Riots

Bonjour tout le monde. I've gotten a lot of questions, comments, and concerns about the violence in France right now. I'm really not sure how American media is portraying it, but from what I can guess I'd say they're blowing it way out of proportion as a way for the ever-misled Bush administration to further prove French "inferiority". I realize the situation has been going on for almost two weeks now, but to give you an idea of how low key it is here, I knew nothing until Sunday. No big newspaper headlines, my host family didn't mention it, nothing in Politics class, nothing. So here's the lowdown...

There has been civil unrest in certain French cities, originating from Paris suburbs following the death of two adolescents who were fleeing from the police and sought refuge in a power station. After climbing the protective fence, the two were electrocuted in a part of the facility. (I still fail to understand how the death of these young men is anyone's fault but their own. Some say they were running from the police, the police deny it, but regardless these two young men chose to climb into a power sub-station in their Parisian suburb... what did they think was going to happen?! Perhaps it was the straw that broke the camel's back or it was just an excuse to take out other anger at the government... but continuing)

This coupled with a particularly violent rhetoric from the Minister of the Interior directed towards the criminal elements of certain communities, that some of the community members have understood as being directed at their communities as a whole, has provoked a rash of incidents. I personally believe that the fact that the majority of the violence is being carried out by immigrant youths stems back to the fires in Parisian illegal housing, which the government didn't do much about, over the summer...

Numerous cars have been burnt as well as symbols of public authority such as schools and police stations. Usually youths on motorscooters ride around and throw Moltov Cocktails into car windows. The "violence" has reached Grenoble, but is restricted to two main areas, both commonly known to be of high immigrant populations. These places are easily avoidable, but car fires and such are only carried out after dark (about 9pm here) so it's really not a problem.

No one in Grenoble seems affected by any of this. My friend Tiffany and I were discussing how, if something like this were happening in the US, there would be armed guards on public transportation and police absolutely everywhere and people would stay in all the time... thus further propagating the sense of fear that those starting the violence wish to spread. However, the French don't really seem all about allowing those who use illegal and dangerous methods to get what they want... (hmmmm... and we wonder why they didn't support the Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq...) So life here hasn't really changed at all, I still have friends going to Paris to visit, and Tiffany and I are headed to Bordeaux this weekend. We're all perfectly safe, and as long as I continue using common sense I won't ever be put in any danger. Hope everyone reading this is having a great week!! Talk to you later!!

For more information and updates in general I reccomend http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4413964.stm but please remember that things happening in suburbs of Paris are MUCH MUCH worse than things here. Also please feel free to e-mail me or snail mail me with any questions, I'd be happy to answer anything.

d-weigel@onu.edu Dana Weigel, 3 rue John Kennedy, 38100 Grenoble, France

Compliment

So I recieved the best compliment in the entire world the other day!! I was at the art supplies store with Tiffany and Aileen (Aileen's quite the artist) and when we went to leave the guy at la caisse asked if Aileen was American. And she said yes, and he asked Tiffany if she was American, and she said yes, and then he said "But you're French, no?" To ME!!! How incredibly cool is that!?!? A Frenchman thought I was FRENCH!!! I haven't been that excited in a while. It really made my day. And my weekend.

The Da Vinci Code

Ok, so Tuesday afternoon I bought The Da Vinci Code because so many people had told me I just had to read it. Now, normally I'm not a fan of books that get a lot of hype but this one actually lived up to it. As a work of fiction it is incredibly well put-together, with very dynamic characters and a fascinating edge-of-your-seat plot. I finished all 589 pages of it in less than three days. It's that good. And it has some really interesting facts in it as well. For instance, did you know that the perimiter of the Louvre in Paris is 3 miles long?! Insanity. So just wanted to reccomend it to everyone. It's worth reading.

Portugal: Part Two

I'm lazy and tired today, so pictures are going up like this because it's a LOT easier.

Sunrise over the ocean

Me in the Atlantic at Lagos

My favorite picture of Tiffany at the beach
The take their feista in Lagos very seriously

Lagos sign

Me and Tiffany at the fort point in Sagres
Me on the rocks at Sagres
The Atlantic at Sagres

