlike my last experience with a train, we were able to actually sit down in a seat! The ride took around an hour, which provided us with ample time to catch up and for me to fill him in on all of my adventures seeing how I had not seen him in almost two months! Two points for speaking French!

We arrived at Vannes and ironically enough the first advertisement that I saw was for McDonalds so we had a nice laugh about that. Thanks to Sergio's smart phone application, we had a map of the town so we were able to safely navigate from the train station to the main city.

As I mentioned, Vannes is a port town, but the historically aspect of this city traces back to the Roman times so it is actually a walled city. Currently, only certain portions of the wall are visible from the port itself because several years ago, the government passed laws stating that the wall had to be hidden from view so people started building houses and stores in front of it!

Just to the right of the port is the visitor center, but unfortunately we arrived literally seconds after they closed for lunch so we did the same and then came back later. The cafe that we ate at had doughnuts available for desserts and every time I see that I giggle. I'm tempted to try them but I just find it so odd that they are so common here for dessert. Anywho, on our way back to get information, I stumbled across this English influence, cool architecture, and a pretty carousel.

It turns out that my internet research from the night before was correct and we were able to meet up for a behind the scenes tour of the fortifications later that day! Before it started however, we still had about an hour or so to burn, so we took our own little walking tour of the city and enjoyed the sights for a little bit. The architecture here is quite unique and the church inside the town was gorgeous just like every other Catholic Church in France!

*Note the Orangina in my hand - my first one of my trip! I sipped it for quite a long time
 
Once the time came for the tour, it tried to rain on us, but it fortunately held off until later that night. Overall, the tour was actually quite intriguing, with a bunch of useful historical facts and plus it's always cool to get to climb towers that are normally forbidden :)

I would include a bunch of pictures with flowers and landscaping but I mean hey, it's big here and it's kinda my thing so there ya go! If you look closely at the last picture, you can see one guy planting the flowers as the other guy throws them to him. They had a pretty solid plan going there! At the end of our tour, we were even able to see the original entrance to the city and the cannon defenses that had been built to protect it so that was neat. Also, around this triangular fortification, as I mentioned earlier, there are houses built around it so imagine having about ten feet of backyard and then a 20 foot stone wall for a backdrop!

After our tour, we did the average French thing and found a local cafe and had some good conversation over some coffee. I had my first cafe viennois, which was absolutely delicious and was served with lots of whipped cream and cocoa powder on top, but unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture, but you can always google image search it :)

Unfortunately, the day had to end eventually, but we stopped by a Monoprix and picked up some food for dinner on the train before heading back to the train station. I love how people here are so much more chill about dogs than the states. For example, someone brought their little chihuhua mix into the store, tied it to the cart rack, and started her grocery shopping. I have seen this happen on several occassions and hey I don't mind because I get to watch a cute puppy dog while I check out!

On the way back, our train did end up being a couple of minutes delayed for some reason, but it's not like we were in a hurry. Overall though, this little day trip was just what I needed and I got to practice a good bit of French! I was even able to see Breton on a sign! Gooo French rebels!

Change your point of view

Yet again, I'm lacking motivation to go through all of my pictures from yesterday so I figured I would just rant for a second, but I promise that pictures and descriptions of more exciting things are to come. As I was walking back from boxing tonight, I decided to walk a slightly different route just to mix things up a little bit. I've been doing that recently because it's just not any fun to walk the same way every time. I feel like I get into these ruts in life where I am so used to doing something constantly, the same way every time, but every once in a while change is good. I feel like this study abroad has opened up a lot of these opportunities and I feel as though I have gained a lot of experience just from my two months in France. Anywho, back to the story. I decided to walk through the park instead of walking around it next to the buildings. By doing this, I could see into people rooms (kind of creepy sounding but it's cool to see how people live and the differences between here and the States) and was able to see the architecture of the building for the first time. I have walked by this same building at least twenty times, but have never taken the opportunity to actually look at the building itself. The architecture is beautiful and there was even a part of it that opened up and there was a courtyard with trees in it that I had never seen before. Overall, take the road less traveled and do a little exploring. It's good for you :)

Peanut Butter Anyone?

I'm a little too busy and slightly lacking motivation to post a full post about my adventures from yesterday, but that is to come soon! I figured I could go ahead and give you guys something to keep you interested in my blog though, so here is a little story of something that happened to me a few days ago.

As many of you know, I have a slight obsession with food. I have had the honor of eating a 4 pound burrito, 30 slices of pizza at CiCi's Pizza, and 4-6 plates of food at every buffet I visit. I also have quite the sweet tooth for baked goods, ice cream, oh yea...and peanut butter. This last food seems quite simple to most people and a little too common to make a big deal about it, but I never realized how much I love it until I came to France. In America, I eat this substance of the gods on a daily basis and I buy it in 4 pound tubs from Kroger...delicious! Here, in France, however, peanut butter is quite the rare commodity and it is rarely ever appreciated by the French. I did find this spreadable gold in the local supermarket however, first in the form of the tiniest jar of Skippy peanut butter ever...but for 5 euros...ummm not acceptable. I can buy 4 pounds of it for less than that at home! So I continued my search and finally I found the off-brand 'Mississippi Belle' at one of the bigger supermarkets in town. Granted, it was still decently expensive at about 3.50, but it was worth it.

I usually try to savor my peanut butter while I am here because it is quite expensive, but during those long nights where you're working on a presentation, there's nothing like a good spoonful...or two...or three...or half a jar of peanut butter. Now that we have subject one covered, time to dive into subject two, and then I promise this will all tie together.

