Life in Nantes
Jan. 9, 2007

This morning I went out to do a few final errands. I went to the hair stylist place in Hightstown to get my hair trimmed, which was annoying because I had to wait awhile even though my haircut only took like five minutes. I returned l'Auberge Espagnol, which is a movie in French about a guy who goes to Spain to study abroad (somewhat appropriate for me to watch), to Cheryl. I also stopped by Liz's house and helped her figure out how to transfer pictures from her iPod to her computer.

In the afternoon, my dad drove me over to Daniel's school so that he could come out and say goodbye before I left. He ran out, gave me a hug, refused to give me a kiss, and ran back inside for his E=mc^2 after-school program. I guess it was worth it though.

I finished packing and headed over to the airport. The plane was a bit delayed since it had come from Beijing and it needed cleaning, but there was a strong tail wind, so we managed to make up the time. I slept a little, but I got a stomachache towards the end (probably because of the weird chicken and potatoes meal I had had earlier) so I watched the end of this movie about a girl and a horse and one of those house re-decorating shows.


Jan. 10, 2007

When I got to France, I was relieved to pick up my luggage and happily surprised that it was very easy to pass through passport control/customs. There was some weird thing going on that caused a jam of people in the terminal on the way to the train station, but it eventually cleared up and I got through. I asked for a ticket to Nantes and also purchased a 12/25 card that gives 25-50% discounts and somehow landed myself with a first class ticket. While I was waiting for the train, I saw some people with IES luggage tags and we introduced ourselves. Blake, Joan, Cassie, and I think one other person was there. We split up to get on the train and I managed to sleep most of the way.

Julia from IES was waiting for us at the train station. She helped us get taxis, although we had to wait awhile. When we got to IES, we had to take turns going up the elevator because it's really, really small. We all waited around until around 6-7pm when all the families came to pick up their students. I was happy to meet my host mother, Sylvie, whose really, really nice. Sylvie also drove Joan and her host mother, since they live very close.

My house is in a very nice neighborhood on a dead-end street next to the Erdre River. Sylvie promptly gave me a tour of the house, which is also very nice. There's a kitchen, a dining room, a living room with a tv and computer, a plain living room, six bedrooms, three small staircases, and a pool in the backyard. I live in a room upstairs next to Pierre's room and I share a bathroom with Astrid. It's perfect. I was very, very happy to discover that they have wireless internet.

I had dinner with Sylvie, Nicholas, and Astrid. We ate some kind of quiche with tomatoes and other things. I'm not sure what we had for dessert, but it was good. Then I took a bath (since they don't really have a shower), and was very happy to finally be able to go to sleep.


Jan. 11, 2007

I didn't wake up until 11am, so I missed breakfast and just waited to have lunch with my family, which I think was another type of quiche, but I'm not sure. I packed my things for the weekend trip to Tours and Sylvie drove me to the IES center, picking up Joan, Brianna, and Monsieur de Berranger (the director of IES) on the way. We waited around at IES for everyone to arrive and then boarded the bus for Tours, where I sat next to Laura.

The bus ride was pretty long - I think about three hours - but we finally got to the hotel in Tours. I shared a room with Katie, who am I happy to say, turned out to be a very nice person. We came down for dinner and I sat with Katie, Laura, and Shereen. For lunch and dinner while in Tours, we always had three parts - the appetizer, the entree, and the dessert. Shereen caught a glimpse of the main dish and thought it might have been pineapple. However, when they put the plate in front of me, I realized it was potato cubes with butter, not pineapple, so I shook my head no. Unfortunately, this made the waiter think I didn't want my entree, so he asked me if I didn't like it. Trying to explain myself, I told him "Yes, I like it, but it is not pineapple." This caused much laughter at the table, as it probably seemed like a very strange thing to say from the waiter's perspective.

We were given maps of the main part of Tours so that we could go out in the evening. I went with Laura and we walked around and found a nice place to sit down. While we were happily seated inside enjoying our drinks, we saw a large group of IES students all walking around together. I was happy we hadn't gone with them and were able to sit down and relax for a bit before going back to the hotel for the night.


