Mont-St-Michel

Hey guys! This weekend wasn't too eventful, but I did get to go to Mont-St-Michel (Mount of Saint Michael, Taylor) on Sunday. If I had known that the drive from here to MSM was like the drive from Dallas to Waco, I would have brought music. **sigh** Anyway, the place is gorgeous and is actually almost an island off the English Channel. At night, when the tide comes in, the road to MSM is completely underwater. If you go with a guide during the day, you can walk through the nasty quicksandy stuff. We had to promise our professor we wouldn't do it; however, I stepped out onto it anyway ;) We climbed a bunch of stairs, really steep ones, and saw hundreds of pictures from places like MSM around the world.

This morning at 5am, Suzanne got up to take her friend Erin to her train and passed out, hitting her nose on something and breaking it. I woke up to the thud and then heard blood-curdling screams. It was absolutely terrifying. Fortunately, she's going to be ok, but I haven't been that scared in a very long time. Pray that her recovery is quick!

Pictures are all of MSM, and the 1st one is the fog that I woke up to Sunday morning.

School...week one....

TGIF. In French, MDCV lol. That means "Merci Dieu c'est vendredi." Classes weren't terrible this week, but they certainly weren't a breeze. To start off, I got my schedule changed yet again because there were too many ppl in each phonetics class and not enough headphones. So, me being subject to Murphy's Law (which I so lovingly call Burge's Law), I was one of only 10 ppl to get put into a different phonetics class. Now I go even later on Wednesdays and Fridays. Major suckage. Then, I went to my Connaissance de France (French history) class and understood maybe 20% of what my teacher said. She mumbles a lot and has a lisp, so it's very hard to understand her. I have her for Lang. and Lit, too, but thankfully for only pt. 1. Monsieur Spiroux is much easier to understand for Lang. and Lit part 2. Below is my schedule and a picture of my 1st day outfit, mainly for mi madre to see lol.

M: 2-5

T: 1040-1220, 310-5

W: 820-1030, 130-300, 520-620

R: 12-240, 445-615

F: 9-10, 12-1, 3-4

Booze Cruise? Haha nope!

Hehe...I thought the title of this blog might get your attention. According to our paper, the boat ride we were going on was going to have welcoming cocktails for everyone. In France, cocktails clearly mean alcohol, so the event got the name the "booze cruise." However, the whole ride was just a bank advertisement, which none of us wanted b/c we're already signed up with a bank. It was rather lame, but I enjoyed myself. I got to take a tour of the canal for free and talk to a lot of Americans for two hours. I met some really cool ppl from Connecticut (yes, they're Yankees), as well as a couple of good ole Southerners. The only really sad thing was that they played some swing music on the boat and I got rather excited, only to have my hopes dashed by the fact that not a single person knew how to dance! It made me miss Baylor Swing Society and dancing w/ Taylor very much.

Sunday was the market, and holy crap is it huge!! I thought this thing would never end!! I bought a kilo of potatoes for lunch (which turned into dinner for me and someone else as well). I suck at metric system conversion and didn't realize that a kilo was so much. However, I got myself a watch for 5€, and I found Les Mis (in French) for only 3€!! I can't wait to read it once I get back from France!! I obviously want my French to improve before I try and read such a hard book. Sunday night the girls went for pizza and watched Pushing Daisies which has got to be one of the cutest, funniest, and saddest shows I've ever watched. I've never gotten a warm, fuzzy feeling inside from a TV show.

Pictures: 1. Shue (sp?) from China, Itana from Latvia, and me after the boat ride

2. A view of a vineyard-like road on my campus

3. The gang before the boozeless cruise lol

Caen: La deuxieme semaine

Bonjour mes amis!