I also like my sleep and there is nothing like a good nap in the afternoon, which is probably what I'll be doing shortly after this post to rest up for boxing. Many people have a problem with snoring, hogging the covers, kicking the covers off, talking in their sleep, and even walking in their sleep. To be completely honest, I'm most likely guilty of all of the above, but mainly the last two. I found out yesterday from my host, that during my first night in Nantes, I apparently talked in my sleep in a blurred mixture of French and English haha. As far as sleep walking is concerned, my favorite story takes me back to Freshman year at GC&SU. One night, Wes, my roommate, woke up and found me standing beside his bed staring at him. He calmly (more or less after I scared him) asked if everything was okay and I replied quite cheerfully yes, but kept standing there. He then told me to go back to bed, so I obediently followed orders. Now, you must know that I have absolutely no recollection of this whatsoever.

Okay, the moment you have all been waiting for! A couple of nights ago, my night ended like any other one in that I shut my computer down, got ready for bed, and fell asleep IN my bed. The next morning, I wake up a little groggy and disoriented, but not because I fell out of bed, or because it was too cold, or because I was feeling sick. Nope, none of those. Once I realized what was going on, I noticed first of all that I was sitting at my desk in my chair, and secondly that there was a spoon in my mouth. What was on this spoon you might ask?! PEANUT BUTTER! Needless to say, I was quite surprised at this but proceeded to take a few more spoonfuls before putting it away. I went back to look at the jar a few minutes later after fully waking up and realized that I had eaten about a quarter of the jar...while sleeping! Did I enjoy myself? Most likely, but I am kind of sad about it because I ate a euro or two of peanut butter and wasn't able to actually enjoy it. If only I could remember the tastinesssssss!!!!! WHY CRUEL WORLD WHYYYYY!

Bam! Ten bucks says that has never happened to you! Ah thank you, ah thank you! Yes, I am that special that I sleep and eat at the same time. How many sleep-eaters do you know?!?! Well one now! You're welcome :)

Registration and Kebab

This blog entry finds me once again at the local kebab restaurant where I have settled in quite well next to one of the two outlets available! I had to come back over here in order to register for my classes for next semester because my student account is conveniently blocked on the school/residence network. It was kind of a weird feeling though registering, first of all because I was able to do it at 1:30 in the afternoon as opposed to the usual 5 am (even though they moved it up to 7 am this year), and secondly because it was my last registration of my undergraduate career! I spent a good bit of time trying to figure out what courses I needed to take in order to receive my diploma, which is kind of an important factor. I am pretty sure I have everything figured out and it looks like I'll be taking two French classes (one of which I have already taken, but I figured it would be good review...and I kind of enjoy French...I know who would have 'thunk' it?!), two Business classes to complete my minor, and one or two Music classes to pass the time (piano or guitar).

While I was enjoying slaving over my computer, I did have some nice entertainment to go with my chicken pita in the form of free soccer and rugby matches on a big projector screen! This kebab place is known for being the local sport hangout. Whenever there is a big match on the television, people flock here to cheer on their favorite team. Currently, Manchester United is playing Manchester City in soccer but earlier I was able to watch almost an entire rugby match. I was first introduced to rugby during my homestay on my trip to Australia. The couple that I stayed with explained the rules and the appeal of the sport to me, but over the years I had forgotten all about it. We did play once in youth group, but it really just turned into a game of tackle the person with the ball/high-schoolers versus middle schoolers. During my senior year of high school, a bunch of the guys started up a club team and the same has happened at GC&SU, so apparently it is starting to become a bigger deal in the states. I did actually quite enjoy the rugby match and it provided a nice change from only watching soccer here haha.

On another note, I'm on vacation! Classes don't officially end until tomorrow but I conveniently do not have any classes on Tuesdays so I get to start a day early! In just a little while, I'll be leaving my cubby here to go grocery shopping most likely and then a nap might be in my future!

*Witty Title*

One down side (or good side) of studying abroad for a semester or a full academic year is that many people have to be away from their usual friends and family for their birthdays. Fortunately, you make new friends during these times so you can still celebrate! One of the canadians had her birthday yesterday so a bunch of them went out ice skating (yea they would, babam stereotyping that is true!) and then a bunch of us went to explore the downtown area at night. Downtime, I was able to meet a couple of French people and was able to observe a little of the French night life. One funny/awkward meeting was a guy with whom I have been at the same boxing practices as him...for two months...and he didn't know who I was. Really now, I'm the only non-Frenchie there and I'm the only one with red hair, come on now, your observation skills are majorly lacking! Anywho, I guess I 'officially' met him yesterday and met another French guy from the same town that I will be visiting on Wednesday!

Fast forwarding to Sunday morning, I went to the usual Sunday service at Church and had an...interesting time. It seemed like nothing was very well organized and even the topic was a little scattered in my opinion. Somehow they were trying to tie politics into the message, but then added in poverty and bad conditions in Africa, and also touched on fasting. Yea....I couldn't exactly figure out what the theme was haha. Anywho, afterwards we thought we escaped the clutches of one of the men from the church who has been trying to get the English speakers to sing a song in English and play instruments during one of the Sunday morning services, but alas he caught up to us and tried to rope us in. I would love to, but I am not exactly the most musically inclined guy out there so we shall see!

After Church, I came back to my room, took a quick nap and then headed over to the local fast food joint, a kebab restaurant, and tried to figure out my schedule for next semester in Georgia. I can't access my student account from my room so I had to go somewhere else. I ordered a pretty tasty chicken sandwich thingy and sat down for what turned into a 5 hour stay...but I think I have a decent schedule set up. It does make this a little bit more difficult though not having access to advisers and people to easily ask questions to so I'm going to kind of wing it and see what happens!

Fortunately, tomorrow will be my last day of classes before a few days of vacation/holiday time, but I'll have to head over to Kebab again after class to hopefully register for classes and then off to the grocery store because after breakfast tomorrow I will be pretty much completely out of food! Oh nooossssss!!!!

Helllooooooo!!!

