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Published: September 15th 2009
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La Fin de Semaine
Saturday Taryn, Katherine and I met at a street market to shop for fruit and stuff. I bought a loaf of bread and a bagel for less than 2 euros. I also bought a few oranges, apples and a kiwi, a pear for under 2 euros! We’re going to try and shop there every weekend if it runs throughout the year. Next we headed to Ikea (round 2) to get a few things we hadn’t picked up the week before. On the way back we also stopped at a grocery store called “Simply”. We carried 2 (almost) full-length mirrors and 3 huge bags of Ikea stuff around the grocery store and FINALLY found toilet paper (we had all been using pocket sized Kleenex). Toilet paper seems to be a difficult commodity to find around here!
After a full day of shopping we headed to a picnic at l’Orangerie, which is a park that Napoleon made for his wife Josephine. It’s about a five minute walk from my residence. I would say it’s comparable to Stanley Park, just smaller. It has a zoo, fountains, and a huge mansion on the grounds as well. I will take
pictures of it soon to post! We had to bring something Canadian to the picnic, so we brought the only thing we could find, maple syrup. On the front of the bottle there was a picture of a lumberjack and it said made in Canada, so we figured it was suitable. Everyone at the picnic had a laugh about it. The Italians brought (surprise!) pasta, the British brought chocolate and shortbread, the Irish brought a potato and cabbage dish, and there were a bunch of other things from around Europe.
I met my neighbour in rez, a girl named Christina, on Saturday. She’s from Spain and she speaks very little French and even less English. My Spanish is probably the same level as her English so we (painfully) attempted to have a conversation in French. She had to look up a lot of word in the dictionary as we were talking. She told me that she’s having a lot of trouble speaking to people in stores, and I have no idea how she’s going to make it through a semester of courses! I suddenly felt very lucky that I at least speak French fluently! I invited her to come
out with our exchange group the next day so that she could meet up with some other students who speak Spanish.
Sunday morning I went downtown by myself in attempt to find a church but apparently I’m not very good at reading maps so I couldn’t find it. After looking for 45 minutes I gave up and sat outside McDonalds to use the internet. As I was sitting there a middle aged couple came up to me and tried to ask me something about the internet in French but I could tell they didn’t speak French well so I said “I speak English, I’m from Canada,” and they said “we’re from Canada too!” They were visiting Strasbourg for 2 weeks from Toronto and they were so excited to meet another Canadian. As we were chatting a homeless man who was also sitting outside came over to me and gave me his hot chocolate. I told him I didn’t want it and he took it back and rambled something to himself. The other Canadians laughed and said that he liked me. After they left the homeless guy started serenading Michael Jackson’s “you don’t need to be rich to be my
girl” to me. He had a guitar but luckily he didn’t use it… Thankfully he wandered off a few minutes later.
Sunday afternoon the exchange group met at this exhibition type thing called
“le foire européen”. There were hundreds of booths set up with people selling everything from patio furniture, kitchen appliances, clothes, jewelry, and art, to massage chairs. It was interesting but there wasn’t really anything there for us to buy.
Sunday night I went for a run along the Rhine river. I almost ran to the German border but it’s hard to tell where it is. It was really beautiful, and I finally feel like I’m getting back into running. The last few runs have felt a bit off, because of jet lag and just being plain tired from walking all day and being so busy. I ran past a group of people with 2 poodles off leash and they ran over and barked at me. It’s always hard to tell if they’re going to be friendly or not, especially with my ipod on, so I never know how to react and I don’t want them to bite me or chase me if I run faster,
so I just stopped and asked the owner if they’re friendly. Thankfully they were! Canada or France, some things never change, dogs will always bother you when you’re trying to run!
One night during the week, Taryn and I went to visit Morgan on our floor and she had 4 friends from her program hanging out in her room. They all spoke really quickly and used a lot of sayings we didn’t understand, but we caught on a bit better towards the end of the conversation. Morgan and her friends are all in first year and studying foreign languages like English, Japanese, German, etc. After Taryn asked them what year they were in she said
“oh c’est excitant!” Morgan and her friends all gave each other funny looks and started laughing. I said “uhh Taryn, in French when you use the word "excited" it refers to sexually excited…” It made for a good laugh anyways! There have been quite a few occasions where French people misunderstand the words we say because we don’t pronounce them exactly right or we use them in the wrong context. I also met a bunch of people from my floor in the kitchen. They
are all very nice and think it’s cool that we’re from Canada. All the French students I’ve met so far seem really eager to help us out and to practice French with us.
Today I walked around downtown and went into some of the stores. I refrained from buying any clothes (okay well I bought ONE thing, but I needed a dress in case I go somewhere fancy, so it’s okay since it was technically a necessity right?) Still no internet in my room, the French seem to do everything in the most complicated unefficiant way possible. It’s very difficult switching from a “everything open 24 hours, 7 days a week” to a “2 hour lunch break, closed on weekends” life style. Puncuality is not a high priority for the French. Actually, I think they try to AVOID being on time. I’m definitely learning patience and to just relax and let things happen when they happen! (Which is totally opposite of my always on the go personality.)
Tonight we’re going on a boat tour of the city, which I’ve been looking forward to since I got here. Keep an eye out for pictures of that in my next
post!
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