I haven't updated my blog in a while because not a whole lot has happened since the party Saturday. I'm finished w/ my first week of classes, which actually was a week of orientation classes. I was in a "limbo" class called 1-3 because the professors didn't know if we should be placed in A2 or B1. Basically B1 is for those who have had at least 2 years of French because the classes continue grammar work, but they also start teaching French lit and French civilization/culture. I really wanted to get into B1 b/c that's what I'm getting credit for at Baylor. And I did!!! I was really excited because I've only had 1 year of French, and my friends who have had 3000 level courses are also in my class. We have no classes on Friday, and 95% of the time we only have morning classes. I'm not really a morning person, but coffee is cheap on campus and then I get the whole afternoon off to shop, peruse, travel, etc. We're going on a boat party this weekend, which my Connecticut friend has aptly name the "booze cruise." Apparently that's from the Office. I have no idea. I'm gonna have a ton of fun watching drunk French students, seeing as I'll be one of the only sober ones there.

Pictures!

1. Me and a kebab! A kebab is actually like a pita bread sandwich, not something on skewers. We're guessing that kebab deals w/ the kind and style of the meat.

2. L'hotel de ville (City hall) w/ moi being a proud American

3. The macaroon hamburger

One week down...

Bonjour!!

Today marks the first official week of my life here in Caen. Yesterday we went to La Fete du Port de Caen, which we figured was a party since fete means party; however, it wound up being like the state fair back in Texas!! It was still pretty cool seeing all the kiosks and such, but my feet were KILLING me. Since we all dressed up, I was stupid and wore my red stilettos with my red dress to match. They looked really good, but my feet didn't think so. I have two blisters on my toes, and last night I wound up taking them off by the port. EVERYONE stared at me and some muttered things under their breath. Four French people actually said something to me about putting my shoes back on, and one realized that my feet must hurt. Apparently going barefoot in France is a taboo...good to know now. Anyway, attached to this will be pictures of the party and stuff earlier. Enjoy!!

1: The CUTEST little boy EVER

2: Me in my dress and coat

3: The port and its ships

4: The random band that was so terrible but really amusing to watch

J'ai froid!!!

My post for right now will be short because I'm freaking cold. It's about 58* here right now and windy, so I'm gonna wait to blog when I can be indoors at a computer instead of in the wild. Therefore, pictures will be tomorrow or Monday, too. I'm going to a party tonight at the port, so I kinda want to wait anyway.

Anywho, we found a Tex-Mex restaurant here!!!! It's really, really expensive, though, so we'll go later when we all have money. It's kind of exciting. We got our French bank account today and social security. It was really cool. The only bad thing is that it takes them a week to deposit a check and have it go through!! I will never complain about a check taking too long again. Anyways, that's all for now...gotta get ready for la fete!!

Rockin' it at McDo

Bonjour mes amies!

Je suis a Caen!! Le temps ici est tres bien; c'est soixante-cinq!! Haha, for those who can't speak or read French, It says that I am in Caen *thankfully* and the weather here is very good; it's 65*!! It has been raining most of the day, but fortunately I brought rain boots. Erica and Kylie's flights got cancelled, so they didn't get here till Tuesday. It was very stressful getting here by myself, but God sent 3 ppl my way who spoke English and managed to carry my luggage and take me to where I needed to go. I am forever grateful. The campus is not very pretty - not like Baylor - but the surrounding city is BEAUTIFUL!! I will post pictures on here of the campus and some ppl that I met, and pictures of the city will go in later posts. Today was just a great day to tour the town. We ate at McDonald's for lunch and a Chinese restaurant for dinner where they gave us free rice cake pork rind things, a cocktail (which I didn't drink don't worry), and free chocolate at the Mickey D's. The burgers there were actually fabulous! Andit's so funny b/c there are American, Canadian, British, and Austrailian specials this month. I'm rockin' it here in McDonald's b/c I have free AND unlimited Wifi, or as they say, "gratuit et illimite!" I had a crazy CRAZY experience in the airport in Frankfurt and a very interesting first full day here. I saw janitors riding bikes IN the airport!! C'est tout pour maintenant. A bientot!

1st picture: Picture of the tram station and restaurant A
2nd picture: My dorm room with, of course, my homey touch of zebra stuff. It's actually pretty nice since I don't have a roommate.
3rd picture: Me and Suzanne, the girl from U. of Kentucky who lives next to me. We bonded over our first day misadventures, and her dad called mine to let him know I was ok.