Melissa Hill
I'm spending my Junior year of study at William Jewell College in the French city of Nantes. I will be studying French and International Relations, and living with a French family. I look forward to French bread, European chocolate, and being thoroughly confused for a few months. JBCollinMezin
Travel Blog Posts
April 22nd 2007
Spring Break Hello everyone, I’m back from my 2 week Spring Break, so I have a lot of ground to cover in this blog. My travels took me to Munich, Berlin, Brussels, Luxembourg City, Strasbourg, Freibourg, and London. Each city was its own unique experience, and I hope I can give you a good idea of their character and strength. Since there’s so much to say, and I don’t want to lose your attention, we’ll try a new blog format… Munich (Germany): Transport to : 10 hour train ride from Nantes to Paris to Munich. One exciting event on the way was when I reached up to put my backpack on the baggage rails and at the same moment the train lurched left. I broke my fall by falling into the lap of the guy ... read more
France: Wine, Cheese, Bread, and Charlie Chaplain
Published: March 30th 2007Europe » France » Pays-de-la-Loire » Nantes
March 30th 2007
As I've been preparing my Spring Break travels (which start tomorrow), I realized that I need to get a blog out before I forget everthing that has happened up until now. I'm pretty good about blogging big trips, but there are all sorts of little events that add up to one blog's worth of info. So here goes... The first scholl day after the Belgium trip, I went to a wine tasting session at IES. The French are very serious about wine tasting, it is even considered a science (oenologie). I went to the same session last semester, but I found it was easier to follow this time since I'm more used to the taste of wine. We tried 4 wines (1 white, 2 reds, and a champagne) and in between wines, the speaker (a ... read more
Belgium: Land of Chocolate, Beer, and Fries
Published: March 1st 2007Europe » France » Pays-de-la-Loire » Nantes
March 1st 2007
Hello again, everyone. After being in classes for a solid four weeks (during which time I visited a friend in Angers and started my internship) IES decided it was high time for a break, so I just got back from a weeklong trip to Belgium. At IES, I have a course in French Cinema and one about the Middle East. At the Nantes University, I have a history course about the 5th Republic (France’s current system) and I have a sociology course about immigration. I was lucky enough to find an internship with a satelitte office of the Nantes Mayor’s office. My host father knew I was having trouble finding an internship with local government or social services ; and so he asked our next-door neighbor if he would be interested in having an intern at ... read more
January 24th 2007
Hello everyone, I had a great time being home for Christmas break. The movie selection on the plane home was excellent : out of the seven films to choose from I watched The Illusionist, Talladega Nights : the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and the Night Listener. I was lucky that I was able to see so many people while I was back, but I still missed a few. At home, I bought some provisions for the upcoming semester, caught up with old friends, and basically just relaxed. My thanks and congratulations to the Moore family for presenting a spectacular Murder Mystery evening (taking place in WWII France) that was definately a highlight of my winter break. I got out of Kansas City just before the awful, icey weather hit. I flew into Chicago, where I had ... read more
November 26th 2006
Hello Friends and Family, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and didn’t get killed going shopping on Black Friday. I’ve got all sorts of stuff to get you all caught up on, so I’d better get started. Where we last left my travels: Rome. On Halloween day, I took an evening tram with Katie to Paris. The TGV (high speed train) is great to travel with, and I was able to use my Eurail pass on it. With the pass, I can travel as much as I want within 3 countries in 5 days. So we got in to Paris around 9:00 and jumped on their underground system. The Paris transit system is pretty amazing: you buy one ticket that is valid until you leave the system, so you can get on and off ... read more
October 31st 2006
Hello everyone, Things are very busy (but fun) over here. Since my last post, I've done quite a few things: visit 5 castles, visit a boulangerie, been invited to eat dinner with a older French couple, experienced a French family reunion, and done lots of planning for our Rome trip (we leave today). In this special Halloween edition, I'll do my best to get you all caught up before my Rome trip takes over the blog. A few weekends ago, IES piled us all into some tourbuses and drove us to the Loire Valley to see the chateaux (castles). What with various nobles angering the king and having their castles royaly seized and other nobles not faring too well during the revolution, there are very few castles in France that are still privately owned. The rest ... read more
October 5th 2006
Hello everyone! As always, I've had an eventful time since my last entry. My classes are very interesting; they require a lot of work, but it is incredibly easy to procrastinate because there are rarely any specific assignments. For instance, in The Palestinian Question, we have a few books that cover the material of the class in greater detail. In order to write a paper or complete the final exam, it is highly recommended to read these huge books (the one I've bought is 950 pages). It requires a lot of disicipline to get started on books that are so large and complex (and written in French). My grammar class is different from the rest of my classes in that we have daily work to do, although it is not graded. The professor is incredibly educated ... read more
September 25th 2006
I just started my second week of classes, and I have been very busy since my last blog. Last weekend France celebrated a weekend of patriomoine (patriotisme). A few years ago, one of the high elected officials came up with the idea to open up all the museums and historical landmarks for the public to view, and most of them are free. I saw the first floor of the Musee des Beaux Arts, which was classical sculpture in white marble. Some friends and I also walked around the Jardin des Plantes; I've never seen a public park with such careful and ornate landscaping. We finished out the day with a trip to Theatre Graslin, the historic opera house. Instead of offering tours of the building, they were giving artistic and historical presentations. Inside the theatre, there ... read more
September 18th 2006
So much has happened in only 12 days. I arrived here in Nantes on Sept 6, and I just started classes today. My flight went well, and I met up with other Nantes students at the trainstation at Charles de Gualle airport. To get to Nantes, we took the TGV (high-speed train). When we arrived at the Nantes train station, no one was there to meet us (as promised in our trip guide), so, with the help from an extremely nice French man (he was there to pick up the American he was hosting) a few of us braved the Nantes tram system to get to the IES center. The center is on the 2nd and 3rd floors of a residence building. Here, most families live in appartments above shops, or in connected houses (there aren't ... read more
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