Day 49: I am not left-handed

We actually learned how to do this move in French. You do it to gain points or to show your enemy that you aren't scared and for them to "bring it on." After doing this, you often keep your sword basically in this position as your opponent tries to attack you. Long story short, it changes who gets priority for points and is really intimidating.

19 octobre 2009 (Day 49)
I really think the weather here changes more often than it does in Utah. I only say this because the temperature fluxuations have been nuts. Just today I went back and forth from being freezing to wearing no coat outside and back and forth at least three more times. Now it is just cold. My heater isn’t working. We worked more on our R’s and the [y] [u] sounds in phonetics. It is good that we are, because I have a hard time with those to sounds! Fencing was good today. We had some boys come to our class today. It was good to fence against them because they are so aggressive and put more power into the moves. I fenced against a left-handed boy. It was so hard! It reminded me of the fencing scene in The Princess Bride, that goes like this
[fencing]
Inigo Montoya: You are wonderful.
Man in Black: Thank you; I've worked hard to become so.
Inigo Montoya: I admit it, you are better than I am.
Man in Black: Then why are you smiling?
Inigo Montoya: Because I know something you don't know.
Man in Black: And what is that?
Inigo Montoya: I... am not left-handed.
[Moves his sword to his right hand and gains an advantage]
Man in Black: You are amazing.
Inigo Montoya: I ought to be, after 20 years.
Man in Black: Oh, there's something I ought to tell you.
Inigo Montoya: Tell me.
Man in Black: I'm not left-handed either.
[Moves his sword to his right hand and regains his advantage]
I came home and showered and then headed off to the museum for art class. Ten minutes before the start of class, at the museum, I looked at our schedule and saw that I put the museum date on the wrong day on my calendar! I invented a shortcut and ended up getting back to class (a 20 minute tram ride) before our teacher started the lecture. How lucky for me! We talked about Nicolas Poussin today who is arguably one of the best French painters (or at least in the top three). Ironically, he didn’t paint in France but in Rome, Italy. I lent my journal to the professor to prop up the projector and I forgot to get it at the end of class! I am hoping it will be in the class in the morning or that my teacher picked it up.
Mathilde called and cancelled our lesson for today, so I went to the Rubis for dinner. I had some turkey, pasta, and weird vegetables. I came back to my chilly room and have been doing homework, happily with hot chocolate and cheerios since. The internet stopped working though, so hopefully the French words I made up in my paper are real ones.

Day 48: Eight Hours Later...

18 octobre 2009 (Day 48)

I had a delightful breakfast this morning after not wanting to get out of bed because I wanted to sleep more. I had hot chocolate, yogurt, and a tortilla. It is a pastry with croissant dough, chocolate chips, and something that I don’t know what it is that is twisted. I don’t know why they call it a tortilla. Today I put in a full work day at church. I got a ride with Armelle so that I could go to morning choir practice. We sang “O My Father” today in sacrament. It went really well. Church went about without anything noteworthy. We had choir practice really late today. I think it started two hours after church ended. It was okay because I talked to Isabel and I am going to get to stay with her in England for Christmas! She called her parents and they said it would be okay. I have my tickets and I will be going to Dublin Ireland for about a day and half and then flying from there to Manchester to spend at least a week exploring England. I am so glad that I will have a home for Christmas! It will be a lot of fun because she is Spanish as well, so they have different traditions. I also had some amazing dessert. One of the members gave me some of a chocolate tart that they had made. It was exquisite. In the words of my favorite person, “You’d sell your first child for it.” All the missionaries got “sheared” as Cheryl so delicately put it. I also got to talk to Elder Walter while we were waiting for choir while his companion was playing the piano. He will be transferred while I am on vacation and has 6 months to go. We talked about life and how his parents got divorced while he has been out on his mission. Poor kid. In choir we went over a couple of new songs. Bless the tenors’ hearts. They can’t pick a key.

I got home after 4:30pm from church (I left for church at 8:10am) and have been going through pictures from La Baule and catching up on my journal since then (besides munching on grapes, chocolate, leftovers, cookies, more cookies, yogurt). Now it is terribly late, my room looks like a tornado went by, and I haven’t done any homework this weekend! Good thing I’ll be on vacation in a week, because I apparently don’t want to do homework! Hopefully I’ll do it AND get to sleep this week though. Next week I’ll be sleeping on a train and in an airport so I need all the sleep that I can get.

