Turning 21

In february I turned 21! I was worried that turning 21 in Europe wouldn’t be as big of a deal as it is in the United States but it was perfect. I woke up early that morning to find my beautiful friend Danielle in my kitchen with a birthday pastry! It was a wonderful start to my day. I didn’t have class that day so I spent it relaxing, which was exactly what I wanted. In the evening Danielle came back over and she, Cara, and I went to get take out. While we were waiting for our food, Cara “had to go skype her mom about something important” so Danielle and I waited for the food. When we arrived back at the apartment, I noticed Joe’s and Antoine’s shoes near the front door so I assumed they came over. But apparently I didn’t notice all the other shoes because our kitchen was full of my friends! Danielle and Cara cleverly crafted a surprise party for me! The best part: they had four different flavors of this ice cream cake from my childhood. Who would have thought that my 21st birthday would be filled with tea and cakes. It was the perfect birthday, thanks everyone!

Snow in Bordeaux

Back in February, I had my first snow day ever! The night before Cara and I had four friends sleep over and we all woke up to a snow covered Bordeaux! All us Californians were so excited that we ran outside in our pajamas plus any extra layers we could find. The Canadian and the Ohioan just rolled their eyes at our excitement and proceeded to stay inside while we were making snow angels and snow balls. 

Kevin comes to Bordeaux

On December 13th Kevin arrived in Bordeaux. I had been anxiously awaiting his arrival and wanted to run and hug him as soon as he entered baggage claim at the airport but unfortunately, I was unable. For some reason (okay, it's a good security reason) the Bordeaux airport decided to put a giant glass wall around the baggage claim area. So, basically, I see him come down the elevator from the terminal and into the baggage claim but we're stuck on opposite sides of the glass for 30 minutes until his suitcase finally arrives. I hadn't seen my boyfriend for 4 months and the airport wanted to keep us apart even longer with that wall! It was obviously a frustrating experience.

Our time spent in Bordeaux together was such an adventure. I loved being able to show off my new city and seeing him experience Europe for the first time. Something happened in Bordeaux though, something I never thought Kevin would do... he wore a scarf. Scarfs may not be considered manly in the USA but they are manly and practical in Europe. And since we all know that fashion in Europe trumps that of the United States... 

Moral of the story, do as the Europeans do and always wear scarfs. 

Bike riding around town & in le Jardin Publique

Before seeing the Nutcracker Ballet at le Grand Theatre

The Capital of Christmas

In mid-December a big group of friends and I went to Strasbourg, France also known as the “Capital of Christmas.” The city is filled with dozens of Christmas markets, ice skating rinks, and mulled wine stands. 

We heard that this was the biggest Christmas tree in Europe

Mulled Wine

Decorated store fronts

We spent a majority of our time getting christmas gifts for our families at the markets and admiring the lavish decoration displays outside shops, but we did manage to squeeze in some time to see la Cathedrale Notre Dame de Strasbourg. The cathedral is HUGE and absolutely gorgeous. I would recommend just standing outside of it and looking at it from different angles because it is covered in tiny sculptures! Also, the astronomical clock on the inside is a must see. It is a calendar, planetary dial, and a display of the positions of the sun and moon and eclipses all in one!

The lower portion of the clock

Our group split into 3 smaller groups to couch surf and every host was great! We went out to dinner with 2 of them and had a fun time dancing to the cover band at the restaurant. The next night I had dinner with my couchsurfing host and his friends at the house and played with his 3 year old son. The little boy was too adorable and wanted to show off his English skills which were quite impressive. 

On our last day of the trip we hopped over to the German side of the border, to a town called Offenburg, just to have lunch! I seriously think that going to another country just to have a meal is the coolest thing ever.

Our first time on German soil... I mean concrete!

Thanksgiving in France

I never realized how much Thanksgiving means to me until it came and went without  having some of my mother’s famous mashed potatoes. So, when my friends proposed we have a thanksgiving of our own the weekend after I jumped on the chance to replicate the potatoes. Apparently three other people decided to make potatoes too but that didn’t stop me! Mine were clearly the best ;) Also, two French people were invited to celebrate this American holiday. They didn’t seem to like the idea of sweet potatoes with marshmallows but who can blame them! Their national cuisine is known for being savory, not sweet.

Cave Art & Hitchhiking

Back in November, my friend Joe and I decided to take a trip to see the world reknowned Lascaux caves. If you haven’t heard of these famous caves, it's okay, they’re only famous in certain circles. These grottes are the location of some of the best known upper paleolithic art; a.k.a. cave paintings. Joe, being an art history major, and myself, being a physical anthropology major, found this site to be quite an attraction. 

We hadn’t done much prior research on getting to Lascaux but I feel that what we did look at should have reccomended that we drive a car rather than take a train. When we arrived at the reccomended train stop, we found ourselves in a tiny fog-filled village, early enough in the morning that the shops weren't even open yet. We walked around the town a bit, trying to find an information office of any kind, but all we found was a small farmer's market. I’m sure the villagers were surprised to see anyone under the age of 40 in their town by the way they all starred at us. 

