Day 134: Oh Boy Burritos

Party on the tram!
New Companions...ha ha ha

12 janvier 2010 (Day 134)
Mmm mmm mmm. I had oatmeal this morning for the first time in a long while. I woke up to do my laundry. I delivered my letters and went shopping for groceries. I bought fruit, veggies, yogurt, and cheese. I went with Hannah to see when classes were. We went around to some of the different departments and found out that most of the schedules will be online. I also went to play translator with Hannah with her rent. Turns out she hasn’t been getting CAF because she hadn’t given them all the papers.
Afterwards, I cleaned up a bit and it was off for burritos. I invited my friend Nana from Ghana, and she said yes. On the way out I invited John, my Scottish friend, but he had two tests in the morning so he needed to study. I had to wait for about 5 trams to go by until Nana came out of the library. Luckily we were still on time to burritos. I had quite the scare because it was exchanges and I didn’t know, so I thought it was the new missionaries. Luckily they were on splits. You see, I thought Elder Smiley was in Nantes now, and well, my face was just priceless (at least that is what Isabel said…that the look on my face was just to die for when I saw him). Elder Smiley is that one elder who talked to me a lot last time they were on splits and we took them home in the giant rented van. Well anyway, this evening he asked me about life and what I was doing, how I was and all that jazz. I talked and yeah. He was really quiet/mellow at dinner. It wasn’t half as awkward as the fact that before dinner started I went to take my salad into the kitchen and then Nana disappeared. She ended up talking on the phone for a really long time. There was a chair for him at the table with EVERYONE but he sat on the other table by himself. Elder Smiley did come sit by the rest of the ward after the 3 other elders left to sit by an investigator who had just come in with her daughter. The conversations were kind of all over and no one was talking much to Nana, so it was lucky that Elder Smiley talked to my friend Nana, though it took him a while to realize that she was a non-member and he was just babbling a little about his mission (he then mouthed to ask me if she was a non-member) but once he realized he switched gears a little. So we talked a little bit about the gospel. Nana enjoyed the burritos, but she had to go so I walked her to the tram stop and then ran back to the chapel. I told Smiley thanks for talking to Nana and he told me good job and I was lame with bringing up the gospel part and he was scolding me that I should have given her a Book of Mormon and then made me sit down and showed me how to explain the Book of Mormon with the pictures that are in the front and that it is a great teaching technique. We all eventually got our stuff and walked to the tram together. Going out of the chapel someone started on BYU football and we had our own little holy war. I started singing my own version of “Love at Home” (words changed) so we stopped talking about BYU v. the UofU. It was really funny because there were 4 elders (Smiley, Baker, Bourgeois, Poussard) and 4 girls (myself, Cheryl, Paki & her sister) walking home and we all ended up pairing off talking. If only the mission president was there, lol. I just thought it was funny so I took a picture. I was still talking to Smiley on the walk. I don’t know how, but he got talking about dating/marriage and this was consecutive with him giving me his name and telling me to find him on Facebook and asking if I’d want to hang out when I got back. So I kind of got asked out on a date…by a missionary. Sort of. More just to hang out since we are both from Utah. That tends to happen a lot. Like Elder Riley and I are going to hang out when I’m back (he’s from Idaho). We talked about PMG, his grandpa who died, him dating when he gets back, being a doctor, getting his little brother on a mission.
Well, Nana ended up being on the same tram as us (she went and visited friends) and so Elder Smiley sat by her and was asking her all these ridiculous questions about Ghana…air dart guns, underground rituals, where does this kid come up with this stuff? Hopefully Nana isn’t too scared off from the church after Smiley’s crazy questions. At least she liked the burritos. Elder Bourgeois, who is one of the new missionaries from Nantes went to BYU with THE Stone Elder Abe McKay. I guess McKay is already in some high up position, so I am pretty much the coolest when I say that I went to school with him. Hannah didn’t come for burritos because, “her hands were cold.”

