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Published: February 9th 2008
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Crazy lady
the crazy lady in Canet Now I have a lot to talk about…
Earlier this week Becca and I moved down levels because grammar and orthography were too stressful and frustrating. Now we are in level three with Libby, which is a blast. It’s just the three of us, the professor, and all the Chinese kids. Class is really a lesson in Chinese….we constantly play a little games called “put away the dictionaries.” Level three is kind of easy, but the way I see it, I’m in France to enjoy myself and the experience...being frustrated all the time is not the way to go. We have the same two professors for most of our classes (which consist of grammar, orthography, writing, oral, comprehensive oral, civilization, and phonetics). They are two of my favorite French people ever and they both speak English pretty well and pull out lots and lots of Franglais…we love it. The three of us are staying in the level 4 civilization class though because we’ve all had French history classes and the level three civilization was basically teaching the Chinese students the ways of the Western world…like Christmas. We explained that we already know a lot about 1) the Western world, 2)
Canet
the beach in Canet French culture and history. Since we are staying in the level 4 civilization class, we now have Fridays off, which really opens up some travel options. This reminds me that next Friday we take off for our first vacation! We’re planning on spending the week in Budapest and Prague…I’m super excited!
Yesterday, Libby, Tyler, and I hung out at the beach in Canet. Tyler is an Aquinas alum who came to France three years ago and is back for a visit. It was kind of cold, and quite windy, so we didn’t really do much. But we did however have a nice conversation with a crazy French lady who flies an American flag on September 11 and won’t take it down when the police ask her too. Nice to know there are some American lovers outside of the States…haha.
Today, Tyler and we five girls went to Carcassonne. Carcassonne is an old medieval, walled city. So cool! It was quite an adventure, to say the least. It was the first big excursion on which I had my camera. I certainly did not let it down…200+ pictures! We explored the chateau for a while and wandered around the city
Carcassonne
One of our first views of the walled city of Carcassonne looking at souvenirs and the like. We also went into the Cathedral, and I could take pictures! I’ll try to post a few on here, but most will be on facebook. We had to wait until 2:00 to get into the cathedral because just about everything closes between 12 and 2 for siesta time. While we were waiting we explored the area around the city walls and eventually figured out how we could climb on them…yes everybody, I scaled a wall…when I found stairs. After we left the walled city was when the real adventure began. It took us a while to find our way back to the train station. On our way we stopped for dessert…yummy éclairs. And we were stopped by an Australian man, who didn’t know what day it was and was trying to find a store that carried cd players. That was weird. And then we ran into a sign that told us the Gare (train station) was in two different directions…ummm thanks! At a little grocery store I found Chupa Chups!!!!!! I was real excited. We finally made it to the gare and Nicole and I had to buy new tickets because we forgot our
Chateau
taken from up in the Chateau that is inside the city 12-25 discount cards which you need to present with your discounted ticket. Luckily the lady was nice and let us pay the difference between our discount price and full price. When we were all settled and started figuring out our train we saw that it was delayed 50 minutes…really cool because Ashley had to be home for a birthday party. The time kept decreasing and it really confused us. First it was delayed 50 minutes, then 40 minutes, and finally 30 minutes (when it was 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time). When 30 minutes popped up on the screen we saw the track number finally pop up on the screen, two seconds later a train pulled up, one minute later that train (our train) left. Yes folks, we missed our train. I told you Carcassonne was an adventure. The arrival of the train was never announced. We seriously looked up at the screen when the track number came up, looked at the track to see if there was a train, and saw the train leave. Not cool. Oh yeah, and we couldn’t have run to catch it because Becca and Nicole had gone to a market to get little
View through a hole
View of the outside of the city through a hole in the wall bottles of wine and weren’t quite back yet. We were all very upset, luckily Tyler is so fluent in French that the French can’t tell he’s not French and was able to sort everything out and get us on another train. While we waited for the next train we went to McDo and all got more 2 euro bottles of wine. Unfortunately my bottle was corked, thus I could not drink it. We finally made it on the right train and back to Perpignan in one piece, with all of our possessions. My host family was incredibly amused by our predicament. I supposed I too would be amused by six Americans, three of whom are a bit inebriated, trying to find their way home. Tomorrow I had planned to walk the city with my camera, but that’s not happening…another weekend I suppose.
Ooo I forgot to say that last Sunday I went to mass at another really big, old church in Perpignan. Grams, you’ll have to call me for the details.
I suppose that’s all for now…I’ll do pictures now.
Love you all and miss you all!
Freya
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Liz Stray
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Wow Freya! It sounds (and looks) like you are having a blast! Congrats on scaling a wall :)