Good afternoon everyone! It looks like I have fallen into the trend of only posting on the weekend but I guess that makes sense seeing how my weeks are actually pretty boring unless you would like to hear me complain about my classes haha. Fortunately, coming up next week we have a week long vacation, which will allow for some much needed rest and exploring time! I only have one event planned, unlike most people, which is a one day trip to a small town north-west of Nantes called Vannes with my host from the first night so I am very excited about that. I plan on using the rest of my vacation to explore Nantes some more, actually take pictures of the city, and do a little boxing (my coach is getting a small group of us together over the break to have a few intensive sessions yay!).

Yesterday after class, I embarked on a little adventure to the train station to buy my student pass, which gives me a 20-60% discount on tickets, and to buy my tickets to Vannes. Unfortunately, I was not thinking correctly and took the train to the end of the wrong line sooo I kind of rode the tram for an extra 30-45 minutes for no reason. I did finally find some brain cells and took the correct tram line and after 30 minutes of waiting in line, my trip was a success! I did have some nice eavesdropping times on the tram though and heard all about the 5 different pairs of shoes that this one middle schooler has and what kind of shoes he is looking to buy (he and his friend were en route to the store) as well as a mother entertaining her four year old and two year old daughters.

As a reward for my accomplishments, last night was dubbed crepe night! A friend and I went to one of the creperies recommended by some of our friends and indulged in savory and sweet crepes! From the choices offered, (of which there were probably over a hundred possible types...which made deciding very difficult), I ate a ham, egg, and cheese crepe and a yummy and delicious caramel-filled crepe (the same filling as the beignet from the carnival) and my friend ordered a bacon, mushroom, and cheese crepe and a rhubarb crepe! All of the above were quite delicious and I was even able to try rhubarb for the first time! Needless to say, I am definitely looking forward to adding rhubarb to my list of to look for foods, but now I really want to try a rhubarb and strawberry pie/tart/crumble...

Today, being Saturday, is one of the busier days for the average French person. Since most people do not work today and seeing how all of the stores here are closed on Sundays, everyone tries to do their grocery shopping and errands today. Fortunately, a little while back I found a list of all of the open air markets in town, four of which are on Saturdays, and figured it was time to try them out! We decided to only walk around one of the them, which is probably a good thing because we found the biggest one. It was absolutely huge! There was a little bit of everything there including mattresses, clothes, purses, odds and ends, Islamic paraphernalia, perfume salesmen (one of his lines used was talking about people smiling a lot like Sarkozy, the President of France, who he said is only good for his country (France) and his wife (who is a young model, singer, and actress); needless to say he got a good laugh out of the crowd), and lots of my favorite thing, FOOD! There was fresh seafood, beef, chicken, sausage, pastries, cheese, bread, candies, international prepared foods, and loads of fresh produce. It blew my mind as to how much produce was there.

It all looked so amazing and it was all so fresh! The seafood and meat were probably some of the freshest looking that I have ever seen. I did find pumpkins, but they just aren't the same....I might still try and carve one next weekend depending on my mood. They have big ones, but they are shorter and more wrinkly and they have small dinky ones for about 2 euros. The big ones though looked quite pricey. Overall it seemed like most of the produce there seemed fairly priced, but even for the overpriced items, it is normally worth it because you are paying for local and super fresh foods. Being at the market today made me think about how many of the people use the markets for restaurants and about what kind of meals people would be preparing with the ingredients that they were purchasing. This was my first large-scale market (other than Whole Foods) so I can definitely say that I had a blast just walking around and seeing everything that was available. I will definitely be going back soon!

Tonight I believe I will be celebrating one of my friend's birthdays but until then I am going to take a nap and hopefully get a little bit of work done, but I might have to venture outside for a break. It has finally turned cold so it feels more like fall! Here's some proof:

I hope all is well in the States!

Sundays are Beautiful

As usual, Sunday mornings are reserved for church at our little Eglise Protestant Baptiste Libre! The big group of students from Pennsylvania, that invited us over for hamburgers my second week here, were able to make it again this week so it was nice to see them again! The service itself was pretty good with the usual French music and speaker. The message however was delivered by a Jewish rabbi (I'm not sure if he is reformed or traditional) who had given a conference at the church the night before. I'm sure his lesson had some great points to it because he kept getting 'Amens' from the crowd, but I just could not focus yesterday. It probably didn't help any that he talk for over an hour...

Anywho, after the service there was a potluck lunch supposedly for the new students and any one new to the church so they could give an introduction to the church itself. This however did not happen, buttttt that's okay because we ate some delicious food. Seeing how students are lacking in cooking facilities, we were told it was cool if we just brought bread so that we did! Nothing like a quick stop by the bakery before church! For lunch there was quite a bit of food ranging from salad, to rice dishes, to meat dishes, and lots of pasta! There was even enough for seconds plus some! (looks like the French are learning from us southerners) We then played a get to know you game where everyone was paired with someone and they had to introduce them to the church, in French of course! I got it easy though because I was paired with one of the guys from Pennsylvania. Dessert followed and man did I load up! I had to feed CJ of course! Tarts + pudding + cake + pastries = major win. Coffee followed dessert, but by this time we were all checking our watches every couple of minutes because lunch was going a little longer than we expected. We arrived for the service at 10:30 and didn't leave until 4 so the rumors are true, the French love their social lunch times!

Afterwards we met up with the Pennsylvania group and had a good couple of hours of ultimate frisbee! In the track beside the field we were playing in there was a horse race going on, so that provided some entertainment as well. On the way over to the field we did manage to have a small conversation with an elderly French couple who were actually excited to talk to people who spoke English, unlike most people so far who just look at us funny. They spoke, in French, and told us about some of their travels and those of their grandchildren.

Overall, the weekend was very successful and we had some of the most beautiful weather we have had since we arrived. I've been told to enjoy it now because normally the weather here is pretty miserable all the time. I am a little excited for slightly colder weather though..mostly because that means hot chocolate!

BEACH! Number 2!