Day 133: Grenoble

11 janvier 2010 (Day 133)
Boy was today a long day! I woke up at 4:30 so that I could get a ride with Jean Claude into Grenoble. He works there 100 day of the year as one of the engineering electrician kind of people. Now is company does a lot of stuff with nanotechnology. It seems pretty interesting and really smart (though he doesn’t work in the nanotech department). It was sad saying goodbye to Florence, but all good things must come to an end. Jean Claude and I had a nice drive to Grenoble. Because of the weather (it was ice, but clear) it took us around four or 5 hours to get there. I slept for a little bit, we talked some, listened to the radio, and I looked outside a lot. It is so beautiful! I really made a mistake in going to Nantes. The south is warmer, as are the people, and there are mountains. It doesn’t rain every day! I am missing out, oh well, too bad for me. There was snow everywhere and everything was covered. I have never seen pine trees so drenched in snow that they were drooping and sagging quite marvelously. It was all too picturesque. Jean Claude and I talked about this and that, just whatever subject came up. There was an interview of some stupid American author on the radio that made me laugh a lot. He spoke really slowly and the translator made him sound a lot less like an idiot. We stopped around 7 and got pain au raisin…it is shaped like a cinnamon roll but with the dough of a pain au chocolat or a croissant. It was really good. I had always thought that they looked nasty. Along the way JC told me about all the different mountains and his adventures climbing up them. We passed this awesome town called Sistern that is a citadel, or basically a giant fort.
I got dropped off at the gare in Grenoble and said goodbye to JC. It was so cute, he was so worried about my bag being too heavy, me getting lost, etc. so he told me to contact them so they know that they know that, “I’m not dead, you know.” He also gave me his cell phone number for if anything happened.
Not much happened. I went walking around Grenoble with my giant sack. I was going to go up to the Bastille, but the cool bubbles that take all the tourists up were closed. If I had been smarter, I probably would have had time to walk up, but I didn’t think about it until I had a little less than two hours before my train was *supposed to leave. I walked around, trying not to slip on slush and ice. I went into a couple of shops since everything is on sale. I looked at baby clothes for Ginny, but I didn’t see anything I loved. I bought some pants at C&A because they were 50% off, came with a belt (I need one) and fit better than any of the pants I’ve tried in the past decade. I liked Grenoble because I didn’t get looked at for wearing my awesome beanie (think the kind with the ear part that goes down that look Scandanavian) and my snowboarding coat because that is what some other people were wearing. The boys, from a glance, seem nicer and cuter than the ones in Nantes (perhaps because they are sporty). I think I went to every bakery as well, lol. I was going to take my time and have a sit down lunch, but I decided to get a mini-pizza for 1,50 from this cute older pizza man. I then got a baguette for the train ride home and a pastry called something of the alps. The lady said it had almonds in it. She lied. It had blueberries. I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. It was basically a blueberry tart. I enjoyed it while I was stressing about missing my train to Nantes, which I did.
When it was time I went back to the gare and waited for my train. The people watching was superb. There were several classes of 9/10 year olds with their teachers. They were so fun to watch. Once they were gone I wrote letters. The train came late, left late, and got to Lyon late. We had to keep on stopping for safety reasons (no idea why, it wasn’t snowing) but practically all the other trains were en retard (late) as well. I wrote and stretched my eyelids for a little bit on the train. I was sitting by two pretty sweet sounding guys [eavesdropping]. Another man scared the bagebers out of me. He was 2 seats away and his foot stretched all the way to by my seat. I looked down and was like, “What the?!”(to myself) looked up, and he said hi. Lol. I got in line to get a different ticket since I missed my train (even though there was almost an hour layover!). I wasn’t too upset about it. There were lots of crazy mad people running around the gare. I wished the lady luck with all of them. I chillaxed and ate my baguette and some clementines while listening to The Eagles. I am now thoroughly convinced that The Eagles is the best “I am sitting in a train station with an overstuffed bag, the trains are late, and everyone is grumpy music.” And bless my heart. I started freaking out because I didn’t see my new train on the screen. It took me going up to one of platforms and back down to realize I was looking at an arrivals and not a departures board. Ha ha, I love me! I was just proud that I stayed calm and didn’t get lost in Grenoble (I decided to not depart far from the tram line which led back to the gare). I got on the right train, a TGV, aka 200 and some odd kilometers of speed and will be arriving in Nantes late.

