'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

   

 

 

A Week of Culture

Hey guys!  I suppose I really am overdue for a blog posting at this point.  Things have been pretty crazy the past couple of weeks, my friends and I have been trying to fit in as much culture as possible since the majority of them are leaving before the end of the month.  We spend most of our afternoons in the town center since our classes are usually over between noon and 3pm, and our teachers tend to not give very much homework.  Our absolute favorite place to go is Coffee & Muffin, which is a small café which serves ridiculously addictive chocolate milkshakes.  It’s usually perfect for the afternoon too, since the weather here makes it difficult to dress properly for the day.  It tends to be fairly cold when we have to get up and go to classes, and our classrooms are typically cold, but by the afternoon we find we are sweating.  We took a taste tour of the city the other day which was really fascinating.  Dijon is known for three things: mustard, cassis (aka black currants) and pain d’epices, which roughly translates to spice bread although I wouldn’t describe it as particularly spicy.  My favorite is the orange-flavored one.   The tour was really fascinating.  The guide took us all around the city, and described the history of food in Dijon, as well as showing us where we could get the best foods in the city, and showing us how the local products are made.  We got to sample several foods, however this didn’t go quite as well as Helena, Katie and I would have liked as we made the amateur mistake of going for crepes before the taste tour, and found that we could barely stand the thought of food for the rest of the day.  I also managed to run into someone else from Connecticut in town the other day!  There was an exhibit with an old American Field Services ambulance, and I got excited when I noticed that the license plate on the vehicle was one of the old Connecticut ones.  The man working the exhibit overheard me, and told me that he was from Franklin, and has a friend he works with who lives in Glastonbury!  It always shocks me how small this world can be.  Yesterday was the 2014 Dijon Velotour (basically a bike race, except you aren’t really racing), so a bunch of us decided that we wanted to participate.  Turns out it’s really cheap to rent a bike for the weekend here.  8,000 participants showed up to tour the city on their bikes, and we were taken all over, through various buildings, including a church and a greenhouse, and along the canal.  There was entertainment all along the course, from a stuntman on a unicycle to live musicians at both the halfway point and endpoint.  The whole thing had the feel of a festival which had been stretched out throughout the city. Katie, Helena and I did the main course, as well as the longer of the two detours, for a total of about 25k, or 15 miles.  All of the costumes that people decided to don for the event were hilarious, and all-in-all it was just a really cool way to spend a Sunday.  Definitely a unique part of their culture here.