20

to add to the list of awkward tshirts:

(i didn't see this on someone it was in a store on a mannequin)


"my girlfriend is a top model ... SO WHAT"


quoi?

in any case, good for the mannequin that he found such a hot girl. i am tres heureuse for him.


i guess i will describe my trip to Rennes now even though it was like a month and a half ago:

Rennes is lovely. The first night I had dinner with mon pote Fabien and his pere. We ate crepes. We went to a soiree chez mon pote Baptiste who had a really nice house - with a sauna! dingdinginddingindindg. I was the tolken American girl at the gathering, blankfaced approx. 48% of the time. pas mal in any case. We sat around on low couches and smoked many cigarettes (not moi, bien sur. i am asthmatique). and then we all got in the sauna with our clothes on. In the morning I left before everyone woke up and I stole a cookie for breakfast (shh).

I stayed with a surfer ponytail guy I found on Couchsurfer. He was swell! Walked me around town even though he didn't have to and took me to the giant marche de lys to eat with some of his copains. We ATE SO MUCH CHEESE. it was insanity. I taught everyone how to eat a kiwi by just biting it (really, you can do this. you should try it it is amazing) and we all got a lil joyeuse before noon.
Rennes is beautious. I wish I had pictures but my appareil photo did not come with me on this trip.

 Jerome had a crepe maker thing in his apartment. So, naturally we ate some crepes that night. I cooked a zucchini too I don't really know why. More cheese. More couch sitting smoking music parties. The next day was Sunday so nothing was open besides another market. I took some peoples picture and ended up sitting with them eating cheese for an hour or so. They were so nice and gave me so much cheese and 4 glasses of wine. before noon. (notice the themes, notice the themes). Oh yeah and we went to a trad music competition in a bar. I bought a Le Figaro from 1970something for 1 euro.

that night i went to fabiens encore and we had .... (drumrooll) crepes!

so to summarize: cheese and crepes. and wine. classique quoi!

19

oh merde I just realized I haven't even covered my weekends in Munich/Ireland either........
I am a very neglectful bloggeuse I'm surprised you all aren't rioting in the streets.

and by "you all" I mean my parents and my grandma - whatsup guys! Love you toO!



Anyways I will condense these weekends into schedule form and put them in the second person so you can really FEEL feel what it was like to be there. Because it was amazing both times.


Munich:

7:00 am: wake up. you are on the floor of a hotel room blanketed by your jacket and all the sweaters you could fit in your backpack (1) along with that loaf of brioche you shoved in there, too (was the best idea ever by the way. good thinking)
7:30 am: walk to the metro
8:00 am: arrive at oktoberfest. it is insanely early but strangely enough there are people everywhere
8:05 am: eat a giant sausage for breakfast. get in line for a tent. wait for two hours until the tent opens
10:00 am: RUN GET A TABLE
10:30 am: order a stein. order another sausage.
11- the rest of the day: drink a lot of beer. maybe eat another sausage. or maybe a half chicken. wander aimlessly. decide the rides are too expensive. witness many drunken 50 year olds in lederhosen. befriend everyone. take a nap on a hill along with 40% of oktoberfest. see far too many old lady cleavages. lights pretzels weiners !
i forget pm: you are in mcdonalds. why? there is a elderly lederhosened man crashed out next to you it is the best burger you have ever tasted

the last night we slept in the airport in the booth of a thai restaurant. at 6:00 am the security guard came by and rapped on the table above our heads: "GUTEN MORGEN. NOT FOR SLEEPING"