Jan. 12, 2007

The schedule:
Before 9am: Breakfast
9:30am: Leave the hotel
10:15am: Arrive at Chateau Amboise
10:30am: Guided tour of the chateau
12:30pm: Lunch at the restaurant "L'Epicerie" at Amboise
2:00pm: Leave Amboise
2:30pm: Arrive at Chenonceau
5:00pm: Leave Chenonceau
6:00pm: Return to the hotel
7:30pm: Diner at the hotel

As the first chateau, Amboise was pretty interesting. Leonardo de Vinci was buried there, so we got to see a bust of where he was originally buried and the cathedral where they later moved the bones that they think belonged to him. The tour guide told us a lot of history, which is really complicated due to the nature of royal marriages. After the tour, we had a little bit of time before lunch to explore the garden area.

Chenonceau was nice because it had a large garden area, complete with a maze, a field with donkeys, and "dueling" gardens on both sides of the chateau. One garden belonged to Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henri II, and the other belonged to Catherine de Medici, the wife of Henri II, who took over the chateau from Diane de Poitiers after Henri II died. Since we had a lot of time, Laura and I decided to buy tickets to this small museum of the women of the chateau and the history of the ownership of the chateau. It was there we learned that Catherine de Medici hosted a party in which men were supposed to dress as women and women were supposed to dress as men, and some of the women even came topless! Apparently it was actually a political maneuver to keep the surrounding nobility from thinking about revolting. Another thing that was strange was that the mannequins' hands and face were made of different materials, so their faces were very smooth, but their hands had started to peel and looked really creepy.


Jan. 13, 2007

The schedule:
Before 9am: Breakfast
9:30am: Leave the hotel
10:30am: Arrive at Blois
10:45am: Orientation and visit of the chateau
12:15pm: Leave Blois
1:00pm: Arrive at Chambord
2:30pm: Guided tour of Chambord
5:15pm: Leave Chambord
6:15pm: Arrive at the hotel
7:30pm: Diner at the hotel

Blois was pretty cool because it showed four completely different architectural styles: Middle Ages, Renaissance, Flamboyant Gothic, and Neo-Classical. We also learned that the porcupine was the emblem of Louis XII and the water-spitting salamander was the emblem of Francois I. It was also there that Henri III had his arch-enemy, the Duke de Guise, assassinated.

Chambord is the biggest chateau of all. It is huge, enormous, grandiose - I think you get the picture. It was built by Francois I, and it was designed to show that the French royalty was above the church. It has a double helix staircase in the middle and many, many other staircases throughout. It's intense.


Jan. 14, 2007

The schedule:
Before 9am: Breakfast
9:25am: Check out of our rooms
9:30am-12:30pm: French test:
9:30-9:45am: Dictation
9:45-10:30am: Grammar
10:30-10:45am: Break
10:45-11:15am: Listening Comprehension
11:15am-12:15pm: Reading Comprehension
12:30pm: Lunch at the hotel
2:15pm: Leave the hotel
5:45pm: Arrive at Nantes
6:00pm: Families come to pick up students

Today was the day of the big French test and then a long bus ride. I did get to meet Pierre and Domique when I came home.


Jan. 15, 2007

During breakfast, my host mother kept giving me more to eat, so I ended up having cereal, toast, apple juice, and two clementines. This resulted in me almost missing the bus, but it worked out and I was able to go with Joan to IES. Once we got to IES, Madame Rouchet, the administrative director of IES, talked to us about pretty much everything there is to know for more than three hours. It was a lot of information to absorb - everything from how to stay safe to how to make the best of your time in IES to how to properly take a shower. The shower part was actually very useful for me because in my bathroom, there is a bathtub but no door or curtain or anything, just a hand-held shower device attached to the faucet. I'm looking forward to taking a real shower when I get home.

For lunch, I just bought a ham and cheese sandwich and brought it back to the IES center, where there are two kitchens. It should be a good place to eat during the semester.

After lunch, we went on an informational tour of Nantes, and I was very lucky to have a tour guide who was able to explain almost everything. She even waited for us to buy our bus tickets at the TAN office, since we all needed them. She also showed us the various tourist offices, the main post office, how to mail letters, the location of one of the University Restaurants (RUs), the library closet to IES, the photo-machine (small photos are needed for a lot of things: bus tickets, student cards, train discount cards, recreation passes, and library cards), and a few other places.