Yesterday, on an absolutely beautiful Saturday morning, those who attend the English Bible Study were invited to go to a port city called Saint-Nazaire for the day with the church youth group. Of course, we are all about free trips to the beach and getting to meet some French people, so we met up around 10 o'clock and were off! In my car, there was the youth pastor from North Carolina, two French guys, a Canadian, a girl from Ghana, and myself, the American! We all spoke in French on the way down there which was some great experience for me.

Fortunately for us, port towns are generally situated by the water hence the 'port' part and because of that, it has a beachhhhhh!!!! It was absolutely beautiful and not crowded whatsoever so we had the place to ourselves. The sand was more like tiny rocks as opposed to fine grainy sand but we just got some extra exfoliation out of it so no biggy! Throughout the day we explored the rocks, picked up shells, played in the water, played baseball (bringing America to France one step at a time), threw around a rugby ball and a football, played a game called 'Tomato', ate lunch, and had our own little worship session on the beach. This was all a great stress reliever especially after the slightly rough week that I had. It was pretty awesome singing songs on the beach though for the fact that you are outside and singing praise songs. One aspect that I am really enjoying about being here in France is the international aspect. The songs were either sung in French or English depending on whichever language the leader was feeling for that song, but during some of the songs, if you were not familiar with the language being sung, people would sing in their own language. At one point, Spanish, French, and English were all being used by different people to sing one song. This also brings to mind the fact that even though we might be from different places, we all still worship the same God, which allows us to come together and have a common bond with one another. As I have previously mentioned, seeing translations for American hymns and contemporary worship songs has been awesome, because each translation portrays a slightly different interpretation and way of looking at something. The same thing happens with translations of the Bible as well. I'll probably start carrying around my French Bible with me even in the States because I like the wording of certain French passages.

After our little extravaganza on the beach, we loaded up in the cars again and headed off to explore some of the town before we left for the day. We stopped at one of the ports where we saw a huge cruise liner being built. This is the same port where the SS France and the Queen Mary II were constructed. Our second stop was the famous submarine port built by the Germans during World War II. This, of course, was one of my favorite parts because I am a huge war junkie. I had only seen documentaries and read stories about this port, but had never actually seen it so it was pretty awesome to actually be standing on top of it. The port itself has a 9 meter (30 foot) concrete roof which was made well enough that despite several attempts by both the Americans and British, we were never able to penetrate the roof or cause enough damage to halt the operations of the German U-boats. I always love these kind of historical places because when you are there it is so moving to think about what life would have been like during WW2 and how crazy it would be to be present during one of the bombing raids. Overall, this experience has definitely made me want to visit Normandy really really bad.

Sadly enough, our fun day had to come to a close, but this was probably a good thing because we were all super tired and apparently everyone took naps in all of the cars. I know for sure that I enjoyed my twenty to thirty minutes of beauty sleep! Once we were back in Nantes, the church offered to take us out to McDonalds for dinner, so yet again, double win for us! A trip to the beach and free dinner! I had been wanted to try out McDonalds ever since I first saw it here just for a little taste test, so of course I went for the Big Mac combo which was surprisingly the cheapest combo on the menu. They did have some interesting other choices available but for the most part, much of the menu was the same, just more expensive! A few people tried the classic chicken sandwich and one of my friends tried the chicken and bacon sandwich which was surprisingly tasty.

The Big Mac itself was smaller than the US ones I believe, but that could be from my lack of McDonalds eating in the States, but it was still quite tasty. It still didn't seem the same but that could be because the health factor has increased over here, but hey the special sauce was still the same! The fries here however are argueably better though and they do have a lot more options for dessert, but no apple pie! We all got McFlurries as well with options of kit kat, m&ms, pecans, toffee bits, and probably something else, with the extra option of chocolate or caramel syrup! I went for the pecan and chocolate....sooooo gooood! First Big Mac and first ice cream in France for the win!

Tomorrow will be an entry about Sunday's adventures so stay tuned!

Efficient French Administration...What?!

The annoying thing about staying longer that three months in France is that you have to apply for a long stay visa. The good thing about this extra hassle is that I get to miss two classes. Who's a winner? This guy!

Friday was the day that I was scheduled to take a medical exam in order to make certain that I was healthy enough to stay in France (even though I could have been seriously ill and still passed it...all to be explained later). All throughout this week I have been checking and double checking to make sure that I had everything ready so that I wouldn't mess up my ONE opportunity to get this extension (yea...you pretty much can't miss this appointment or you're up a creek without a paddle). My one mistake that I will not EVER do again is to not write the directions down the night before. I looked them up on Google maps but thought to myself, I'll just wake up early and go over them again tomorrow morning. Bad idea. Friday morning would be the day that the internet does not work in our residence. So I pretty much booked it over to the library, found directions and ran to the tram line. About halfway down the tram ride, I start getting paranoid because these directions are to the middle of no where and France has a great habit of having several of the same street names throughout a town, but I put all of that behind me and kept following my directions. Btw...internet maps make things look a lot closer than they actually are. This definitely reminded me of the classic sign on the side mirrors of your car...but anyway, I walked for seemingly forever, but the street names were lining up with my directions so I was starting to feel better. I did walk through quite the cute neighborhood though getting to the OFII office. I did discover a cool road invention on my way there however. The French did not have enough room to build a road for cars and a line for the tram...so when a tram isn't coming, the cars ride on the tram tracks, cool!