Day 47: La Baule

Wind Surfing
The alien
Dinner!
Mmm...chocolate
Afton and Mari

17 octobre 2009 (Day 47)
Today I spent a wonderful day at the beach with Afton. She is from Seattle Washington. She loves everything about France so it was good to spend the day with her to have her ridiculously happily-in-love-with-France attitude rub off on me. We got our train tickets and had a peaceful hour ride to La Baule. La Baule is supposedly the most beautiful beach in Europe. It was gorgeous with seashells littering the sparkling sand. It was so nice to have the sunshine and hear the waves crashing against the beach. We saw wind surfers, couples walking arm in arm, horseback riding on the beach, sand castles, and people searching for sea food. I don’t know if they were raking up oysters or clams. There were so many people collecting their fresh find while the tide was low. I enjoyed sneaking up on them to take their pictures. There were also lots of dogs on the beach. We found this washed up squid/octopus/alien thing. I made it have a face. It was pretty funny.
There was an amazing chocolate shop and we hadn’t had lunch, so we bought some caramels and chocolate. I probably got around 100 grams and it was over 5 euros! It tasted really good though. When we did it I got a chicken Panini and had one of my apples, yummy. I wanted to have a quiche, but we couldn’t find anywhere with quiche. We did find one restaurant that had a plate that cost 98 euros! A lot of the shops were closed for lunch. It was so great to just sit in the sun and roam around the town taking pictures. Afton has an amazing camera. We got to come back on a double decker train on the top half. It was so neat! I felt like I was in that Harry Potter bus.
We came home in time for dinner and homework doing, but I somehow didn’t do any homework yet again. I ended up being up until 12:30 sorting my music genres on iTunes…

Day 46: Voltaire and Manifestations

Sarkozy, must agriculture pay the price?
Courtesy of someone whose camera didn't have dead batteries..

16 octobre 2009 (Day 46)

Today was cold. Really really really cold. I remembered to get on time to my classes today and kept on my coat and gloves. Madame Sanson said that it isn’t even “cold” yet. Annick had us run around in theatre to get warm. She also told us the building we have class in is one of the last to get heat, so don’t wish for much heat wise. I ate a rushed lunch with Nana (because I waited for Lea, a girl from the ward, but she didn’t show up.)

History was amazing as usual. Today Monsieur Touvron amused us with the writings of Voltaire You must cultivate your garden, or always be thinking. Voltaire was anti-clerical He wasn’t for a democracy because he thought that people should be lead by someone with lots of power (but not a tyrant). Voltaire felt that stupid people shouldn’t talk politics. This is why the US Constitution has the electoral college, so the “learned” can make sure the non-educated people don’t make a stupid mistake. We went on an interesting tanget about the rights of women in class too and how in 1945 they thought that women 1. Understand nothing [politically] and 2. Would vote like their husband, thus it wasn’t necessary to have women vote. Rousseau thought that men were inherently good but that society corrupted them. Montequieu was for the separation of powers, a real democracy. These great thinkers, the Lumiers, the financial situation of France, and the bourgeois are some of the origins of the French Revolution.

I was cold enough after class that I decided to go find another jacket. Part of the tram was closed because of a farmer’s manifestation. They decided to mow down the middle of the city by parking all their tractors in the street and on the tram line. This manifestation included, but was not limited to: bulls, hay being thrown everywhere, feathers, explosions, signs, white hats, screaming, John Deere tractors, breaking glass, knocking down ents, spray painting, burning things, pretend Sarkozy hangings, breaking glass, and throwing apples at policemen with clear shields. It was quite the scene. They do take their manifestations seriously. Luckily Steve Jobs knew just the music for the occasion. I had lovely classical music that fit trying to get through the crowd of people that were at the tram stop. The tram is the most popular mode of travel here (although biking is prevalent) so there were oodles of displaced people. As I first saw the manifestation “I wanna be a minority, I don’t need your authority” came on. I didn’t get very close, but I saw enough to get worried. This is when Jack Johnson came on singing a song saying, ‘Don’t worry.’ I found H&M and thought I died and went to heaven. They had a lot of awesome clothes. I bought some bright pink tights, an amazingly frenchie knit hat, and a bright blue sweater (which I will be taking back because…).

