Back in Tours

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Sorry I haven’t been such a diligent writer lately, so here are just a few highlights of my last two weeks in Tours:

1. Giving my host sisters their presents from Ireland. I got Bea a rubix cube with sheep on it and Marguerite sheep slippers and their reactions were absolutely fabulous! Apparently Marguerite has always wanted slippers like that and I had guessed the right size! Yay!
2. Everyone’s favorite Professor: Jean-Nöel Billard, coming through on his promise. The first Thursday back from break he brought our class of me, Allison, Denise, and Mackenzie a bottle of Rosé wine which we drank during class like it was no big deal. He’s probably one of the nicest professor’s I’ve even had, but also one of the most boring lecturers and of us have ever experienced…
3. Visiting Azay-le-Rideau. We visited another chateau that was pretty close to Tours, so we didn’t have to leave until 1:30 which was nice. However, it was kind of a miserable day with lots of rain and then Mme Fazelley made the executive decision for us all to get French audioguides, which probably is a good idea in theory, but in reality since we don’t know time period specific or architectural vocabulary, this meant that we learned pretty much nothing about the castle which made the four page paper near impossible to write. But all in all it was a pretty fun day to spend with the other BEF-ers.
4. Watching “La Melodie du Bonheur” (The Sound of Music) with my family. We don’t have a TV so I assumed we would all huddle around the computer like we had before, but the dad went and found a projector in the basement and a huge screen to set up in the dining room! It was kind of weird to watch the movie in French—the song tunes were the same, but the words were all different so they would sound good in French. It was also weird to not have Julie Andre’s voice leading all the songs.
5. Going to the Tours Opera. Italian singing, French subtitles, some version of Romeo and Juliet where Romeo was played by a girl—we left at intermission. (Although I’m glad we went—I felt cultured.) Afterwards we went to a little patisserie where I got told that I could only sit with my friends for 5 minutes if I didn’t order anything because it was kind of busy…as if someone else would take my place at my table with my friends?
6. Renting a bike. Now I have sweet wheels in Tours! I’m still getting used to riding in a city but hopefully I’ll have time to go on some bike rides because just running gets boring…
7. Taking the DELF. The Institut bought us our train tickets to Amboise, so our train arrived at the station at 8:30 when the DELF started at 8:45. Needless to say, we were late because we had to find where we were going. It was wayyyyy harder than any practice tests we had taken, and the Turkish man sitting next to me must have thought so too considering he was looking at my paper every other second. At least I didn’t experience what Allison and Carl did: the people sitting next to them actually tapped them and pointed to a question they wanted to know the answer to. Our proctor was kind fo a joke. He sat at the desk that was behind this large pole from all of us and his phone went off during the test, playing some pop song! In the end, we all passed—me with a whopping 68.75%, but hey, that’s 18.75 more points than necessary.

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Comments

[emily mcswain]

heaven.
val, this is heaven you are living in. THE SOUND OF MUSIC IN FRENCH?!?!?! does it get better?!?!?!

[Mom]

Fun times
Wow! Not a day goes by without something noteworthy happening! The photos of Azay-le-Rideau are terrific! No seat for those who don't buy treats at patisseries! Hee! Hee!