Ireland:

whenever you want am: wake up. tea.
11 am: eat biscuits and crisps. watch trippy british version of teletubbies on the television
12 pm: get on a bus
12:30 pm: walk up the one street that is Naas. turn around and walk down the otherside.
1: eat a burger
2:  eat some biscuits. take dog for a walk.
3: fall in a river on accident dont worry only your shoes get wet
2:30: tea. youtube videos
4: play guitar. try to get the synthesizer working it doesn't work. play with ross' sister most adorable baby ever
5:  get interviewed for a documentary. random jam session with some people who are much better at music than you. its all good though especially when you break out the vanessa carlton
6: get on a bus
7: walk around aimlessly in the freezing cold drinking a bottle of wine
8: go to a bar drink GUINNESS
9: drink some more guinnness.
10 onward: buy a jagerbomb. why? maybe go to a nightclub and dance like a crazy idiot. maybe suddenly find yourself singing "ride wit me" into a microphone to a bunch of milfs. try to steal everyones halloween hat. photobomb anyone and everyone (this is when you stick your face obnoxiously into strangers photographs weeeeeeeeeee) your halloween costume is a hazmat suit. why? lose your wig walk home under the stars because you are too cheap for the real bus

somewhere in there i saw a fort and parts of Dublin (the sketchy side, Temple bar, the spire(needle? forget what it is called).



ALL IN ALL great times were had. many thanks to ross' family for letting me stay with them they are very sweet. still thinking about stealing the baby. mail me some biscuits would ya Ross?

18

Will get to my weekend in Rennes in a bit but first I just want to make a collection of all the bizarre english t-shirts I have seen since I've been here.

Because once something is in English, it is automatically "le cool"

EVIDEMMENT



et voila:


1. BAD
    SAD
    MAD

in giant letters going down the front

2. Recommended. The Best Year. 1975.

le duhh

3. JESUS IS A CUNT

yep i wish this was a joke.

4. City, New York

5. Happy is the new chic



im sure i will remember more but am blanking for the moment.

In other news: I don't have tuberculosis! hooooray. but in all seriousness I think I have finally finished everything I need to do (here) for SIT in Madagascar. the rest will have to wait until I get home.

(IN 6 WEEKS)
le quoi?? i just got here .........

17

Look je suis celebre (=famous)


http://www.fragil.org/focus/2060


A random girl from Nantes (who was also Scottish) found me on the internets and asked to have an interview because she was doing a bit for an online newspaper on Americans in France and their opinions on the election.





HOley moley! The interview was in English but she translated it into French. I like how she quotes me as saying some people want a president that can "kick some badass" when it comes to foreign affairs. I vaguely remember saying something like this but feel like she was un peu confused / does not know the difference between badass and kicking ass.

oo well!

16

for those who care to see:

naked french peoples! my drawings thus far from modele vivante

why yes the mans name IS François! bien sur. but it actually is.

15

When the moon is shaped like a c it is called a croissant. When a person has great abs it is not a six-pack it is a "tablet de chocolate".

FOOD IS EVERYWHERE.

Trying my best not to come back obese and addicted to brioche.

Also last weekend I went on the elelelelephant:

that little house there is where the man sits who operates the elephant. If you walk too close to the snout he will pull a lever and spray you with water from the end of the nose. Even if you are just trying to take a picture. he is my hero. 

also heres a video to show just how thrilling it was (aka not at all)

but you only get to ride a giant elephant once in your life and when you do you better enjoy it even if it is raining and a snarky 10 year old is hogging the best spot on top of the elephants head.

14

i begin to learn the words that are not words at all - sounds that are far from meaningless but whose sense you would be hard pressed to find in a dictionnaire:

(bahhh oui, euhh, en fait, en fin, euhhh, how to pop your lips and shrug - which is to say : euhh franchement je ne sais pas, donc, du coup, bahh non, and to finish every sentence with quoi. "et euhh j'aime la fromage quoi.", oop! euhh fin--,  bahh et voila)

also the level of someone's drunkenness depends mostly on how long you stretch out the word. "il etait bourré"  "il etait bouuuuuurré" "Il etait booooooouuuuuuuuuuurrrrééééé quoi" 