After I looked at everything about five times in H&M I headed back to the tram. After passing a Scottish bagpipe player I saw C&A and decided to go in. It was like H&M but cheaper and for motherly-people. Here I found some fantastic purple insulated hobo-mittens. I also found a navy blue jacket that I think I am going to keep. I ran into a funny lady at C&A. She recognized me from last month when I had helped some Chinese lady find the right bus. When she first saw me she said, “You’re the one who knows Chinese!” My thoughts, what the heck?! “No, I don’t speak Chinese. You must be mistaken.” “Oh no. I saw you, I know it was you. I remember. You were with a Chinese lady…” Eventually I remembered. We had a nice chit chat about this and that, if I liked school, France, if I needed help with my French writing, what other colors do they have that jacket in, where did I find those gloves, do you believe in God. I tried to do my member missionary work and tell her about our church. I also forced a pass along card on her. I tried to get her to read the Book of Mormon and I attempted to bear my testimony of it. She was trying to convert me to be a Jehovah’s Witness (or at least I think that is what she said in French). Needless to say, she now has a pass along card with the Salt Lake Temple, my phone number, the missionaries, and wants to talk Bible sometime. It should be interesting! She was a nice lady though. Her name was Catherine and she is probably in her late 30s or early 40s.

Once I got home with my fantastic purchases I cooked up all the rest of my carrots from the market and have some pasta and carrots. I somehow avoided doing all my homework. I wasn’t feeling very good so I actually went to bed early (or at least earlier than I have been).

Day 45: I Scream for Ice Cream

Hannah & Mari

15 octobre 2009 (Day 45)
This morning I had a paper due in writing, so I woke up and wrote a lovely essay on the Patriot Act in French. I actually learned a lot about the Patriot Act. I turned it in and the rest of writing class wasn’t so great. I did not understand the concept Annick was teaching us. I tried asking her and she wasn’t getting what I was asking so she ended up making fun of me [sort of] and I ended up almost in tears as I was trying to explain what my question was and that it was a valid question. I had delicious kebab (like the kind on a stick) sauce today at lunch. I really wanted a falafel to stick it in!
I went to chat with Patricia Torres after class. There has been some confusion about whether I need to get a carte de sejour (55 euros, doctor’s visit, big card that says I can stay in France) or just have a long stay visa. She informed me (all whilst taking FOUR different phone calls while having this meeting with me) that I needed a carte de sejour and that I couldn’t go on my planned vacation to Switzerland and Sweden. She informed me that even though I have a passport, my visa is for France, and even though this visa doesn’t expire before I’d get back, this visa means that I can’t use my American passport rights and travel. She informed me that I could go to ONE country in the Schengen area and that neither Switzerland nor Sweden are in this area (google check: they are. Lesson learned: if you don’t like the answer you get, ask a different person). Luckily she did take so many calls while she was telling me this otherwise I am sure I would cry. I somehow composed myself enough to ask what I could do. After asking several times she finally said I could come back at the end of next week and get my carte de sejour early, but that she and I were both dead if I didn’t pass the physical exam.
This was a enough almost crying for the day. Even when I found out I could still go on my vacation (I was so broken-hearted when she first said I couldn’t) I was still about ready to cry in the downtown Nantes. I composed myself enough with the happy thought of Amorino ice cream that I went and bought some chocolate chip Amorino ice cream and ate it on the steps of a giant fountain at Place Royal.
Afton Tyler, winner of the happiest American in France award invited me to they symphony. I of course jumped at the chance of being able to avoid homework and go with her, Hannah, Carter, and Juan (a boy in Afton an my classes) to the Cite des Congres and watch the National Orchestra of the region perform. We actually met some of their Irish friends there as well. They have such great accents! For three euros we got to be up close with comfy seats for the symphony. This month’s “theme” was French music so I got to listen to the soothing sounds of Maurice Ravel’s (1875-1937) “Le tombeau de Couperin.” It was so beautiful that your mind would just drift away with the music and you wouldn’t even think. The second French composer’s music they performed was a contemporary oriental/Senegal/Saw XI at the symphony by Jean-Louis Florentz (1947-2004). It was called Magnificat and had a choir. It was supposed to relate the story of flying in an airplane and hearing bugs in a jungle, but it sounded more disoriented and scary. I was sure it would give me nightmares. Georges Bizet’s (1838-1875) was much better in my opinion. I listened comfortably in my seat with squishy armrests to L’Arlesienne suites 1 & 2. It was fun to watch the conductor and the musicians. It is so amazing that someone thought to create instruments and how beautiful they sound. Afton and I missed the tram home from Commerce by about 20 seconds, so we spent the next 30 minutes waiting for the next train in a popular Irish Pub with the others. The symphony was a good ending to a bad day.

