Random Happenings in France

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Today, Beatrice is teaching me how to solve a rubix cube. I’ve been working on it for about two hours now, and have not succeeded without her help (I did it with her about an hour and a half ago and she wrote down the formulas so that I could solve it myself. I’ve come close, only to mess up the last step and then start over again…but I am determined. My host dad told me that I have “courage” which can be translated to kind of mean persistence.) I am DETERMINED to learn how to do this. But I’m taking a break right now. But mark my words, the next time you see me, I will have successfully solved a rubix cube.

I’m done with the Institut now! I celebrated by sleeping until 12:30 yesterday—it was fabulous. Also, Allison and I are planning our February break—we officially bought all our train and plane tickets yesterday! We’re going to Amsterdam for two days, London for about 4 and Ireland for about 4. We also splurged slightly and booked a cute little B&B to stay at in Amsterdam—we figured that if there was one place where we wanted to spend more money to not stay in a sketchy hostel, it would definitely be Amsterdam. So we’ll be spending Valentine’s weekend in a B&B, probably with tons of couples—haha, oh well. We’re planning on seeing the Anne Frank museum and the Van Gogh museum as well as doing a biking tour of the city (apparently there’s lots of biking in Amsterdam). We haven’t gotten to the planning London and Ireland legs so much yet, except perhaps crashing with some DGs in London and staying with my friend from middle school/high school Anna who has an apartment in Dublin for the year. Allison loves horseback riding so we’re going to see if there’s somewhere pretty in Ireland to do that, if it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Today for lunch we had fruit salad with mango and kiwi. I felt like I was in heaven.

My family eats very healthily; almost everything they have is organic. The French word for organic is biologique, so everything is labeled “BIO.” My first instinct is always that it means biohazard, so I have a small heart attack whenever I see them cooking, then remember that it means healthier and not toxic.

I went for a run yesterday! Now I’m sore. But it was fabulous—I ran by lots of cute French houses and then along the Loire, which was so pretty! I ran over a suspension bridge to the other side of Tours, and then back over the bridge that’s the one if you look at any pictures of Tours. I should probably find out what it’s called. On my way back, I attempted to take a different path, just to be fun, but ended up running on a road with lots of foot traffic—that was embarrassing. But it was cool to find roads that I hadn’t seen before. Yay!

We (the Bucknell group) found a new favorite place for lunch. It’s a little panini place, that’s pretty much just a to-go café with one table, but what the one-time panini place go-er might not realize is that there’s a “cave” or basement under the place with a lot more tables (although very spotty heating). We’ve come to take our place there during the lunch hour. The paninis are only 3.50 and DELISH. And the selection is so French—I had a goat cheese and ham panini one day. I love how goat cheese is so common here. And of course, the infamous Panini Nutella is only 1.40. FAB. We all got little stamp cards so when we buy like 15 paninis or something, the 16th is free.

I did my laundry for the first time yesterday! Luckily, my family has a dryer. Unfortunately, when it stopped, my clothes were not completely dry. I thought the mom had tried to explain to me that there was some sensor on the dryer, so it just stopped whenever they were dry, which obviously wasn’t the case, so I just took my semi-damp clothes back up to my room and laid them out. They were dry by this morning.

One of my host sisters just asked if it was raining, and the other responded by singing it’s raining men. Hahaha.

We found a place on Friday that sells coffee in to-go cups! They had warm or cold drinks—except cold just means not hot. As in room temperature. Denise and Mackenzie both got some sort of coffee beverages made by the sketchy guido-like characters, both of which were room temperature and sub-par at best. Looks like to-go coffee will not be happening this semester.

Now one of my host sisters is playing the piano, and the two girls and their dad are all singing, with harmony and everything. I feel so inferior with zero vocal ability. Also whenever the family sings grace, there are like 20 harmonies going on. It’s so pretty. I don’t understand how a family can be so musical.

However, Beatrice’s concentration is math, so sometimes we bond over liking scientific things and not liking analyzing things (she had a philosophy test Wednesday). She randomly asked me the other day if when we did physics, etc. problems if we had to use meters and kg, etc or if there were other formulas, to which I had to reply, yes, indeed the US is retarded and in science we do use units that have no meaning to us in the rest of our life. She thought it was weird. So do I.

That’s all for now!

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Comments

[Katie]

OMG
I MISS YOU. This is by far my favorite entry. Panninis sound amazing, to-go coffee does not. I'm so proud of your ambitious running experience, rubix cube persistence, and scientific ways. Feb. break sounds amazing. Keep having the best time ever!!