Eventually we found an office where we were told that we would need to take a taxi because the caves were 10km (6.2 miles) away. How to find a taxi? They didn’t know. A bit frustrated, we walked back towards the train station and spotted an off duty taxi parked in a parking lot. We stood, like creepers, in the parking lot and wait for the driver to arrive. Luckily, he agreed to take us to Lascaux even though he was in the middle of running his daily errands. After a few minutes we realized how far the caves were from the train station, but why didn’t the guide book mention anything about taking a taxi? The taxi takes us as far as the next town where we learn that we need to hike up to the caves. However, I was confused when we reached the top of the mountain, the location of the site, and found a parking lot with tourists getting out of cars. Why wouldn’t he take us to our end destination? Finally, we had made it to Lascaux, bought our tickets, and entered the cave with a group and a guide. 

Besides the rubber floors and professional lighting, Lascaux II is an exact replica of the real Lascaux. Lascaux is gated off and entry is only allowed to suited up scientists who preserve the paintings. Inside the cave, the guide pointed out what types of animals were painted,  how some paintings showed movement, and different techniques used. One thing I found interesting is that there were about three quadrangular shapes painted. They were randomly placed and quite small compared to the paintings but the fact that people 17,000 years ago used right angles was interesting. Afterwards, all I could think about is where squares and rectangles occur naturally in nature. I failed to come up with any real examples. Overall, the experience was pretty amazing. Although, I am still curious how they painted on the celing without having scaffolding to raise them up. 

After the tour we stood outside the gates of Lascaux I and nerded out a bit just trying to catch a glimpse of the opening the cave. Then, we started our descent to the village. However, once we got to the village it was lunch time and everything was closed. We called the number that was on our first taxi but they said we were too far away for them to pick us up. We called another taxi company, they said something similar. So what were we to do? We were in what seemed to be a desserted town that we didn’t even know the name of, we had no transportation to get back to the train station, and we didn't have enough time to walk back. My suggestion: hitchhiking. Joe really didn’t like this idea but I figured it was our only chance and if driver seemed sketchy we could turn them down.

Only 6 minutes after sticking out our thumbs an older white-haired man pulls up and humorously warns us in French that hitchhiking is illegal. Joe takes the front seat and I take the... platform in the back, laying on my stomach. As it turns out, the man, Allen, was British and had been living in France for many years. He had a lot of stories to tell, like how he was a reporter during the Algerian war and witnessed one of the biggest massacres. He also had a lot of questions about the Occupy movement and the presidential elections in the United States (It seems that every person that finds out I’m from the United States wants to talk about the presidential elections, they think America is crazy!). I was enjoying every minute of it but I learned afterwards that Joe was ready to open the car door and do a tuck and roll at any moment. 

We made it to our train and arrived back in Bordeaux just in time to get a slice of cake from the record breaking 200 meter bûche de Noël.

So excited to be at the Lascaux site!

Can you see the treehouse through all the fog?

200 meter long cake!

Fluency Update: Month 7

Tatech and Myself

I'm back on the blogosphere! After three and a half months of being locked out of my account I can finally blog about my adventures again! I have toooo many posts to catch up on...

As for a general update, I am now more than half way through my second semester in Bordeaux, France. I no longer live with a French host family but I do live in a pretty great apartment in centre ville. I live with the beautiful Cara from UCLA, my artist landlord, and six cats. Yes, six cats.

Now for the fluency update:

Since one of my main goals in coming to France was to become fluent in the lovely language, I thought it would be a good idea to do this Fluency Update thing to regularly check in on my progress. However, since I hadn't had my blog for the past 4 months, there hasn't been anything to force me to sit down and take time to reflect on this topic. That being said, it's been a long time since I really thought about fluency.

There was a period of time where I was hanging out with a group of French people but after a while, the friendship kind of faded when we realized we didn't share the same interests. There are some other French people I am slowly getting to know, but they all know English. So basically, I've been hanging out only with English speakers and exclusively speaking English. Because of this, classes in French have been overwhelming. Teachers speak so quickly that it is impossible to follow. They seriously slur all those verbs, prepositions, and negations so the importance of the sentence is lost. But, I guess English speakers do the same thing too.

Despite the above, there definitely has been some improvement. I am now able to eavesdrops and understand casual blabber, I can follow most conversations and participate in them, and sometimes my French is automatic and I don't need to do any translation in my head. As it turns out, all those weird sounds I would hear then panic because I thought they were important words were exactly that, weird sounds (the French have a large collection of these). Also, my accent must have improved because shopkeepers and waiters rarely ever respond to me in English anymore.

Since I really don't speak French that much, there have only been three moments worthy of boosting my language ego: two hours of hanging out one-on-one with a French girl, a long group discussion  with some adorable French girls, and my evening of conversation with a moroccan nomad from the Sahara'wi tribe (the interesting story about that to come in a later post!).

My time spent in Morocco actually showed me how much I've improved. Since Morocco is a French colony, everyone speaks French and since Moroccans find Westerners intriguing, everyone wanted to talk to me! I'm pretty sure I used more French there then I had in France the past few months! I feel like moroccan people are much more patient than the French when it comes to listening to a foreigner speak the language so I think that helped a bit.

Anyway, I will try to update on time next month but I will be in Berlin so let's hope I find some wifi!