Day 44: Whisper to be Heard

14 octobre 2009 (Day 44)
After dreaming about giant new black laundry machines, coffee, and a snake, I woke up early to do my laundry and homework. The laundry got washed and semi-dry. I say semi because it was still wet. I therefore used my creative abilities and had clothes hanging everywhere in my room. It looked quite nice, I will have to remember to decorate like that for Christmas. The homework didn’t get done. I received a letter saying that I didn’t need to get a carte de sejour but should apply for a long-stay visa. This of course has caused confusion and much time (but hopefully not money) wasted as I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon trying to find out what I really need to do.
Mme Rialland lost her voice so culture was quite the adventure as we all had to lip read and ended up whispering ourselves. We continued our conversation about political parties in France and began to talk about authors who write in French who aren’t French. I ate lunch with Nana by some people speaking a very foreign language. I had no clue what they were speaking as I was munching on my yummy donut-like dessert. Annick spent a large portion of class today talking about the DELF and DELF tests after which we studied grammar. I had an epiphany of the obvious in class today. I realized that my problems in grammar are anything that M. le Prof didn’t teach me. I know solidly what he taught me, but the things that we never went over, simply took note of, or skimmed I don’t know. In college I haven’t had any classes where we study grammar, so my knowledge of French grammar really stopped when I learned about the subjunctive and some complex tenses.
I had another English lesson with Mathilde tonight. We had a mock interview and worked on possible responses to questions. She really does speak a lot better than she thinks. She has an interview to become an au pair next Thursday and I hope she does well. I have a paper due that I haven’t even started, which is so not like me!

Day 43: Would Maupassant Ever Eat a Burrito?

California-style burrito

13 octobre 2009 (Day 43)
Today in writing we spent the full two and a half hours analyzing Jadis by Guy de Maupassant. He was a realist writer who lived from 1850-1893. I liked Maupassant’s short story. We talked about the general idea, the format of his writing, the subtle sarcasm that revealed his opinions, and the witty humor. I personally enjoyed Maupassant for the basic story itself and for the rich vocabulary words it provided. I now know how to call people things like a pimp or a flirt in sophisticated literary terms that they won’t know.
I took my time at lunch enjoying my delicious Hawaiian pizza which I got scolded for. The Franco-Italian was in the theatre practice room playing the piano. My teacher, Madame Cherafoui (whom we all call Annick, quelle surprise) tried to stall him by talking to him. I of course, rested as the deer in the headlights. It is difficult enough for me to talk to boys whom I think are swell in English and then if you add the foreign language part I become completely speechless. Yet taking first in the expressions category was a cute tiny Bolivian who started choking when she saw the Franco-Italian, Annick, and me. Many of my classmates were quite disappointed that they missed the Franco-Italian. I got quite the scolding by everyone (my teacher included) that I didn’t talk to him and the jokes have continued strong about me and the Italian.
In orale class today the hispanophones didn’t disappoint. It is common knowledge and a common joke that the Latinos tend to be very boisterous and talk a lot. Take for instance Karen. She is married to a Frenchie so she is now living in Nantes learning French. Her French is very rich; it has many rolled Rs and porquais (spelling!). She was to give a 10-15 minute presentation. She talked for 30 minutes about the biodiversity of Colombia. After a while I stopped paying attention and started working on the outline of my presentation because she continuously, albeit accidentally, kept on using Spanish words.
Tonight was the monthly Burrito Fest at the church. I arrived about 45 minutes late which means I was right on time for eating. This month there were actually more English speakers than Frenchies! I tried a burrito “California style” aka with fries. It wasn’t too bad. I helped clean up in the kitchen. I love the people here, they are such characters. I got a kiss on the cheek from one member who is a jokester and loves to flirt, and laughed all the time while cleaning with a jolly round man who kept saying, “Oh! And look at this, it will not do, oh no.” We had an amazing cake talked a lot with Elder Riley and Elder Walters. Elder Riley, although seeming to be the good hardworking one, is actually the lady’s man of the four. He may not be the most dashing, but he has seduced (in his innocent piano playing way) many of the young women in the ward. The other elders like to joke about this. Cute surfer boy from Florida Elder Walters was terribly tired because it was almost his bedtime. I grabbed one of his bags and we started to go along with Cheryl and Elder Riley. The Elders called and said the tram was leaving in 5 minutes, the next tram being in 30 minutes, and the missionaries already out past their curfew. Cheryl began to run and Elder Riley (who grew up in Kaysville) who also did track was trying to beat the cross country star Cheryl. He lost. Elder Walters was trudging along quite slowly so it was evident that we would miss the tram, but bless the tram drivers heart, he waited for us. We hopped on the tram and laughed all the ride home (apart from Elder Walters who was falling asleep poor kiddo).