Bonjour and welcome to France!

Last weekend well, on friday we took a short train to strasbourg to meet up with the group there. We took a nice coach bus up to the mountains to see the only concentration camp from World War II on french soil. Needless to say, this was a depressing trip and no one talked throughout the tour. So lets move on to something more uplifting since its hard to talk about this experience. After this visit, we took the bus to the castle of haut koeningsburg and got a 45 minute tour in french. The whole time I was there, I was thinking about how cool it would be to place hide and go seek since the place was huge. The furniture and the paintings in some of the rooms were not from the origional castle, they were just there for show. We also went into this room with lots of weapons and the tour guide exlained to us which one was the best for getting a guy off a horse and then killing them. To make this day a little better, after the tour guide some of us went in the restaurant place and ordered german blackforest cake! yummm, it was the best thing ever! Then we got back on the coach bus and headed to kayersberg where we were going to have dinner. The town was really cute and selled kugelhopf ( which is pretty good). The dinner was even more amazing cause we got quiche lorraine as an appetizer. For our main dish we got some chicken thing, veggies, and potato. I think the dessert was a chocolate cake. This was a lovely end to our friday, and then the lc kids went to there hotel in strasbourg. The strasbourg kids offered to take us out and they showed us the bar they like to go to. It was nice and I ordered a peach beer. Then we went to this club and danced for a while but I was tired and left early.

The next day, saturday was free until our train at 5. We ended up going to this really cool contemporary art museum. I really liked the sculptures and there was this one funny video about throwing rocks. After that since this museum had given us a free pass to any other museum we thought we'd use while we were here. Laura, Karen and I went to this archaeological museum... which they never checked and ripped off our ticket. It was good cause the museum was really boring, lots of stones. They tried to integrate asterix but I was kind of confused. So then we went upstaires to the musee des beaux arts which was much nicer. Not to small, but it still had a lot to see. We ate our first kugelhopf for lunch, and it was pretty good. It had raisins in it and almonds on top, it was like a bread but shaped like a large muffin. I enjoyed sitting by the river and watching the tourist boats go by and all the people walking around. I heard a lot of german, or maybe it was alsacien. It is much more  of a tourist city then nancy which is why traveling to see it is fun, but to live there for a whole year.... im not sure. ok, its almost 3 am here, why am i writing this so late? who knows but I should go to bed. Hopefully this was a little insight on my travels. Tomorrow I think im going to this town called commercy where they make madelines! that should be exciting/ im excited to eat them! well I talk to you all later in my next post.

After paris is when our classes really started and we had a bunch more things to do. We are talking this french litterature class with madame Gilet. I don't really know what to think of the teacher yet.... but she seems nice. We get to pick our own book to read throughout the semester which will be nice. We have an arts and ideas class with our direction Ron Lyndaker. We will be doing a lot of cultural things like seeing the opera. Then we have a project village class with the best teacher ever Mr. Poret. In this class we have to do research on a certain village/ topic in the lorraine and write a 5-10 page paper on it. We are reguired to visit the town and talk with the locals. I think my project is going to be on cheese and the making of it. There are some cute towns he suggested where I can go and see how cheese is made. That should be fun, maybe not so intellectual but cheese is so good! We also have a french history and civilization class with the same man, haven't started it yet. Then we have to take some test this coming monday to get placed into a level of french, probably grammer or something, though im not sure. Our schedule is still up in the air and its kind of confusing. Ohh and we have to audit a class for the university. Im gonna audit this one called: the history of the french language. Should be interesting. AND my director said I could take a class in german so im gonna take: the history of europe in the 19th century.

Enough about classes on to the more exciting thing: Luxembourg. I decided with my friend laura from lc and a bunch of other erasmus students ( international ones) sort of spur of the moment to go to Luxembourg for this international festival of music.  We got there in the afternoon and it started to rain, it wasn't raining in nancy when we left ( it was beautiful and warm), and it was cold, really cold. The festival was in the main square, there were i think 2 or 3 different locations with bands playing. The bands were from africa, finland, italy, and other places. The music was really cool and we saw this marching band which was quite fun. For dinner we went to none other than Pizza Hut, but man i have never seen such a nice Pizza Hut. The restaurant was huge and there garlic bread was fantastic. After that we went back out to here more of the music. When that was finished we went to a bar and drank some beers. Then we went to this club where people were dancing. It was hot inside, and it smelled of smoke so  I ended up just sitting outside with this other girl. There were no trains back to nancy at like midnight or 1 so we had to take the earliest one in the morning which was at 5:30. Basically I didn't sleep all night until I got back to my house at 7:30. The experience was worthwhile, it was so much fun, but since it was so cold and i was not really prepared clothing wise the last few hours just sitting outside this club were horrible. 