The Statesman

USU Study abroad asked me to write an article for the university's newspaper, The Statesman. I wrote two because I wasn't sure what to write about, sent them a ton of pictures, and said, "Have at it!" They chose this piece and didn't cut it (it is twice the length that they asked for) so I guessed they liked it!

Aggies Around the World: Feeling the Aggie Spirit in France
by Mari Lindstrom

I know that many of you, my fellow Aggies, are not looking forward to the dreary, dark, cold, icy, windy, “When will it be spring?” spring semester, which I more appropriately refer to as winter semester because it only ends with “spring” when we all should be studying for finals but are instead sunbathing on the Quad. But really, USU isn’t that bad. I will be the first to admit that I wasn’t all gung ho Aggie-spirited before I left to study abroad in France for a year, but after spending a semester at a French university, there are some things about USU I now appreciate more.

First off, you have to understand that I love studying abroad and have never regretted it, but seeing how a socialized basically-free university education is, I will gladly empty my savings account when I return to go to be an Aggie next semester because I really love …

The A. How else am I going to get some random stranger lay one on my kisser? The best I’ve gotten is the traditional, yet sticky beer-smelling bises (kisses) on the cheek from random drunk men. Everyone else just pretends to kiss your cheek, so it is more of a hi-five with your cheeks and not as romantic as you’d think.

Aggie Blue Blikes. Although the rentable bikes at Nantes are definitely cooler (they are orange and green with a bell) you sure pay for it. Not only do you have to put down a 170 euro guarantee, you have to put down 40 more euros to use it for the year. Aggie Blue Bikes? Free. ‘Nough said.

Three words: Aggie Ice Cream.

The bathrooms. I didn’t know how much I loved the bathrooms at USU. They always have toilet paper and don’t smell of acidic kidney waste. There are also many of them, and they get cleaned regularly. They even have mirrors so you can see if you have saved some leftover Angie’s breakfast in your front teeth for later. This doesn’t happen in France. You also live your worst childhood nightmare every time you go to the loo … thinking that you walked into the wrong restroom. But no, you are just in France, where it is socially acceptable for you go to a bathroom while the boys relieve themselves around the corner because you are in a non-gender specified WC.

Choices. Choosing a major in France is like chaining yourself to a brick wall, never being able to move again without causing lots of pain and inconvenience for everyone. Once you pick a major, you stick to it. You don’t even get to dabble your toes in other classes such as group guitar, live animal or carcass evaluation – or fluvial geomorphology just for kicks and giggles (not that they have those classes in France). In France if you are a science major, you can say “au revoir” to an English or art class, and you don’t have the “right” to take some other science classes. At USU we have so many choices: don’t like the professor? Change the class. Don’t like the hour the class is held? Change the class. Don’t like your major? Well, change it. No one will look at you funny until you change it for the fourth or fifth time. In France you don’t have these options.

Heating. I used to think it was sometimes chilly in the Merrill-Cazier Library during winter near the giant glass windows, yet that is nothing compared to sitting in a bare classroom (no computer, no projector, often no garbage can) with the ambient temperature being 12 degrees Celsius. For those of you not accustomed Celsius, that is a balmy 53.6F, which, with humidity, requires one to be fully equipped in a snow coat, long johns, a beanie and mittens to be able to even fathom the idea of taking out your pen and take notes.

The library. Not only does the Merrill-Cazier Library have the awesome barn, it is actually open at convenient hours for the strange variation of homo sapiens that we call college students. I used to complain that the library was only open until 6 or 7 p.m. on the weekends. At the University of Nantes, it is open from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays and only until 1 p.m. on Saturdays. It makes it quite the adventure to try to find 20 minutes between classes to study at the library. You can forget midnight cram jams with pizza at the library with your friends.

The paper. The paper here is long, and I don’t know why. But I don’t like it. Since the paper isn’t the standard letter-size we have in the U.S., it makes a one-page paper that much longer. And never mind lined paper for taking notes. They are all about the blocks here.