The actual appointment went by ridiculously smoothly despite my apprehensions and the fact that they were horribly overbooked for the day. Because of the latter, I was shuffled around a lot, so let me give you a run down of my morning:

1) A preliminary waiting room
2) A secondary waiting room
3) The first doctor's office where she took my blood pressure (below my elbow...that kind of threw me off) and asked me a few questions. This is the funny part, because I could have lied about everything and they would have never known. Do you take prescription/over the counter drugs? Are you currently sick or been sick recently? Are there any health problems in your family? Have you had any surgeries? Like really? I could be the unhealthiest person ever and still pass this test by lying. Fortunately, I didn't have to, but I'm just saying.
4) Back to the second waiting room
5) A second doctor where she weighed me, checked my eyesight, and asked if I had any questions concerning safe sex....awkward.
6) Then of course, it's back to the waiting room
7) An x-ray of my chest in another room
8) Second Waiting room
9) Back to the first doctor so she can look at the x-ray and comment on the fact that I should gain some more weight with the question (Do you like French food? and Have you been eating a healthy diet? - Yes and yes...I just run, box, and have a tapeworm named CJ, come on now)
10) To the first waiting room (I got to keep the x-ray!)
11) Waited for a while, talked to someone else, andddd then received my long-stay visa woohoo!

During the final stage of my journey I was granted the honor of listening to a verbal fight between the secretary and a man who wanted to change his appointment time. I was getting a little worried for a while that I would have to step in and break up this little debate but all ended well. I can understand the man's frustrations however because he is not able to come to his appointment time because he works so since the appointment is at the OFII he figured he could change the time there. Unfortunately, the law states that they must have the request in writing and then they send it off to the prefecture who will then call the man back. Fair enough, but this guy was not cool with that and after insulting the secretary for being 'just the secretary and not important' and asking to speak with a supervisor, he eventually cooled down enough to think logically and left with a few choice curse words. I have to admit that that woman did a fabulous job of professionally handling this man and as soon as he left instead of freaking out, she calmly went back to her job. Well done!

At the end of the day however, despite the fact that I still had one more class that day, I still had my visa so I won't be deported...at least for that reason haha

*Disclaimer - I don't actually have a tapeworm...at least it's not documented, it just helps explain my ridiculous eating habits :)

Did you know?

- The French love to randomly protest and complain
- Sometimes they refer to the government as 'Papa'
- They normally wait until the Spring to protest (well because it's too cold in the winter and gives them time to figure out what to complain about and get angryyyyy)
- They like to chant 'Je ne suis pas content' - 'I'm not happy' (sounds a little childish non?)
- Despite the ridiculous amount of butter, creme, dairy products, and bread in their diets, the French have the lowest Body Mass Index of all of the European Union
- Each summer, France receives for tourists that than are French people with 63 million vs 60 million respectively
- France is the number 1 destination for retirees
- The mayor of Nantes is also the leader of the SRC (Groupe Socialist, radicale et citoyen) which is the far left socialists
- Nutella is ridiculously good...please take this jar away from me...oh wait it's almost gone...

Those were just a few of the random tangents that my teacher went on during my writing class today so I thought I would share them with you

Laundry and Baked Beans!

My day off from school actually turned out to be quite productive! My room is now squeaky clean and I even tackled a little bit of laundry! I really only needed to wash socks and I did not feel like that deserved a 3 euro wash at the laundry facilities in the building so I busted out my travel detergent and bonded with my sink...

The only downside to this plan was the unexpected LONG drying time. I wrung them out as much as I could without completely stretching them out and have moved them around my room to various places and ended up piling them on my window sill.

I'm sure it's not everyday that my neighbors see 20 socks hanging out the window hehe. Unfortunately, it is quite chilly and not sunny at all today so that kind of killed all plans of getting something dry, so until tomorrow!

I was able to go to boxing again today and was invited to class on Thursday, which is only for higher levels weeeeeeeeeh! We'll see how that goes! Afterwards, one of the French guys that I have talked to in the past gave me a ride home so I got to speak a little French :) Turns out he is actually planning on studying in Canada for two years after he graduates here in France to work on his English. He hopes to one day become pretty fluent in English. I know exactly how he feels haha. I ended off my day with a nice meal of baked beans and toast. Nothing like some of the Good Ole' South in France!

Yo Yo Yo

Hola people! Our internet has been horribly not efficient the past few days. Sometimes it decides to work, sometimes it decides to half work (which is the most frustrating), and sometimes it just won't come on. The weird thing is that when it is acting up and running really slow, Facebook runs perfectly fine. You would think that the one website that everyone uses would have problems...but apparently not!

Besides technical issues, school yesterday was pretty darn boring but with a little comic relief when my teacher would say 'but' in English because she would accentuate the 't' so every time she would say it, I would always think of Finding Nemo's "He touched the butttttttttt!". Yea...I know, mature right? Oh, I have officially found the most frustrating pronunciation in French though. This would be the difference between the -er ending and the -ais/ait ending in French. Yup, there is a difference, they aren't pronounced the same. The easiest way I can describe the sound difference for those who have a little background in French is -er like in the verb 'manger' and the 'e accent grave' as in 'frere'. Awkward, so weird. Also, certain words that I have always thought I knew how to pronounce...well that's all gone out the window with my phonetics course. Like 'poulet' the word for chicken, it follows the second option, not the first. Goes to show, that these classes are proving to be helpful!

After class, it was decided that a trip on the town was needed so we decided to check out a Christian bookstore (not Catholic I might add, I know they exist in France!). Unfortunately, they are not open on Mondays...I still can't figure out the French logic. After that, we figured we would still make the best of it and went downtown to activate my French debit card, then went off to one of the big malls and the other big supermarket, Carrefour. I will have to admit that the mall was pretty cool and had the basic shops that you would find in America just with less food options, cooler rides for the kiddies, more interesting displays, carnival music playing, and conveniently a supermarket attached to it. I had only been to LeClerc before so I figured it was time to try out Carrefour. I was definitely not disappointed with their selection, which for certain items was larger than LeClerc's, but the overall organization and appeal of the store was not to my liking. One plus to it though was that I purchased a bag of lemon Madeleines and a huge jar of store-brand Nutella for around 2 euros...fabulous! On the way back, we decided to stop at the bakery with supposedly the best croissants from 2009 but despite all the hype, we were not too impressed. I mean, it was delicious, but I feel like the bakery by the residence is higher quality. Granted, they did have most delicious looking everything else, so a trip back will be made to celebrate receiving my stipend whenever that comes in! Here's a little look at snack time!