If you have never been to luxembourg you dont really need too, it is like it looks on the map: a dot. The town is really small, we circled it a couple of times that night. lol. Luxembourg does bring in great musicians though, since its trying to boost its reputation. Overall I had a great weekend and cant wait till we go to alsace on friday with the strasbourg kids. I shall write more when I get back from alsace! talk to you all later :)

wow, so a lot has happened since my last post. ill probably separate this into two posts so that its not so long to read. anyways, after the week of informational stuff we travelled to paris with the lc program in Strasbourg. There is only one person actually from lewis and clark on that program but there was a bunch of kids from kalamazoo college ( i love that name!) and one girl from bryn mawr. We met up with them at the train station and went from there to our hotel. Laura, Karen, and I shared a room which was really nice! The day we arrived we had a free afternoon to just wander around before our dinner. Laura, Karen, and I went to get sandwiches and we ate by the seine which was really pretty. We walked to the louvre and also saw the Jardin des Tuileries. After some sightseeing we went back to the hotel to meet up with everyone for dinner at this indian restaurant. The samosas were delicious and so was the nan flat bread! It was a nice change to eat somewhere ethnic... ohh and the curry was really super! Following this amazing meal we went to see the play: La Leçon by Ionesco. All of us had already read the book for one of our classes. The theater: la Huchette where they have been putting on this play as well as the: Cantatrice Chauve ( this ones been playing there regularly since 1957) was pretty small. It was also so hot that I was sweating throughout the play which is not so enjoyable. Its true that you will laugh while seeing this play, but for me its just really upsetting.

The next day we went downstaires to have a nice breakfast of croissants, bread, cheese, jam, chocolate spread, eggs, orange juice, tea, coffee basically whatever you wanted! Then we met upstaires to go to the Musée D'orsay. The nancy students were required to prepare a presentation on one of the paintings in this museum. Karen and I had: Le Cirque by George Seurat. We had to talk for 5 minutes each about the painter and the painting itself. Either Ron Lyndaker the director of our program or his wife Beth who is the director of the strasbourg program had to listen to us. We got Ron and it was a little nervewracking to be talking about a painting in a museum with lots of people walking by. It went well I think and then we had time to explore the museum before going to the restaurant for lunch. This was one fancy restaurant and the food was really good, the desert especially. After the museum we had more free time to look around and see other things. We got some paninis for dinner and ate by the seine again which was really nice. Then Karen and I went to a little store and bought some wine to mix with coca cola ( which is surprisingly really good). We drank some with friends and then decided to head off to the eiffel tower. It was too late to actually go up it but it was really nice just to look at all lit up at night.

The next day after breakfast we went to the Palais Garnier- the opera house. We had a guided visit and actually got to sit in some pretty expensive seats near the front row. It was such a pretty building and I imagine a preformace there would be so much fun! Then Karen, Laura, Max, and I went to a cute cafe and had some lunch. I had the salade au Chèvre Chaud which is always a good choice since I love cheese. Then Max ( the only guy on the nancy program) and I went to the louvre. It is Max's first time in Europe and obviously then was his first time in Paris so this was a huge moment. He is also an art history major so going to the louvre is a dream come true seriously. The place is huge though so I just let Max go where he wanted since I had already been there. We covered all of the major peices including the famous mona lisa which really small so its kinda depressing.

We arrived back at the hotel to go to dinner at this traditional french restaurant. It was the cutest place ever and the people were so nice, they offered us some white wine on the house. As an appetizer I had Calamari in this ink sauce, the sauce looked exactly like blue ink and it made my tounge blue which I was weired out by at first. It was a very good dish tough dispite the odd color. Then I had some viel and vegetables with these potatoes which were crispy. For dessert I had the creme brulee which was also excellent. This pretty much concludes our paris trip. Tuesday we had some free time to walk around before taking the train back. We went up to mont-saint michelle to see the sacre et coeur. We also saw a salvador dali exhibit and went to the moulin rouge. After that it was time to head back to the train station to go to nancy . Overall this trip was really fun! wow this was a long post, sorry. I will post later on my luxembourg trip and things that have been happening in between. but for now, I am gonna leave you all! write to you later

My host mom, Marie Claude Henriot just got wireless internet today which is exciting for me. Though, Charles-Edouard, her youngest son says that if I use the internet a lot then I won't improve my french. This could be true, but I do like keeping in touch with my friends from back home and I already speak in french at the house everyday, all the time, and at school. We started whats called the cycle cours with other erasmus (international) students. We take classes everyday which are really just informational to help us find stuff around the university and the city. We have also done some oral and writting excersises to help us prepare to take our real classes starting in october. Its nice to meet some other students besides the 6 of us from lewis and clark.... everyone is really nice. Tonight we went out to the hemingway cafe where a lot of international students and just university students like to hang out and drink some beers. That was fun but before that the LC students had to go to this lecture about growing old and dying. The person who talked was interresting but he talked a mile a minute about natural selection, genes, an cells all in french. I am supposed to write a 2-4 page paper on this for tomorrow.... omg, we'll see how that goes. On another topic, it was my 21rst birthday on the 8th. Kind of anti-climatic being in France but it was really fun. My host mom, 2 of her sons ( one with his fiancee) came to have lunch for my birthday. It was really nice and we got to eat in her superb dinning room. She gave me a room plant and some chocolate as gifts. She is seriously like the best person ever besides the fact that she might be trying to get me drunk. lol No, just some of the chocolates she gave me had liquer inside them and I did not realize that they were going to be that strong. Its like having a shot inside some round chocolates of different pretty colors. I'm pretty tired and should go to bed, i'll prob write more at another time. ohh and I blew all the fuses in my host moms appartment with my adapter.... opps. Its all fixed now but I never told them that it was me and I feel kind of bad. Power strips are too high of a voltage to work with the adapter I have, but stupid me forgot to check if they would work so I just kind of tried it and sparks flew out of the outlet and there was a big pop. So as to not fall asleap on my computer i'm gonna peace out!