England

The Week That a Million Things Happened

Hey everyone!  I’ve got a lot to catch you up on today; it’s been a pretty eventful couple of weeks.  I’ll do my best to remember everything that’s happened.  Dijon has had its annual fair going on for the past couple of weeks.  Technically I believe they consider it to be two separate fairs happening right next to one another.  One part has amusement park rides and typical fair foods (candied apples, cotton candy, churros).  I’m not a huge fan of rides, so I didn’t spend too much time in that section, although I did walk around it for a bit just to see what they had to offer.  I think the most unique thing I saw was a large pool of water, where they were putting kids into those massive inflatable balls and letting them try to walk around on top of the water.  The other half of the fair was in celebration of the local cuisine.  We walked around and sampled different kinds of foods and drinks.  The other girls were brave and tried frog’s legs, but I still can’t bring myself to even consider doing that.  Too barbaric.  We did find one thing which I’m pretty sure was a version of the Egg, Meat and Cheese recipe that we use for appetizers, so that was interesting.  We also found a booth that was Quebecois, so the Canadian girls got to chat with people from their homeland for a bit, and I bought a bottle of my favorite maple syrup. 

     Last weekend, I cut a couple of days of classes and went to visit Katie and Helena in Birmingham, England for a bit.  I stayed in Katie’s apartment, and Helena and her boyfriend Ed came over just about every day so we could find cool things to do together.  I got there on November 6^th, the day after Bonfire Day in England (a celebration of Guy Fawkes’s failed attempt to blow up their parliament), just in time to celebrate at the University of Birmingham’s carnival and fireworks night.  We mostly just went for the fireworks since none of us wanted to go on the rides, but the carnival did look really cool.  There were lots of rides, and some people twirling flaming batons.  We grabbed some cotton candy (or candy floss as the Brits call it) and headed over to the grass to watch the fireworks.  They try to choreograph their fireworks display every year, so they had a great music selection going.  The funniest part was when they started shooting up dozens of the fireworks that look like smiley faces in time to ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams.  We tried to squeeze as many super British things into the weekend as possible.  We went out for tea and scones at an adorable little heritage house/gardens.  We ate bangers and mash (aka sausage and mashed potatoes) at a local pub.  We took trains to get anywhere we needed to.  It rained for pretty much all but ten minutes of the time I was there.  We also went to a nearby town called Litchfield, where we toured an amazing gothic-style cathedral.  Unfortunately I only got photographs of the outside since you had to buy a photography permit if you wanted to take photos of the interior, but you’ll have to take my word that it was absolutely breathtaking.  Hands down the most amazing cathedral I’ve ever been in.  To be honest though, I think that the thing I appreciated most about the weekend was just being able to get out of Dijon for a bit, and spend some time in a place that felt more like home.  The Brits are a lot more similar to Americans that the rest of the Europeans; in their style, in their humor, in their food options.  They also have Reese’s, and I even found some Angry Orchard Cider (made in Cincinnatti!), so I was able to eat some of the things I’ve been missing the most.  It was also nice to be able to sleep in a comfortable bed, and take a normal shower for a change. 