It is starting to turn Fall here, but I feel like all of our on and off cold weather is messing with the trees, so certain ones have turned while others are holding on. I do miss Fall in the States though, but I'm still holding out that I can find a pumpkin to carve! Until then, we shall play in the leaves!

Even though I dominated a quarter of a jar of Nutella, a croissant, and half a bag of madeleines, I still indulged myself at Bible Study with a few croissants with Apple Butter! Our leader (who is from the States) was kind enough to bring us a little treat, which was greatly appreciated! Gotta love mixing French and American goodies! There were only 5 students there at the Bible Study, but it was still quite a good message. Ironically enough the message was on trials and coping with tough situations. Gotta love how God likes messing with you. That's happened a lot on this trip actually. I've been worried or thinking about a certain topic and through some event, some person, or just a random revelation, he shows you that everything is going to be all right. Two points for humbling experiences!

I had planned on going for a run this morning, but alas I managed to sleep through four alarms. I'm going to blame the sun though on this one because I have been leaving my blinds open so I will wake up with the sun, but today the sun didn't peak out until closer to 8am because of the clouds :( No worries though because I still have boxing tonight. In the meantime, it looks like I'll get some cleaning and laundry done, because my internet is not cooperating too well again which means I might actually be productive!

Thanksgiving in October? Alright!

Tonight, I had the honor of celebrating the proud American holiday of Thanksgiving...just a month and a half early! As mentioned in my last post, today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada so the big group of students from Canada had a little picnic outside one of the residence buildings. Nothing beats a picnic potluck on a Sunday evening!

Here's half of the group and half of the food. There were probably around 20 of us in total with myself being the lonely non-Canadian! Here is my friends and my contribution to the group. One brought these tasty appetizer chip thingies (think cheesey poofs but smaller, different flavors, and some round), another purchased some pains au chocolat, I brought strawberries (my first idea of sweet potato casserole had to be scrubbed unfortunately), and helped in creating a carrot and green bean dish with maple syrup!

In the end, we ended up with quite the selection of goodies which included: turkey, stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, our green beans and carrots, strawberries, mixed fruit, salad, ratatouille, quinoa, salsa chicken, pasta and chicken, bread/crackers and three kinds of cheese (I got to keep the leftovers!), apple pie/tart, pains au chocolat, chips, cashews, almonds,  and instant cappuccinos with cookies to finish off the night! *Notice the pretty plate from IKEA :)

Afterwards, we probably made a couple of enemies with the French students by goofing all while speaking English, but hey it was a holiday! Some of the group ended up playing soccer while I threw around a Frisbee, which I had not done in forever so it was nice to brush up on my skills. I also tried my hand at handstands and cartwheels and even busted out some old Aikido forward rolls!

Mmm...Sleep

Remember how I said I was going to go for a run this morning? Yea...that didn't happen. I set my alarm for early, hoping to have a productive day, but alas I kept hitting the snooze button and pretty soon the snooze was all snoozed out soooo I ended up waking up around 10 because a friend came and knocked on my door. I'm not quite sure why I kept sleeping because it was one of those times where it wasn't even comfortable to keep sleeping, but you just want to. Also, it was really cold so that could definitely be a reason behind it. I'm thinking I'm going to need to buy more warm clothes or invest in a better blanket/comforter, but hopefully when the heat kicks in it won't be too bad.

Anywho, after I quickly woke up and had some coffee it was time for church! I really enjoyed today's 'culte', or worship service. It always throws me off when they say that because in English, it has a slightly different meaning haha. There were surprisingly a lot of people at the service this morning, which is always a good thing. The 'band' was bigger than normal and they even busted out a bass guitar and an electric violin. Throughout the morning, they played quite a few English songs translated into French, the main one that I remembered being 'It is Well'. Funny enough, the lady who introduced the song said that is was a old song only really known by the older generations, but surprisingly enough, just about everyone knew it (she later contracted her statement saying that we are all apparently old haha). Given that all of these songs are in French, it takes a little figuring out in order to sing them, which forces me to pay more attention to the words than just the act of singing. With some of these songs, I know the English version so seeing the differences between the two languages is quite interesting to me. In my opinion, at certain times French has a more poetic version of expressing emotion and situations. It is hard to explain but certain words and phrases have a bigger impact on me than in English.

The sermon itself was given by an American from Oklahoma who has been in France for I believe around ten years. He seems like a really nice gentleman from when I met him about three or four weeks ago. He spent quite a while talking about encouragement and the difference between that and flattery. He included several real life examples that are always a good way to bring the message home. He even had us think about the name of someone in our life that needs some encouragement and had us reflect on how we could help them out. Gotta love deep thoughts! By the way, I am loving my French bible. I do kind of want another translation as well because the one that the pastor had, had slightly different phrases, but that's just me being curious, it's still the Bible and that's all that matters!

Today looks like homework day with graduate school research, maybe watching Harry Potter, and then a Thanksgiving picnic with the Canadians. Happy Thanksgiving Canada! (still weird saying that in October....)

Two points for the weekend!

The past few weeks as I have mentioned have been quite stressful, but things have finally settled down, at least I believe. Let's see, in the past couple of days, I have given a presentation on Samuel Beckett (so I am currently quite in the know on him and Gustave Flaubert!), taken a couple of tests, written some essays, petted a cat who was just chilling in the middle of the atrium at school one morning, emailed graduate school people, researched graduate schools, ran, boxed, finally broke down and pulled some money out of my American bank account, went grocery shopping, cried a little over the fact that sweet potatoes and brown sugar are hard to find and are just not the same, walked past the vanilla extract and wondered why it is 3.50 euros...that's about 5 American dollars, made spaghetti, received my tram pass so I officially can't be kicked off, have NOT eaten any Nutella since Tuesday, and have realized that I cannot sleep past 8 am.