When we got back to IES, I met up with Sam and Cesalie, who was visiting Sam before going back to Brown, and we went out for a cup of hot chocolate. I was nice seeing some of friends from Brown again. I then managed to find my way back to my host family's house for dinner and went to sleep.


Jan. 16, 2007

The schedule:
9:30-10:30am: Security in Nantes (Madame Rouchet)
11:00am-12:30pm: General academic orientation (Monsieur de Berranger)
2:45-3:45pm: Conversation (Mme Rouchet)
3:45-4:45pm: French Language (Mme de Pous)
4:45-5:45pm: Grammer Exercises (Julie Kasper)

All of us were broken up into three groups depending on how we did on the French test. I'm in the Poitou group, which is apparently the most advanced of the three. It's nice because I got a long lunch break today and I get to sleep in an hour later on Friday.


Jan. 17, 2007

The schedule:
9:30-11:30am: Visit to the University
11:30am-1:00pm: Lunch at the University Restaurant
1:00-1:30pm: Return to IES
1:30-2:00pm: Presentation of the Translation course (M. Feith)
2:00-3:00pm: French Language
3:00-4:00pm: Conversation
5:00-6:00pm: Grammar Exercises

Seeing the University of Nantes was nice, although we only went to the literature/history/language part, not the science part. (The University of Nantes is broken up into different parts depending on the subject, although they're all in the same area.)

The cafeteria was quite an experience. There are different lines for different meals, but you get one appetizer, one main dish, one dessert, a piece of bread, and a glass. Each table has a water pitcher that you're supposed to fill up and share with the table. I had grapefruit, pizza with hamburger meat that tasted like Hamburger Helper, and this flaky-crust pastry with chocolate and apples inside. It was pretty good.


Jan. 18, 2007

The schedule:
9:30-10:30am: Conversation
11:30am-12:30pm: French Language
2:30-4:30pm: Guided tour of the historical part of Nantes
4:45-5:45pm: Grammar Exercises
6:00pm: Leave IES with Jessica for a reception organized by the French and United States Association at the Villa Flora restaurant

The outside, two hour historical tour of Nantes would have been a lot more fun had it not been drizzling, windy, and cold. At some point, I think everyone in the group was thinking more about how nice it would be to go back inside once the tour was over instead of paying attention to the tour guide. It was pretty miserable.

The evening was fun though. We all went to this fairly big restaurant where there were a few older people from the France-United States Association. The President got up and gave a short speech about how Nantes and the United States had some connection in the past and there used to be some restaurant with a sign that said "Welcome to Nantes Americans and Other People" or something like that. Then we got to eat the "galette des rois," which is a pastry cake with a small favor hidden inside. Whoever gets the favor in their piece gets to wear a crown and becomes the "king." I had actually celebrated this holiday with my family on Sunday evening and I was the one who found the favor, a small plastic Mona Lisa portrait, so I got to wear the crown.


Jan. 19, 2007

The scedule:
10:00-11:00am: French Language
11:00am-12:00pm: Conversation
12:00-1:00pm: Grammar Exercises
2:00-3:00pm: Academic orientation for courses outside of IES (M. de Berranger and Jessica DuPlaga)
3:00-5:00pm: Counseling meetings with professors
5:00-6:00pm: Meeting about "Nantes students and what they do in their spare time, where and how to meet them" (Carole Ronco, Social Coordinator)

My advisor is M. de Berranger. I thought the counseling meetings would be more substantive, but I just said I wanted to take French Language, Phonetics, Translation, two computer science courses, and maybe a math statistics course. I wrote it down on a piece of paper, he signed it, and that was it. I did get the website with all of the science courses from Jessica DuPlaga, the person in charge of registering and academic things in general.

The meeting with the social coordinator wasn't terribly informative. She just said she would try to arrange activities throughout the year, like going to see movies, ice skating, bowling, and various other things.