The professors. Not only do we have the infamous Andy Anderson at USU (I have never been so proud of a B+ in my life) we have other teachers who actually care if you learn what they are teaching. I concede that my teachers here have cared more or less about me in France, but they aren’t as willing to be at the mercy (I mean that in a good way) of the students. Here, I am lucky if I get an e-mail back from a professor in a week, but at USU I can have e-mail conversations with professors at midnight about my paper that is due the next week. Aggie professors are willing to work with students, stay after class and do whatever they can to help them succeed. In France, you thank them endlessly if they give you a 12 out of 20 on the last paper you wrote.

School spirit. Team go? Go team? The French don’t even know what to cheer because organized collegiate sports aren’t the thing here, nor is loving your school. I have yet to see a single student wear a T-shirt, hoodie, beanie, pants, socks or other article of clothing bearing his school name, possibly because said articles don’t exist in France. We don’t even have a school mascot.

The secretaries. Send them flowers on Secretary Appreciation Day (April 21), because they deserve it. Not only do they speak the same language as you (figuratively and literally speaking), have e-mail, computers and other forms of technology, they also know what they are doing. All the French paperwork that one must constantly do is confusing enough, but when you have to visit seven different secretaries, each telling you to visit a different secretary, get a fifth form of picture ID along with three photos of you, it becomes ridiculous.

Social life. No sports games, dances, painted faces, hanging out in the university housing, late night movies and pranking your roommates. French students are boring – no offense to them, but they are. I can easily spend two ours sitting in my hallway and see no one. You get looked at strangely for saying “bonjour” to people you don’t know, and you can just keep your Chacos, shorts and hi-tech backpack in your closet because you will get death glares if you are not silent, on the verge of anorexia and have a solid Eastpak backpack for boys or a grossly oversized handbag for the ladies. And dating? That doesn’t exist. You don’t have the cute guy in the next room ask you out, getting a significant other happens only through the law of physical attraction. If you find someone fit, as they say in England, you give a go at holding hands. The other accepts? You’re a couple. The other rejects? Move on. You don’t get a chance to show the other that beyond your clammy hands is your great personality.

Technology. Do you know how we all complain that there aren’t lots of computers on campus and that online registration is a nightmare? It isn’t. There are maybe 20 computers in the library here, and you have to go to a separate computer to print papers. Online registration? Doesn’t exist. Try finding each professor and seeing if you can be in the class – said class being offered only one time during the week, which naturally coincides with two other classes that you want to take, and said professor never answers e-mails and has office hours once a week while you are working. I definitely won’t complain again about online registration, thinking the Internet is slow or having to wait in line for three minutes to use a computer at the TSC. Even USU’s student cards are more advanced. Although it was an adventure to stick the sticker with my information on the card (all the first letters cut off), glue on the minuscule photo of my head that I had to go downtown to print off, go to the library to get a barcode for which you must give your name, nationality, address and phone number, I prefer our nifty cards all ready to go and not from the stone age.

So Aggies, although it may be cold out, at least you have the Aggie Spirit to keep you warm. Team go.

Mari Lundstrom is part of the USU Study Abroad program. Look every Monday for more students’ experiences abroad.

Day 132: Pig Legs and Cow Tongues

10 janvier 2010 (Day 132)
Happy Sunday. Sadly it feels like just another day here. I woke up and had breakfast before the kids were up. We haven’t been doing much all day though. We went outside and built a snow fort and had lunch (pasta and more wild hog bog) as children. It was fun playing out in the snow because one of the dogs would jump and catch all of the snowballs. Antoine and I watched some show with genetics and cloning, but I didn’t pay much attention at the beginning. It got more ridiculously entertaining though, so that made life fun. There was this crazy scientist who decided to clone a dragon and it ended up killing almost everyone (except the two people who fell in love, naturally).
We played Scrabble together before dinner. It is hard in French, to play Scrabble, but luckily we were all on teams. I even thought of some words for my team! Go me! For dinner we had some soup and tried some cow’s tongue. I can’t believe I ate it! They didn’t tell me what it was when they stuck it on my plate, but I had an idea, so I said tell me after and I went for it! It wasn’t bad, but if you think about it too much, it makes it difficult to eat. So there we have it. My last day on the farm and I had cow’s tongue and some very salty ham cut right off from the pigs leg. It was some pig, I thought it was a deer’s leg!