Here's a little lookskie at the spaghettiiiiiiiii...

Delicious! This was my reward for finishing my presentation and it was followed by the most delicious fudge that you can make in the microwave! Unfortunately...it was gone faster than I could take a picture. I mean peanut butter by itself is fantastic. Chocolate by itself is fabulous. When you mix the both of them...well it's just fantabulous. Superman has kryptonite, and I believe the chocolate and peanut butter combination is probably mine.

And just because you asked sooo nicely, I figured I could share the recipe with everyone:

3 Minute Chocolate-Peanut Butter Fudge

1 1/2 cups chocolate morsels
1/2 cup sweetened, condensed milk
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon water

Combine all ingredients in a microwave safe bowl. Heat on full power for 30 seconds, then remove and stir. (The mixture should look like it does in the 3rd picture down). Heat again for another 30 seconds, then stir again. Mixture should be smooth by this point, but you may need to microwave it 1-2 more times in 30 second increments depending on your microwave. You can also melt this mixture over a double boiler if you do not want to use a microwave. When mixture is smooth, pour batter into a baking dish and pop in the fridge for 30 minutes or more. When ready to serve, cut into squares. - I'm just going to warn you, it's addicting...


Anyway, back to real life. Sadly, because of my busy schedule, I had to miss boxing all of this week. I was totally planning on going on Tuesday, but I woke up from my nap a little late and when I arrived at the tram stop, I realized I had left my pass in my room. After a nice brisk walk back, it was too late to make it on time, and I have a slight problem showing up late soooo I kept myself occupied with food blogs and my presentation. Fortunately, I was up bright and early (can't sleep in past 8 for some reason) and made my way downtown to the gym. The instructor called me out on being gone for a week, but at least he didn't make me do an extra workout haha. Once we finished up our boxing session, I was dead tired so I took my time walking back. I took this time to take in what was going on around me and how different the architecture and public areas are different from the States. Here's a picture of one of the many churches in the city. I get to walk by this twice a week to go boxing.

It was weird walking back this week because for the past month, the festival has been set up just down the street from where I took that picture, but last weekend was it's last so now it's just a big open area. Overall though, I am quite enjoying the random trees, parks, open areas, and memorials that are quite popular here.

On the subject of the environment, I do miss chilling on front campus at GC&SU, buttttt when you have a field with this view just behind the school, it suffices for now :)

Tomorrow I am going to try to go for a run in the morning, but we'll see if that happens, and afterwards will be church and then those crazy Canadians are having a Thanksgiving picnic so I'm going to have to go crash that. AMERICAAAAA!!!! I know right, Thanksgiving at the beginning of October?! They just don't know how to do things properly...

Blarg

Well today did not exactly go as planned. Last night I stayed up pretty late because I made the mistake of taking quite the long nap so I just wasn't tired. A good thing about this is that I managed to write up my entire presentation for Wednesday! Since waking up today though I have been lacking a lot of motivation and spent a LOT of time looking at food blogs. This is kinda silly because I can't even make half of the stuff I look at because we don't have ovens here :( sad day...but it still gives me ideas for later!

I did get to go grocery shopping but as soon as I got to the store, my tiredness sank in. I got a few items to tide me over for a while, but unfortunately, the stupid scanners at the store wouldn't accept my credit card or my debit card so I had to use the last bit of my cash to pay for it all. Looks like I'm going to be paying the extra charge and withdraw some money from my American debit card! ISEP could just be nice and give me my stipend though! Pretty please!

I then proceeded to take a nap and woke up so I could go to boxing to get some stress out and to be at least a little active. Unfortunately, as soon as the tram pulled up to take me downtown, I realized that I did not have my wallet or my tram pass and since I am lacking hard cash to buy a ticket, I had to trek back to my room. By the time I retrieved my wallet it was too late to make it to boxing on time. I have a problem walking into places late so I just scrubbed this mission and came back to my room where I preceeded to eat away my worries with peanut butter and nutella....this seems to be a continuing trend....

This is super random but it also has been really bugging me recently. French people must really look down upon English speakers because it seems like whenever I speak English to my friends I get the dirtiest glares ever. I've even just been standing there by myself and people just stare me down. Do I have 'American' written on my forehead or something or is it just my red hair?!?! This did getting me thinking though about how we view others especially in American. I feel like we are not as judgemental in the states concerning other cultures and languages but maybe we are. It is kinda interesting looking at everyday life through the eyes of an international minority though. All of this just urks me and I just want to run up to them and scream in French, 'I speak French tooooooooooo'. I think I just need to start forcing myself to speak French all the time in public, but even when I have done this I still get the same looks and French people just respond back in English. Rant over, thanks for listening!

I think I have sufficiently wasted enough of my day to where I should probably get back to working on my presentation. I will have to admit though that the weather here is absolutely amazing. There is a nice brisk wind blowing occasionally signaling the upcoming Fall weather. I'm soooo excited! I just need to find a pumpkin to make the season complete!

Everyone needs a break right?

After my relaxing Sunday of doing absolutely nothing (besides cleaning my room, oh so shiny!), I was unfortunately thrown back into the mix of things and had to attend classes again on Monday. I'm glad I am able to take French classes here and it is definitely helping me with my comprehension skills that's for sure. I was sitting in class yesterday and kind of got blown away by the realization that my teachers are only speaking in French, and yet I am able to understand, well, everything! How many people in the world are able to do that? I definitely understand that I am no where near fluent and that there are so many people that know several languages, but it is still a cool thing to think about. Besides the awesome language being spoken, my classes are getting a little annoying. Since all of my classmates are international students either here just because they wanted to get away, they are marrying/dating a French person (there are three people in my class in this situation), or because they need the credits, most of them do not care whatsoever about their classes. It seems like every day, only half of the class is present on time and then the rest file in anywhere from 5 to 40 minutes late. Really?! Just don't come to class at all if you are going to continually do that. No one EVER does their homework and they ALWAYS forget to bring in the assigned readings with the classic excuse of, oh I didn't get that...rightttttttt. Participation in class is even worse. I'm getting a little annoying with my teacher asking a question, waiting, looking around, and then finally looking at me for help or just flat out calling on me. I don't mind volunteering to give answers, but I sure don't know everything and would like to not be the only one talking. Blarg! Well rant over.