the reasons i have gathered for everyone to come to france si possible are as follows
- you can have sushi delivered to you on the back of a moped
- it is not at all strange to be a socialist
- it is not at all strange for strangers to nod and tell you "bon appetit" if they see you eating in the street
- it is not at all strange to sit at the tables outside MacDos (Mcdonalds) like its some classy cafe and smoke a cigarette after you finish your hamberguer
- they have like 7 different words for which english only has one:  "pastry"
- in french being right or wrong is not something you are, it is something you have
- goodbye = "au revoir" meaning literally until we see each other again. everyone says this to everyone even if they are pretty positive they will never see you again


c'est pour ca en fait euhhh, donc bahh oui

13

also for those who care about the more academic side of things (aka hi mom, dad) I think I have finally figured out my classes. They are these:


French - (just auditing not for credit)
Drawing
Literature - French Writers and Foreign Nations
Live Model
Prehistoric art/archaeology
Sociology of Marginalization
Sociology of Aestheticism


pas mal ! I am taking the minimum amount of credits possible.. but I still think it will be a lot considering I gotta practice piano/guitar also bien sur.

12

Just got back from Oktoberfest. Am exhausted. Also nostalgic for all the short-lived German/Aussie/New Zealand/Swiss/English friendships I forged. Turns out everyone is your best friend when you are holding a 5 lb stein of beer 
"PROSCHTT!" = "cheers" in German. Probably butchered the spelling. 

Anyways there will of course be a post about Oktoberfest but before that I gotta tell the story of how I found myself leading a license 3 sociology class the second time I had even set foot in the classroom. 

 I had gathered from the 60% that I understood of the first lecture that I was to do an exposé along with 3 
other French etudiantes on the subject of "Discrimination and Exclusion in the Work Force". Quite honestly I 

picked the group that I picked because it had the cutest boys in it...

Seemed like a solid strategy at first . I didn't at the time realize that I had just signed up for the first time slot. Regardless, I remained brave. This would not be so bad. The exposé fell off my radar 

UNTIL two Wednesdays from then. The night before the exposé I met with the 3 french etudiantes in the Sociology library. I had some trouble finding it. I called Maxime the shorter of the cute boys

"I'm outside but the door is locked"

"D'accord"

Moments later he poked his head out of a room farther down the hallway to my left. He waved. I realized I was standing in front of a closet.

... whatever. I remained confident.  When I sat down they launched into a description of what they had gathered so far. On the docket was a short video, an analysis of a 30 page reading and two sociological studies. I felt I was missing something.

"Donc, how many minutes do we have? 15? 20?"

"Mais non. We have the whole class period"



merde..

I tried to act like this information wasn't horrifying to me."Oh bien sur. C'est excellente"


Fortunately, all ends well. Thankfully, not only were the mecs pretty cute they were also very capable and intelligent. And they also concluded that I would have no idea what was going on and so did all of the work for me. They showed me the two pages I would discuss and told me to put it "in my own words" (i.e. grammatically incorrect and practically incoherent). Formidable ! I would also need to lead a discussion. This proved to be awkward and difficult but not altogether impossible. All in all the worst thing that happened throughout the whole thing was that I looked down halfway through and realized I had spilled yogurt on my pants. 

Pas mal. c'est la vie en fait 

11

UPDATE::  I am not dead and I have not lost anything too important (I did lose one of my sketchbooks though. 5 years of sketches ... it is hurting me a little but is not life threatening).  I am slowly getting accustomed to the fact that a random 61 year old woman washes my underwear once a week. I think people still think it's weird when I do the Rubiks Cube on the bus but I stopped caring long ago.

ANECDOTE:: Last night I was at a "pre-fete" with some french university peeps and all of a sudden everyone started singing along to "Hit The Road Jack" like it was the next Carly Rae Jensen song. One of the more heartwarming/hilarious things I've experienced since i've been here, especially when they got to the verse after the chorus and everyone started going "LALLALALALALALALLALALALAL ALALALALALLALALALLA" because they didnt know the english words. Christ I hope I'm that adorable when do i foreign things..