Day 131: Polenta, Galette des Rois

9 janvier 2010 (Day 131)
This morning the family (I was sleeping) saw two bucks. It is apparently very rare to see them, so they tried to catch them with no luck. One of the dogs went after the cerfs (male deer) and didn’t come back. We hope that Trenion is okay.
Today I played the guitar and piano a lot before everyone came over. Saturdays the kids have piano lessons and guitar lessons. They have neighbors come have their lessons here as well since they have a big house and a piano. So we had cute little Lulu and her mom along with the piano teacher for lunch. We had some meat in potatoes with this really yummy side dish called polenta (aka corn meal mush) that you boil milk and water then add cornmeal, butter, garlic, and mix mix mix. You then stick it in a casserole dish with cheese on top and bake it. It tastes really good. I want to make it again. I helped Juliette make it. We all had a nice lunch together and then I went up to Mathilde’s room and played guitar in there for a while because I didn’t know what else to do while everyone was having their lessons. I talked to Amber, my bestest friend ever in America for about five minutes. It is the first time I have talked to her since I left.
In the afternoon we went into the city center of Sallagriffon to have some galette des rois ("This is a popular French cake that celebrates the holiday of Epiphany (January 6th) the day when the 3 Kings visited the Baby Jesus. As part of French tradtion, a bean or small china feve (favor) is hidden in the cake. The person who finds the feve in his or her slice becomes king or queen for the day. The person can also choose someone to be their king or queen and can lead the tradtional dance."). There was some official that was talking before we got to eat the cake that was really boring. We then had the galette! This time I tried some apple-filled and chocolate galette des rois. I prefer the galette with almond filling and lots of mille feuille. Antoine had one of the small figurines which means that he was to be king for the day. He didn’t really want to have it and it was really funny to watch him. He saw it and was whispering to Juliette and me, “Look! I have it, I don’t want it. What do I do?” He avoided eating the bite with the feve until it was the only thing left on his plate. He then shoved it in his mouth and tried to keep it there. We finally made him take it out and get his crown. He was so embarrassed about it, it was great to watch…especially compared to the 60-year-old lady who grabbed her crown with glee and kept it one for the rest of the day. Antoine and Juliette showed me a little around the city center while Jean Claude was talking with the other adults.
I got to talk to Amber online before dinner. It was so great! I haven’t laughed that much in a while. It was great for both of us, I don’t think either of us have stopped smiling. Tonight for dinner we had wild pig that Jean Claude illegally killed (which makes it taste that much better). It was okay, but not my favorite. We went out and looked for Trenion in the car, but we didn’t find him.

Day 130: A Day to Myself

8 janvier 2010 (Day 130)
For all of you who read this (aka Dad) I finished! I have no written all about Sweden, so feel free to go back into the 50s and read all about it. My New Years vacation is also all written about as well and as usual there are loads of pictures in the photo albums on the right hand side of your screen.
Today has been a pretty productive day. I woke up with a cold around 9am (after I went back to bed at 7:30 because it was cold) and took a shower. I came up and had breakfast. It snowed last night and it rained on and off for the rest of the day. The organic brown bread today for breakfast was SOO delicious. It has a great taste. I also tried some of the spice and honey bread that Flo makes. It is pretty good as well. The parents left to go to some meeting about raising organic sheep (I decided to skip out). Instead I put labels on honey jars and cooked the rest of the cookies. I added more flour and they turned out a lot better. Now I just need to stop eating them! I have been catching up on my journaling and talking to my dad. I just had leftover couscous and some bread (and cookies) for lunch.
I played some English games with Antoine and Juliette before dinner. First we played Pictionary with fruit (you had to say the name in English) and then I had Antoine act out different animals and Juliette had to guess what he was. For dinner we had chicken, potatoes, and a green salad. It was quite delish. Tonight we watched two episodes of Veronica Mars and they were crazy! I can’t believe that all that happened did, and in just two episodes! I was going to talk online to some friends, but the wifi stopped right before I started, so I just went to bed instead.