Besides that little tid bit, things are going well and I have a presentation tomorrow in my culture class on Samuel Beckett. Nothing like a little talk on an author who enjoys writing about the absurdity of life and trying to explain the unexplainable! I have already written up the presentation, seeing how I took too long of a nap yesterday so I stayed up until four in the morning finishing it. Granted, the majority of this time was actually spent either on facebook, youtube, or looking at food blogs...all while eating from my jar of nutella. :)

Today I plan on eating less nutella, memorizing my presentation, and boxing tonight. I also finally broke down and bought a monthly tram pass last week so I can ride it whenever I want, so I am definitely going to get my money's worth! On another completely random note, I've been kind of motivated recently to get back into running, but I have a pretty annoying schedule to work around. We'll see how this goes, but I have a plan that I want to follow so hopefully I'll keep it up!

BEACH!

After several stressful weeks, it was time for a break...or so I thought. There is a bus that goes from Nantes to several different towns, many of which are on a beach, so they are quite popular on the weekends. It's quite the nice system for the most part considering the ride there and back is only 4 euros, but little did I know the intensity of the situation as a whole.

The first bus left at 9:30 and the lady at the desk said we would be fine if we got there at 9:15...so knowing how French people operated we decided to get there at 9. Even by getting there early, by the time we arrived at the platform, the bus was already full and driving away, leaving twenty to thirty people behind. Good start right? Fortunately there was another bus coming at 11:45 so we bummed around the downtown area, rode the tram for a while, and came back to the station around 11. By the time the buses (two actually showed up!) drove up, there were probably 100 people wanting to get on these two buses, a.k.a. not happening. Fortunately for us, the bus literally stopped directly in front of my two friends and I, but then the fun began. I would have to admit that this was one of the few times in my life I have been purposefully rude to people. Cross country and martial arts training kicked in so we started throwing bows, leaning against people, making holes (gooooo American football!) and we barely made it. I played nice for a while, but once the other two got on and the bus started getting full I had to kick it into high gear. Miraculously I was one of the last five people on the bus!

The ride itself did not take too long and I managed to get in a little cat nap in before we were dropped off. Relaxed and rejuvenated, we commenced our trek from the bus stop to the beach! Once we got to the port town however, we noticed that the tide was a little low...

I was totally cool with this though because first of all, how often to you get to see boats stranded like that (I would hate to own one and have to wait for high tide to go out) and second of all because that means that there will be more cool stuff to see on the beach! Once we traversed a few roads, boardwalks, rocky outcroppings, and gravel paths, we finally made it!

The little kid on the right hand side was so cute because he would start at the left hand side of the boardwalk and yell to his mom to watch him, awkwardly run down, and then jump into the sand at the end...oh too be young again! This picture was probably taken around 1 in the afternoon, but after about two hours, this beach was packed with people sunbathing, eating lunch, swimming, and playing beach games. The funniest this ever was watching two French guys trying to throw an American football...they thought they were hot stuff...but they never threw it far enough, and never in a spiral. America for the win! Once we found a good spot to camp out, a few people who we met on the bus stayed with our stuff and we went off exploring! As I mentioned earlier, low tide = fun time!

Sooo many starfish!

Nothing like contemplating life on the beach!

You gotta have some fun every once in a while! After all of this hard work of exploring and climbing barefoot over wet, barnacle and seaweed covered rocks (not recommended) it was time for a nice snack break and what do I bring...PEANUT BUTTER!!!! It's quite pricey here, but I just had to have it
.

After about four hours on the beach it was sadly time to head back to the bus stop so we could be sure to make the bus going back (or so we thought). The walk back was just as beautiful as the walk there but with a little added water so the boats weren't so lonely.

We eventually made it back to the stop, which was sadly in the opposite direction of the beach :( and of course we would find more people than came with us on our two buses...great. The two buses arrived and the pushing and shoving began again this time with not so good of a result. 21 people were left stranded in the middle of a random city an hour away from Nantes! A part of the select few who made it on the bus was a middle aged lady who screamed and shoved her way through with the excuse that she was the first one there and that she had two children with her so it was her civil obligation to make this bus. We'll just say people were not too happy about that and even more unhappy when we were told by the bus driver that there would not be another bus. Let's take a minute to think about this logically shall we? They send three buses in the morning, one at 9:30 and two at 11:45, but only send two buses to pick people up at 5:10..hmmmmmm.

Seeing that this mode of transportation was a lost cause, we followed the bus driver's instructions to the train station and bought our tickets (7.50 euros...after already having payed for our return ticket on the bus). We kept a positive attitude though because at least we knew there was a train going back. When the time came for us to board the train we walked by the train and were instantly gratified because the seats looked sooo comfortable and our tired legs were looking forward to a nice break on the way back (or so we thought...notice a trend yet?) This train however, was not ours. Ours happened to be the dinky two car train at the end of the tracks. Instantly, nightmares about bus ride started creeping back up and we just knew we weren't going to make this one either. Fortunately, the French were soooo nice as to let us stand...on an hour long train ride.

  But hey at least it was not too crowded (or so we thought).

This train was not made for standing passengers either. My arm fell asleep twice because I had to reach over peoples heads while standing on one foot to hold onto something to keep from falling over. Fantabulous! But hey, despite all of the hussle and bussle this caused, it was still nice to get away from Nantes even if it was just for the afternoon!