So to receive credit I have to translate all my course syllabi into English and send them to Tufts. This is what ive come up with so far for my "Sociologie d'aesthetique" class. It is probably the least legitimate sounding thing ever I think Susan Ostrander eyebrows might rise and rise and then straight up leave her face.

(keep in mind this is for the class where the prof is legitimately half-clown half-awkard nerd. He's the man. Coincidentally, his last name is Lehmann. Yes Im serious)

Classes 6,7: Showing your body at the beach. Have we always gone to the beach? Since when? Showing your body when you are a farmer as opposed to showing your body when you are a woman - to be bare breasted? 

2 class periods, 4 hours.This is literally a word for word translation I am not making it up. How this relates to aestheticism, i have yet to determine. I'm sure Lehmann will be able to enlighten me and also maybe do a weird dance which he does atleast once a class period. 

However, I can say it relates to France pretty well because I have seen at least 4 seins nus (boobies) since Ive been here (not mine). Dont worry they were all at the beach at Vannes that first  weekend. I have not been frequenting strip clubs. En fait; they probably dont exist because all you really need to do is just go to a beach. 

BISES TA TA FOR NOW :)

10

this weekend there was a chateau

a vineyard






and some cool arts

9

I had my first university experience yesterday morning. arrived to class 35 minutes early because i was afraid i would be late. i managed to find my classroom (amphitheatre 3) even though upon walking into the building the first signage i saw for AMPHI 3 showed an arrow pointing directly towards the exit. hmmm.

voici le "social science" building. giant. 

you can't trick meeee fac. I would say my experience was not altogether regular because there were only 20 ish kids in the class instead of 900. probably because it is a "license 3" class so all the idiots have been weeded out, presumably. however it was also regular in the sense that halfway through a student up and walked out and all the prof did was shake her head and laugh. "au revoir!"

My prof in the class I had this morning is a real goofy guy. he made a lot of jokes I didn't understand but laughed at anyways so that I wouldn't look like a deaf mute. All in all the classes were not so terrifying, so that is tres bon!

8

what i am doing this weekend:

 Festival Scopitone

7

voici les photos les plus belles that I have taken of Nantes

6

Just had an epic failure trying to go to my SUAPS (intramural) footie pickup game. (Footie = soccer, please try to keep up with how european I am. Sorry I know it's hard). I had lost the sheet telling me where it was (surprising), so I looked it up online. The University website directed me to some random aerodome place (i.e. small airport). When I got there an hour later, cleats dangling innocently from my backpack, SURPRISE there was no field.  I asked directions from some nice garcons and they told me to go 50 minutes in the other direction. They also told me the word I used for field actually means "cow pasture" and not "soccer field" (classic example of how french people have far too many words)
"Can you run?"
"Non"
"You will be en retard" (they were not calling me a retard. en retard means late.)

Soooo i reboarded bus 72 for the scenic hour long trip back to my apartment. lovely voyage !! i am seeing so much of the french countryside and the highway system. lesson learned: do not trust information from the university because they are purposefully trying to screw you over.  i heard from some university students that we should check the boards next to our departments because sometimes they will randomly change the time of a class for no reason other than they are trying to confuse you and make you want to drop out so that the prof will not have to deal with an 800 person class.


MERCI BEAUCOUP. in reality though i am not that sad because the kid I talked to knew about IES and came to the conversation club all last year. This was our parting conversation it went great

"ajadlkcjlakejalkjglkjac" this is him asking for my name in a very fast and complicated way.
"Uhhh.. it's called the conversation club"
"No, I asked you what your name is."
"Oh oui. Moi, c'est emma" (translation: Me, it is Emma) superbe. making friends all around, especially with those who enjoy people who speak like Tarzan.


stay tuned !!!!! i will do many more awkward and embarrassing things before I leave, je suis certaine

