Cultural Weekend

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Hello everyone,
Hope you all had a great weekend. My weekend was great. Friday night I relaxed at home. Saturday morning consisted of shopping with the girls at the supermarket and H&M (I bought a scarf so I can look more french:-)). In the afternoon, Christine and I met Derek at his house, met his host mother, and she drove us to a beautiful park along the Erdre river on the north side of Nantes. Derek's host mom is amazing, I could go on and on about her but I'll save that for another time. The gardens were amazing as well, and the roses were beautiful. We spent the afternoon there walking around and sitting in the grass near the water. Then the three of us took the bus to the IES center and met up with some others for dinner at a creperie. Let's just say I had the most wonderful tiramisu/coffee cream crepe for dessert. Ahh, it was wonderful. Yesterday I slept in and hung out until my host family came back from mass. Then we had lunch, and I met some friends at the Jardin des Plantes (while waiting I called home and got to talk to my family!). Then we went to the chateau for a free museum tour. This weekend was the Journees de la Patrimoine, during which EVERYTHING in France is open to the public for free, and EVERYONE comes out to see the museums and such. Well, EVERYONE seemed to be at the chateau, so we didn't wait in line to get in. But we did go to the Musee des Beaux Arts and I got to see a Monet painting:-). Then I headed home and spent the evening with my host family.

Well I better be off. It's almost 10:30am here. I had my first class of the semester this morning, which went really well. My next is at 11am, hope that goes well too! As always, I'd love to hear from you guys and how things are going at home. Send me big long emails, I love reading them! Also, the best way for me to post pictures is on facebook. I have 4 albums so far, and you can see them even if you don't have facebook. The links to each album are here:

Album 1: http://hope.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027280&l=f8ffe&id=11402985
Album 2: http://hope.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027281&l=b8598&id=11402985
Album 3: http://hope.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027314&l=433fd&id=11402985
Album 4: http://hope.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027499&l=5df49&id=11402985

Have a great week everyone!
-Caitlin

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Photos

In the Garden
Me and Christine at the beautiful park on Saturday afternoon

Journee de la Patrimoine
meeting in the Jardin des Plantes for a cultural afternoon at the chateau and Musee des Beaux Arts. Christine, me, Alison, Jenna.

Comments

[Tami]

Hey
Hey Caitlin Sounds like you are loving France!! I'm so happy for you! Do you have skype? we should try and chat sometime. what's the time difference from you and home?? well anyway, I have your address and will send you a postcard as soon as possible! it'd be great if you could send me one too, I collect them :) have a good week!! love Tami

[Freya Yskes]

Don't worry, I don't know who Zidane is either, unless he's the guy who's in a Gilette or Schick shaving commercial with Roger Federer and Tiger Woods.