     Thursday, the Musée des Beaux Arts had a student night.  They extended their hours until midnight, and there were presentations going on in different rooms throughout the museum.  These ranged from classical music, to art lessons, to gypsy dancing.  My favorite was a couple that were playing guitar to popular movie songs.  They did a wonderful version of the French edition of ‘A Whole New World,’ and then did a duet in which the guy sat behind the girl, and they both strummed the same guitar while doing a mashup of a lot of popular movie theme songs.  They were incredibly talented.  After we finished walking through the museum, we headed over to the ice rink for a late-night skate session, which was really fun.  It’s been a while since I skated with other people that really knew what they were doing, so it was fun to try and match the speed of the hockey-playing Canadians.  I have learned that I should try to rent hockey skates instead of figure skates in the future though.  I trip over the toe pick pretty much every five minutes because I tend to shift my weight the way I would on inline skates when I’m trying to pick up speed or take sharp turns, and that doesn’t tend to work very well in figure skates. 
     Friday night was also a good time.  I let the Canadians talk me into going out in the rain to watch the Duc’s hockey game.  (They’re the local team).  We lost horribly, and their skill level is definitely nowhere near that of the NHL, but it was still nice to be at a hockey game again.  After I got back, I went over to the room of one of the Columbian girls, where a large group was watching the Columbia v. USA soccer game.  After the game, they started showing us clips of the Columbian team dancing (apparently they do it a lot, and it’s pretty funny; definitely worth looking up), which somehow escalated into a late night Salsa and Merengue dance lesson in the basement of the Residence, until we got yelled at for making too much noise after hours.  It was a really good time though, and I think we’re going to try to do it again during the day sometime.  Hopefully that’s just about all of the major things that have happened, I did my best to remember.  Until next time!!!!

Geneva

 

A Good Start to the Semester

Time here is flying by.  It’s crazy to think that this semester is almost halfway over now.  The autumn semester definitely has a different feel to it than the summer semester did.  We spend a lot more time in class, and there are so many students in the CIEF program that our schedules are staggered, so we don’t wind up with as much free time to explore.  It is a really good program though; I’ve learned a lot of French in the time I’ve been here.  There is a lot of casual conversation, so the vocabulary we learn tends to be more useful, and native French-speakers tend to have insights to rules of the French language that we never would learn back in the US.  We played Taboo in class the other day, which was really fun.  I think we’re going to try and buy it so we can play in the residence from time to time.  The majority of my friends here are Canadian now, although there are a couple of Norwegians and Colombians that hang out with us.  There is one other girl in the residence from California, and there is a school-group here from Wake Forest in North Carolina, but they live in host families so we don’t tend to see them as much.  Autumn semester has more of a ‘real-university’ feel to it.  We spend most of our time in class or doing homework, and when we have free time we tend to play sports, watch movies or go out drinking.  I tried beach volleyball for the first time last week, that was fun.  Yesterday CIEF hosted a trip to Geneva, Switzerland.  It got off to a rocky start, as there was a miscommunication between the school and the residence and it was never relayed to the students that the departure time had been moved from 6am to 7am, but the rest of the day was great.  Geneva was a lot cooler than I had expected.  Naturally they sell Swiss Army Knives and watches everywhere, and their ‘claim to fame’ is basically this huge spout of water in the middle of the city, which isn’t really my idea of an amazing attraction, but the city did have a lot of other things going for it.  We took a tour of the Red Cross Museum, which was very modernized.  Everyone wears headsets which sense when you walk into a new room and give you an introduction.  They can also give you more detail on exhibits that you are interested in, and there are certain parts of the museum where there are screens with life-size figures projected, which your headset can tune in to and you can listen to their stories.  The museum also has archives of every prisoner of war they have record of, so that people can glance through books and try to locate their family members.  I think I easily could have spent an entire day in that museum.  After the museum, Stephan (our guide and one of the teachers from CIEF) took us on a tour of the city, showing us all of the major sites.  It isn’t a very big city, but it has a lot of history.  We went past the United Nations, which was really cool.  Apparently if you aren’t there on a Saturday, you can actually tour the building.  We had a few hours of free time in the afternoon to roam the city before heading back, and Stephen showed me and a couple of my friends a nice fondue place where we ate lunch.  Someone should definitely start that trend in the US, fondue is wonderful.  And naturally, we bought as much chocolate as we could carry before heading back to the bus.  All in all, it was a pretty good day.