Jan. 20, 2007

I bought boots! All of the Nantes people wear boots and this month is their major sales month, so I bought a pair. They're really quite something. Katie actually bought the same pair, we both liked them so much. I was also able to buy an umbrella, which I neglected to bring with me to France. I bought the umbrella in this fairly large mall dominated by an IKEA. IKEA is apparently very, very big here. I think the majority of furniture and things in my host family's house comes from IKEA. It took us awhile to figure out that the mall was actually hidden behind the IKEA.

For lunch we went to this potato restaurant, where I ordered a fondue plate. It was a little weird since it came with two baked potatoes, various ham meats, and salad, in addition to the cheese fondue and a few slices of bread. The potatoes with the cheese fondue were actually really good.


Jan. 21, 2007

I met Joan for lunch in the center of town and we just got some sandwiches and sat by a fountain. Afterward, I went to go investigate the science university, but the gates were all closed. I decided to take a leisurely walk back to my host family's house along the Erdre River. It was really nice, except for the occasional rain that would break for about five minutes before the sun came back out.

When I got back to the house, Astrid asked me if I wanted to watch Princess Mononoke, to which I happily said yes. I had to leave in the middle though, because I told Sam I would meet him for dinner in the center of town. We ended up going to a creperie, where I had an excellent galette (crepe with wheat, I believe) with mushrooms and cream. For dessert I had a flaming crepe that was excellent.


Friday, Feb. 9, 2007

I know I haven't updated in awhile, but I've been really busy. Hopefully I'll get a chance to update a lot on Sunday, because tomorrow I'm spending the day on an IES field trip to Mont St. Michel. I hope it's fun.

Earlier today I went on a one-hour guided tour of the Musee Dobree. It was fairly interesting, but for some reason it made me really tired. It was probably a combination of standing on my feet for an hour and before that listening to a professor drone on and on about how to write a proper essay the French way for two hours. I probably should have skipped that session since I'm not taking any literature, history, or philosophy courses but I thought it might be useful since I have to write a 15 page paper for my networks class. I also have to give a 30-minute presentation to the class. Luckily it's not due until march, so I have some time, but I'm really not looking forward to it. I chose "Wifi versus Wimax" as my topic, but I think I'm going to ask the professor if I can write about IPv6 instead. It seems a bit more interesting.

I also went a bit crazy this morning and bought pajamas. I'll have to post pictures of them soon, although they're not really that special. Just warm and comfortable. I kind of needed them since I only brought one pair of pajamas with me. So that's good.

Bed time for me. I have to wake up before 6am tomorrow to get to the bus on time :-(. I guess I'll survive though. I think it'll be worth it.


Feb. 16, 2007

I'm about to head off to Dublin, with a plane change in London. I'll be in Dublin until Tuesday, staying in the Kinley House hostel with Itay and some of his Oxford friends for the first two nights and Abraham House hostel Monday night with Shereen and Katie, two of my IES friends. Then it's off to Edinburgh, where I'll be staying in either Amy or Emily's room, who are studying abroad there for the semester. Finally, on Thursday, I'm taking a train to London, where I'll stay with Itay in Oxford. I've made plans to see Liz, one of my high school friends who's studying abroad in London, on Friday along with her sister. She said we'll probably go to a museum or something. And then Sunday, I fly back to Nantes.

I'm really excited, it should be a lot of fun! Time to go... probably no web updates for a week since I'm not bringing my laptop.


Feb. 27, 2007

My week-long vacation was amazing! It was fun seeing all of the museums and attractions, and all of my friends. I'll have to tell more about it and post some pictures when I have more time.

It's getting really hard to find time. I came back Sunday evening from England, Monday evening IES sponsored a wine specialist who came in and taught us how to taste wine, today was conversation club and then I went ouy for dinner (crepes) with some friends. This weekend I'm going to Normandy on a field trip with IES. We're leaving 7:45am on Saturday and coming back around 8pm on Sunday. I'm looking forward to it, but it means that I don't really have any extra time this weekend. It's pretty late now (11:30pm) and I have a lab tomorrow at 8am, so I think I had better go, but I hope I can find some time later this week to do some serious work.


Mar. 14, 2007

I haven't updated in a long time basically because I've been working on my 15 page paper on Wifi versus Wimax for the past two weeks. It was due yesterday; I emailed it to the professor Monday night. It ended up being 27 pages total: 15 pages of text, 2 pages for the bibliography, and 10 pages for the appendices. I really hope the professor thinks it's okay.