5

Um so I have been tres lazy with these posts. But let's see lots has happened. These are the things I have done/seen/learned in the last few days. I will do a list form because.. it is easier than making sentences (I do not make many sentences in English these days so you will have to give me a petit break)

• abolition of slavery memorial
• printing museum
• planetarium (a l'oeil= at eye = for free)
• if you wanted to know, the word for supernova in French is the same as in English. has been very helpful knowledge for me thus far. 
• a man blowing fire at a jeune fille. don't worry she survived. 
• tried to pick classes. didn't really work because the European system is wack and chaotic
• played frisbee with some French boyzz. literally only two French boys because people don't play frisbee in Europe pretty much ever
• successfully "faire la bise" without spazzing out. "faire la bise" = kissing strangers you meet on their cheeks instead of just saying hi/shaking hands/awkwardly waving
• received awkward looks for wearing shorts while jogging. apparently this is a weird thing to do
• received awkward looks for smiling too much at strangers. I must work on my chilly French demeanor
• received many blank stares. "euuhh vut ees eet that you are atryinguh to sayyee?"
• a Francaise singing BB King 
• had a picnic next to a castle. casual. 
• actually it wasn't really that casual we were way too excited. there was a group high-five
• the french word for tipsy is joyeux
• became joyeux entirely too early this saturday. typical americaine move. but it was vaut la peine (= worth it)
• the french use the same word for the little plate that goes under a cup of coffee and for the rings around a planet. because cafe is that important, bien sur.
• the word merde (shit) was invented by a man from Nantes
• yep.
• I myself have also invented a lot of words since I've been here. but none of them have been picked up by the rest of the frenchies unfortunately. 
• ate a kebab it was awesome
• got into the highest level french class ! 
• this means I have to choose between having a 9am grammar class or having Fridays off
• difficile... 
• two expressions for hangover: geule de bois = mouth of wood. mal a la cheveux = bad hair
• took the night bus and did not see Harry Potter
• planning a trip to Oktoberfest
• became not sick anymore!

Okay I think that is just about it. I will post pictures of Nantes soon. I went on an epic journey around the ville taking pictures of pretty much everything. But there is still more. I enjoy pictures more than words so expect lots more pictures aussitot!

BISESSSSS

4

Yees so here are some pictures of la maison. I gotta go around and take pictures of all the weird shit she has. But I haven't done that yet. Just for now this is all choses normales. 

 Ma chambre

view from back porch (from my room).. pas mal

 kitchen.. tres petite!!

 le living room.. kind of swank n'est-ce pas

 view from front porch. marie-annick aime les plants beaucoup

le piano. we haven't done any duets yet but i'm sure this will happen aussitot

That's pretty much it ! We are on the third floor. There's a 96 year old who lives under so I have to be tres quiet at night. Oh yeah I forgot to mention.. Marie-Annick wears a fanny pack (she rocks it. if you were wondering). She also plays video games and owns every pixar movie ever made. She's the best ever.

3

Right! So I have been in Bretagne for the past few days for un petit vacances. (Yes the French do vacation a lot more often.. we took one test and then left immediately for a beach weekend). Here's a picture of me on a giant bouee!

Anyways yes it was supposed to be a bonding experience for all the kids on the program. Which it was. I have beaucoup des amis now. Like this guy ! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

But in all seriousness everyone is really nice. The staff at IES (5 people) is all really nice as well. There are 50 kids on the program. We all try to speak French to each other mostly. Maybe more Franglais then French but we are trying at least. 

Anyways Bretange is vraiment beautiful. Must change my life plans if I am to move here eventually. Art teacher salary will never do the trick. Quelque photos.. 

Et donc.. It is too hard to add many pictures in one post so I will do another one later with pictures of la maison. C'est tout for now .. must go to sleep. I still haven't gotten over my cold if anyone is wondering. C'est difficile to learn French when I am coughing my brains out. Ah bon. more to come, a bientot!