Day 129: On The Battle Front

7 Janvier 2010 (Day 129)
Boy was breakfast “fun” today. We woke up early because we had to take Brooke down to the bus. We were all tranquilly eating breakfast when Jean Claude brought up how you can’t say that you are a friend of the environment and take and airplane, anywhere. This turned into a semi-heated debate that got talked about for quite some time. At least we got to eat cookies for breakfast. Due to said debate, we thought we were late for the bus because it wasn’t there! We had already descended partway down the mountain, and Jean Claude went even faster, thinking we could catch the bus at the next city. We didn’t catch the bus, but we saw it on its way up (it was late), so we had gone all that extra way for nothing! At the stop Jean Claude was backing up and hit the barrier (that thankfully kept us from going over the mountain). Cursing insued. Everyone, including the car, is okay. We said goodbye to Brooke and then it was back up the mountain, talking about hiking the Alps (they have cabins you can stay in along the way hiking all over), parachuting, rock climbing, Alp skiing (no lifts involved). Life sounds pretty cool!
We finished breakfast more mellow-ly (I had to get help yet again with the gas stove to make my hot cocoa). Well actually, I did. The adult persons (*cough* Jean Claude) were hollering at Antoine to hurry and at each other. I’m glad I’m normally asleep for this part of the day. Antoine, “our little bunny”, got to school on time. It was so cute to see him out waiting for the bus with his lunch and the dog by his side. It was too classic.
After washing the dishes I went out and fed the sheep by myself. They were awful today, as was Jama (apparently the horse’s name is NOT Jean…oops). They were very hungry so they were going nuts. I did get them fed, although moving hay bales over fences without them touching the ground is a lot easier with another person on the other side of the fence. I went and helped Jean Claude do some plumbing. By help I mean I put some Teflon tape on things and learned the word for screwdriver (tournevis). We got the system working though (after more cursing!). Jean Claude is a true MacGyver. He rebuilt (and enlarged) their house by himself as well as built the mielry. The dogs stole my slipper, but luckily I found it outside before they ate it.
Jean Claude offered to drive me to Grenoble because he is going to work there. He is not only a farmer, but some nuclear electrician or something really cool sounding like that. Not only will my train ride be 9 hours shorter, I will also be several dollars richer! I made some celery salad and a couscous/tuna/onion/corn salad for lunch. Jean Claude kind of freaked out that I put corn in it (that is what chickens eat. He is also against eating oats as homo sapiens. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I normally have them every morning for breakfast.) I thought it was really nice though. I think the highlight of the awkward lunch (since I had cooked it) was the cat barfing. We had some pate that they made. Florence gave some to the old half blind cat and she puked it up about 90 seconds later and then proceed to eat the foamy spit.
After lunch I learned how to put the honey in the jars. I am totally a pro now! I didn’t spill that much, and what I did spill I got to taste test.  After filling honey jars (relatively uneventfully) I proof-read my two articles for The Statesmen. Quite the productive day!
So, as I am typing right now, the parentals are getting lice and nits (the eggs) out of Antoine’s head. At the kitchen table. With food on the table. Not only do I find this disgusting, this house is not at all sanitary. I worry for my head. Luckily it hasn’t started itching. I’ve just been tapping away, taking occasional breaks to play the guitar and the piano.
For dinner we essentially had mushy peas, sausage they made themselves from their pigs (it was delish). Today wins for awkward dinner conversation. Somehow we got on the topic of killing people, the best way, the most efficient way, how you would want to die, etc. Jean Claude is quite brutal. He said we didn’t kill enough people in the Reign of Terror (by we I mean France) and that we should have had something more efficient, though the guillotine was, but he prefers different ways to exterminate mass quantities of people, like burning or bombs. He did give props to Hitler though. I just thought of how much Jean Claude would get along with Thomas Malthus, lol.