Besides handing in my paper, which was a huge relief (although I still have to give a 30 minutes presentation on it sometime in the next few weeks), I also took a Networks exam and got back my exam for Phonetics yesterday. The Networks exam was absolutely horrendous. The main part of the exam was on FDDI protocol and I obviously hadn't studied enough of it and I cannot tell you what the various values for TTRT, TRT, and THT are supposed to be at various times in a network with multiple stations wanted to send out various amounts of synchronous and asynchronous traffic that, just to complicate things even more, happened to be a part of an Ethernet network operating with its own protocol and data frame sizes. Ugh. It was bad. My phonetics exam went pretty well though. I got 17.25/20, which translates to an A. I made a few small errors, but I was definitely pleased with my grade.

I'll leave it at that for now, since I have my step basic class in about half an hour. I'm going to go take the boat across the river to get there :-). The weather has been amazing lately - 60 and sunny. I hope it stays like this for awhile.


March 27, 2007

I just came back from Bordeaux this weekend. It was really great. It took about 5 hours to get there by train and we (Sam, Sylvia, Katie, and me) stayed in a budget hotel. Sam knew two people currently living in Bordeaux from his French camp, so we got to meet them and hang out with them. Tristan had his parent's car, so he was able to pick us up and drop us off from the train station and also drive us out to St. Emilion on Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning we went to the market, where we bought pain au chocolat and some bananas for breakfast and I also bought a shirt. Then, like I said, we went to St. Emilion in the afternoon. We had a nice, although expensive, lunch (I had an omelette with mushrooms and salad) before heading out to find a place to do a wine tasting (degustation). The first chateau we went to (which was recommended to us at the tourist center) wasn't open for wine tasting because the owner was having guests, so we went to this wine cave instead, where they store a lot of wine until it's ready. I was surprised how big the cave was. Then we tried a bunch of very different wines, 4 or 5 total, and I ended up getting two bottles for my mom and dad when they come next week.

After the wine tasting, we dropped our stuff off at the hotel and headed out for dinner. We ended up eating at this small restaurant that specialized in food from Dakar in Africa. It was really good! I had some kind of beef dish over rice that kind of reminded me of mom's beef stew, but it wasn't really a stew. It was good. We then met Sam's other friend, Maude, and her friends and headed out to a bar to hang out and dance.

When we arrived back in Nantes at the train station, we were completely taken aback at the number of people and the fact that there were kids in costumes and confetti and silly string everywhere. It turns out, there's a big carnival in Nantes this past Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday. There were tons of food stands selling things like candied apples, cotten candy (barbe du papa = daddy's beard), and nutella covered waffles, to name a few. They also had rides set up and there had been a parade with huge floats and people in costume. Unfortunately, we all had our suitcases and needed to get home for dinner, so we couldn't stay, but it looked like fun. It was somewhat tricky getting back - we had to walk kind of far, since the entire center of town was closed due to the carnival. I'll have to see what happens on Wednesday and Saturday.

It was kind of sad going back to a full week of work after such a good time and vacation approaching rapidly. I have two exams this week - Wednesday, French Language, and Thursday, Graphics, so I'm been reading over notes. Hopefully I'll do okay. I was really happy today that someone in my Networks class said he was sorry he had missed my presentation because he heard it was good and that I had "bien maitrise" the information, meaning that I had really known the material since I didn't use notes or a powerpoint presentation, I just wrote on the board.

I really didn't intend on writing this much, but I guess it's good because I haven't updated in awhile. I also realize there is a lack of pictures, and at some point I'll try and get around to fixing that. It's hard to find time though, my schedule keeps me really busy and there's always more that I want to see and do. I'm really having a great time!


Monday, May 7, 2007

A few weeks ago, there was an IES trip to Clisson, a small town fairly close to Nantes. In the morning we spent about an hour wandering around the chateau and then walked around in the nearby park, which was beautifully situated next to a river. In the afternoon, we all went to a winery where one of the owners explained the wine making process (they produced Muscadet) and we got to taste the wine. Here you can view some pictures of the day trip.