Weekend Update!

---

Hey guys! SO SORRY I have been majorly slacking on my journals! I think its been like 3 or 4 weeks maybe!! Well, thigns are MUCH better! I guess I haven't been writing as much becasue (well, 1. it slips my mind), but moreso because I've been much busier with lots of trips and social time etc. So much better! There is so much to update you on I guess I'll break it down my section:

*HOMESTAY
I changed homestays! I now live with a 62 year old woman in the center of town..waaay closer to school and everything. Her name is Marie Do (short for Mary Dominique) and we get along really well. She has a four year old granddaughter, Anna, who stays over once a week. She is really shy but sweet and loves to draw and dance..as most 4 year old girls do! Being in centre ville (French for city center) is soo nice because I am close to shops, resturaunts, food stands, activities, and more friends. So I go out at night more casually now and can make it home without taking an expensive cab! YAY!!

*SCHOOL
Classes are going welll. My French Cinema class is boooooring but what can you do?! I switched out of my art history class (that was also really boring me) and changed for Provencal History (which I like muuch better..along with a much better teacher as well). My actual art class is really fun..we've gone out in the landscape now. We did one day at the foothills of the Mt. St. Victoire (huuge mountain here made famous by painter Paul Cezanne). I had mid-semester critique (which was a little nerve wracking because I've never done anything like that..though it made me feel like a real artist hah) and it went well. They say that it's suprising that I haven't truly painted (or drawen) before because I see 'color complexities' in more deapth than most beginners. So guess I'm off to a good start!

*FRIENDS
I have an awesome small core group of friends now..with other more casual friends that fit in the bigger circle. But me and four other girls : Blanca, Jacquelin, Anne and Tiffany and I do most things together and are planning all our trips togther as well. I just got back from a big trip (I'll write it in a different section) and they were the ones I went with. Life is so much better with a group of good friends. It took me a while to find them but now that I have it's soo much better. And worth waiting for!

*TRIPS
MARSEILLE
I went to Marseille (second biggest city in France, after Paris) one saturday with the girls and our guy friend Patrick. We walked around the city for a while, saw the huuge open air markets and then decided to go on a boat tour. We saw several small islands, one containing the chateau d'if, where the story of the Count of Monte Cristo is from! Really cool! i want to go back sometime because we did not have time to see the big and famous chruch Notre Dame de la Garde. Marseille is an interesting city with a real mix of culture and ethnicities but it is also realllly dirty. It actually smells when you get off the bus. When you get away from that area it gets much nicer. And we actually hoped off the boat and explored one of the islands on the trip and that was really nice and peaceful. But back in center city it isn't quite as pretty. I was warned though!

TOUSSANT
Toussant is a religious holiday in France and many other European countries. It is All Saint's Day (like from our origin of halloween) so our school gave us a 9 day break for Toussant (not typical in French schools..I think they just did it becasue they knew we were going toke time off to explore and travel so they might as well give us the time instead of us missing loads of class haha). So my and my friends Tiffany, Anne, Blanca and Jacquelin and I went together to Dublin, Venice, and Brussels. I then went to Luxembourg from Brussels by myself for the day as well. We spent 3 days in each city..toatl of 9 days.. with only one backpack per person! I feel like I've done the quintessential backpacking/slumming through europe with your friends while you're young trip now! hah So here is a bit of info on each:

DUBLIN
We first arrived in Dublin. We were all really tired because our plane was at 630am so we had all gotten up around 3am and gone the whole day without sleep. I don't remember which day we did each thing but we saw: St. Patrick's Cathedral (prolly the most famous landmark in Dublin..), Christ Church, Kilmainham Jail (where lots of patriots from the Irish rebellions we're held and killed. I don't know much about Irish history but it seems to be a place that you would be REALLY impressed by if you did lol), National Botanic Gardens, National Art Museum, Dublin Castle (working govt building and castle dating from the middle ages..an interesting combination of different styles throughout the generations). We also went to the Guiness St. Jame's Gate Brewery (a self-guided factory-type tour of how Guiness is made..and with a free tasting at the end!) and the Old Jameson Whiskey Distillery (guided museum-type tour with the history of the company/product, how it's made, how it's different than other whiskeys and a bigger free tasting at the end! :D). I definitely prefered Jameson of Guiness..I just hate the way Guiness tastes. No getting around it! The weather there was HORRIBLE!! Raining constantly and gale-force winds the whole time! It was like a movie..our umbrellas kept poping back and it was hard to walk through it at times! Jacquelin's umbrella broke!
We also went out to a bar in Dublin..ask me about a funny story with some priests we met there!