'Free Time' Kind of Sucks

Well, the dorms are continuing their streak of having the worst internet in the world.  They are seriously starting to drive me crazy, their system is completely ridiculous.  They forbid us from bringing in any kind of routers to set up our own Wi-Fi networks, claiming that it interferes with their wired system (which I’m pretty sure shouldn’t actually be possible) and then they allow their system to crash for weeks at a time.  It would be slightly more understandable if this dorm wasn’t exclusively for international students, whom they know have no other way of staying in touch.  I’m going mildly stir-crazy without the internet to keep me entertained.  I brought about 50 DVDs with me to France, and I’m pretty sure I’ve watched a solid majority of them by this point.  I’ve tried going out into the city by myself, but it just isn’t as interesting without the girls around.  I think adventures tend to be a lot more fun if you have someone to share them with.  I did finally make it over to the Archaeology Museum the other day, which was the last thing on my checklist for city attractions that I wanted to check out.  I’m afraid I’ve already burned through most of the cooler places in the city trying to cram in as much as possible before Katie and Helena went back to England.  And truth be told, Dijon isn’t really a very big city.  The museum was cool, and did have a lot of interesting artifacts, but it wasn’t really anything I haven’t seen before at half a dozen other museums.  It wasn’t really a very big museum either; the girls weren’t missing anything by not making it around to this one.  I suppose the one nice thing about not going out quite as often is that I’m not blowing through nearly as much money as I was for the first month.  What can I say, girls loving shopping and café lunches.  For the moment I’ve switched to microwavable meals and fresh bread from the local boulangerie, at least until the new semester starts and I’m back on the school’s dining plan.  I do love being able to get fresh bread and pastries anytime I want.  That is probably France’s number one selling-point in my opinion.  And it really is impossible to feel more French than when you’re strolling down the street with an entire baguette in your hand.

The End of Part I of the Semester

Once again, I’ve been slacking on the blog front.  My friends and I have been cramming as much as possible into the past two weeks so that we would see all of the major sites in Dijon before they left.  We’ve spent a lot of time at the more historical and educational sites of the city.  We’ve toured the majority of the Palace of the Dukes now.  We climbed to the top of the tower of Philip the Good, where we had an amazing view of the city, and explored the wing of the palace which has been converted into the Musee des Beaux Arts (roughly translates to Fine Arts Museum I believe?)  The museum was really cool.  It has all kinds of art, from ancient Egyptian pieces, to rooms displaying art from every period of France’s history, to modern art.  

There were severally pieces from notable artists such as Rude, Manet and Monet.  The museum also houses the Tombs of the Dukes in a room with some of the most exquisite detail I’ve ever seen.  We also visited the Jardin des Sciences, which are gorgeous gardens which also house several sculptures and art exhibits, a planetarium and a natural history museum.  The planetarium was closed, but we did a quick tour through the natural history museum.  To be honest, that wasn’t really all that interesting, just a lot of stuffed versions of different species of animals.  There was a huge market going on in the city center last Saturday.  Naturally, with four girls, we spent a lot more money there than we should have.  They did have some of the best deals I’ve seen since I got to this city though.  I’m going to have to find out if that market was a one-time occurrence or if it is something that happens regularly here.  

We found out that the ice skating rink has really cheap skating and rentals on Sunday mornings, so we took advantage of that this past weekend.  It was a lot of fun (particularly watching Katie use the penguins meant to help the children skate in order to get around the ice) and I think that I’m probably going to make that a regular thing this semester.  During the week it got kind of rainy, so we spent most of our time either at cafes enjoying the local delicacies, or in the basement of the residence watching movies.  We watched one French movie called Les Intouchables (The Intouchables if you’re looking for the English version) which I would highly recommend – it was about a man who started working for a guy in a wheelchair and became friends with him, and it was absolutely fantastic.  The last of my Anglophone friends left this Saturday I’m afraid, so I’m alone at the residence now.  I'm really going to miss those girls, we all became great friends in the past month.  Hopefully we'll all be able to visit each other sometime in the future.  We did have a really good semester, with lots of interesting debates in our classes, and we learned a lot.  It’s going to be interesting trying to find things to do now though, considering the next semester doesn’t start until October 6^th.  I’m sure I’ll figure something out, and I’ll try to do a better job of keeping you guys up to date in the future!

                      ^ Lucy, Mareike, Helena and Katie

New Friends, Mustard and Velotours