VENICE
Soooo beautiful! Just like I imagined. Tiny little canals and bridges everywhere..small alleyways that you can (and did!) easily get lost in! It was raining on and off there as well but it wasn't nearly as windy and cold as it was in Dublin so it was more tolerable. We visited: Basilica di San Marco (very famous and huge chruch), San Marco's square, Dodge's Palace (old palace..with really beautiful huge ballrooms with painted ceilings as well as creepy dungeons! The whole package!), Costume/Fabric Museum, Art Museum, Murano (island off of Venice's center..famous for their glass work), Murano Glass Museum, Burano (another small island..famous for their houses all painted different bright colors). I didn't go on a gondola ride because they are too expensive! But it was fun to see them around and all of the gondoleers. We ate some really good pasta and two different resturaunts, different nights. The first night Tiffany had some friends from school who were there so we ate with them all togeher at a resturaunt looking out on the water. Really pretty. And the patrons were funny/flirty Italian men. Of course. lol But harmless. The second night we went to a resturaunt indoors where they had THE MOST HILARIOUS AND CREEPY accordian player. He was this big fat man with a giant unibrow who would smile all creepy and come up to you and play his accordian right next to you. He took a liking to my friend Jacquelin and kept on coming up to her. THAT made our night!! Soo funny! We also bought a lot of Murano glass jewlery. I got some for me and some for friends. I found a very unusual shaped necklace with all kinds of colors mixed into it and a beautifullll slightly heartshaped necklace with a robin's egg blue flower inside of it. The glass is clear but the flower inside, which looks as though the petals were pulled out from the center are blue..so its really unique and gorgeous! AND IT BROKE! i was wearing it to art class and the cheap chain (which i should have changed..BIG mistake!) broke and the pendant fell on the tile floor and broke! I might be able to fix it..but when you put two pieces of broken glass together they're not clear anymore..they show the line where it broke! And I don'thave all the pieces. Someone suggested I take it to a jewlery who does glass work and see if they can fill it in again. I might just do that..though I know it will cost me a fortune..but I LOVE the necklace so much! Like fell in love with it! And then it had to break 😞 😞 😞

BRUSSELS
Raining still. The whole trip was filled with rain. But Brussels was a pretty city with lots of nice buildings and a lively city center. we went to the Old Brussels Musuem, saw the famous Mannequin Pis statue (little boy peeing), got waffles (covered in melted chocolate and strawberries mmmmm), drank hot chocolate (prolly the best in my life!), ate chocolate..basically everything in chocolate. We met a Candian kid named Andrew on the flight over..he was traveling alone and going to be in Brussels for one day so he kind of hung out with us for the day. There isn't quite as much to do in Brussels as the other cities..it's more a big city for business. I feel like I saw more museum-y type things but just don't remember. We walked around a lot though..as we did a lot in every city. And we went out to a nice pub two nights in a row ...one of them being Halloween. None of us had room in our backpacks for costumes so we found a halloween store and all bought different colored fake eyelashes (mine were bright orange :D). We met some cool Dutch kids at the bar (three guys..Nils, Jules , and Jeffery) and talked with them for a lot of the night. Then the next day I decided to take a train from Brussels to Luxembourg (idk why, but I've ALWAYS wanted to go there!)...

LUXEMBOURG
It was a two and a half hour train ride each way from Brussels, 38 (or so) euro roundtrip...about $50. Not bad for a whole other country. And I've really always dreamed of going there for some reason. It waas reallyyy pretty, so that definitely met my expectation. I went on Toussant day, however, so not much was open. And it rained all day so my shoes were filled with water and I was getting cranky from that. So I broke down and went on one of those tourist bus tours around the city..saw lots of places like the palace(with a guard out front who wouldn't smile or talk to anyone, Buckingham Palace style), lots of monuments, the national library, big banks (Luxembourg is a huge economic and banking center), a big abbey, a big church, a HUGE royal looking mansion that had been converted into a retirement home (WHAT a way to retire!!), the EU Parliament, EU Comission, EU auditing buildings (all really cool and modern buildings..and all EU buildings have all the flags of member states in front of them..so it makes for quite a cool presence)! They have lots of strange/modern sculptures around the city which was interesting to see as well. There was also a huge bridge that spanned across a lot of really beautiful trees. The city is surrounded by and covered in landscape..which makes it really picturesque. And all the leaves were changing colors for fall so it was really pretty to be there then!! I only spent 6 or so hours there but it was a really nice place to visit. There was a really nice mix between the new modern EU command center and banking district and the old city buildings and charm! A nice Saturday trip! And a whole other country to add to my list!

It is really surreal to think that I have been to that many places..I've always dreamed of traveling a lot and having a passport filled with stamps..and now I do! Although they have weird regulations for stamping your passport..never when you go somewhere on a train, and if you are coming and going between Eurozone countries then they don't stamp you or look at your passport at all (ie. Italy- Belguim, Belguim-France..i have no stamps for those countries 😞..or Luxembourg). I have one for Dublin though, because Dublin is in the south of Ireland..so not in the UK, and, therefore, not a Eurozone country. Complicated stuff. And I really wanted to like beg someone at the airport to stamp it..just for the evidence of having been there! Oh well.. C'est la vie!

So that is a lot of info now to fill you guys in on. Hope everything is going well! Everything is great here!

A Bientot,
Abbe

ps - I have a lot of pictures to put up. They're already on facebook (for those of you who have facebooks as well) and I'll hopefully find the time to get them up on here...it may take a while though bc there are so many!!

---