Portugal: Part One

Settle in folks, or ignore this all, because it's gonna be a long one...
I have never been so happy in all my life to hear French. I don't think I'll be complaining about not speaking it again for a very very long time. The Portuguese language is essentially the result of a bunch of drunk Spaniards with a lisp deciding to really confuse the rest of the world by making their own language. Or maybe that's just my interpretation. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
DAY ONE: Tiffany and I left Thursday afternoon for Portugal from the Grenoble bus station where there's a RyanAir shuttle to the airport. In true French style, they overbooked the bus and Tiffany and I had to shove ourselves on it so that we weren't left standing on the sidewalk as our luggage and only way to the airport drove away. This should have been an indicator that the trip would be interesting... the flight all the way to London and then London to Porto. It was raining and we decided that since it was already late it was probably best to just take a taxi to our hostel. The taxi driver didn't know the address and had to ask someone else and then there was a traffic jam for approximately 4 minutes, 3 of which our driver spent laying on the horn. Somehow this seems to sum up Porto, Portugal pretty well. It's not a city I reccomend. We got to our hostel and checked in, it was a really really nice place (though it smells EXACTLY like Claire's (friend from high school) house which brought back a lot of memories and was nice. We went out to ask where to eat and there was another tenant there... and Brazilian man who offered to take us to the restaurant down the street. Probably not the best idea in the world (going off down a dark road late at night to an unknown place with a man we don't know) but we were really hungry so off we went. In Portugal if you tell someone "Io nao fallo portuges" (I don't speak Portuguese) they immedeately respond in Portuguese. To make a long story short, we saw a million pictures of his baby, were repeatedly assured he wasn't married and he claimed to work for Brazilian television. Then he found a Portuguese man who spoke English and could translate so he asked for our numbers and asked to take us out for the night, we lied like crazy and ran back to the hostel.
Day TWO: Left hostel ridiculously early to catch a train. Rode the train forever and ended up in the wrong city! Ooops. Luckily there was a train going to our city in like 5 minutes and they smiled and nodded at the stupid Americans and let us use the old tickets. We got to Lagos (say it Lah-goosh) around 8 and miraculously found our hostel where she informed us we had signed up for a shared bathroom room but she could change it if we wanted to pay extra. Luckily we're cheap, because the "shared bathroom room" was an apartment. On the waterfront. With a kitchen. And a balcony. And we were the only people there all weekend!! Talk about amazing luck. For $12 a person per night we got our own APARTMENT!!! It was incredible. Also, we had NO idea but this past weekend just happened to be essentially the 4th of July type celebration for this little town. Which meant there was a huge festival, a fireworks display (that we had a PERFECT view of from our balcony) and all sorts of nifty stuff going on all weekend. Gorgeous town too, right on the ocean, with palm trees and blooming flowers and everything.
Day THREE: Left Lagos mid morning for a day in Sagres (say it Sah-gre-sh) which is the southwestern most point of the European continent. We frolicked in the Atlantic, walked along the coast, explored the fort, rented bikes to explore more... it was just a really awesome day!! Got back to Lagos really late after waiting for the bus for two hours (Portugual makes French public transportation look early...). We had been planning to go out on the town but ended up falling asleep to a movie on tv (American film, Portuguese subtitles... really good way to learn a language actually).
Day FOUR: Slept in til about noon then got up and explored Lagos all day. Another fort, another beach, went to the festival for a while, found a convertor at a Portuguese Dollar Store, went out to eat at a nice Portuguese restaurant and fell asleep at like 9pm.
Day FIVE: I ended up waking up early enough to go watch the sun rise over the ocean... pretty much one of the coolest things I've ever done. Then we went to get our train tickets back to Porto. For some reason the train connections were all REALLY close this time and we litterally had to RUN onto one train as it was pulling out of the station. Insanity. Got back to Porto early and tried exploring, but it's a really slummy scary town and after getting lost for over an hour and not finding a SINGLE restaurant we succumbed to McDonald's (I'm so sorry everyone, I hate myself for it too) and then got lost trying to find our way back to our hostel for about 2.5 hours. Again, DO NOT VISIT PORTO!! Stayed up talking and watching random American TV shows with Portuguese subtitles, being dorks and analyzing the language til way too late.
Day SIX: Woke up at 6:30 in the morning and checked out, where the man told us to take the subway to the airport. Considering is was approx. a million times cheaper to do so, we found the subway station, asked a worker to explain ticketing, and got very clear directions from him on which lines and which stops to take to get to the airport. Unfortunately he was wrong. So we had to backtrack, take a bus which reeked of urine, run across five lanes of highway traffic with our luggage, run up 4 flights of stairs and get to the ticket counter only about 5 minutes before it closed. This was the beginning of the 'Trip Home Fiasco of 2005". We got to London, but a combination of the flight being a bit late, our terminal being a million miles away from every other terminal, luggage not coming, me not knowing which luggage was Tiffany's, Tiffany getting confused and getting in the wrong line, and RyanAir ground staff having an attitude problem forced us to miss our connecting flight back to France. Eventually we found another flight into France, but not the city we had train tickets for, and not Grenoble. 2 hours in London Stansted Airport and a two hour flight later we were in the middle of a cornfield somewhere near Limoges(no, we'd never heard of it either) stranded at the airport. There was no bus to get into town and a bad combination of age and driver's license validity made it impossible for us to rent a car... so one very expensive cab ride later we were at the train station in Limoges. Where we found out our other tickets were non-refundable, and the only train to Grenoble left at midnight... 6 hours away. So we hung in Limoges train station for 6 hours (it wasn't really IN the city, so we couldn't go tour or anything) and then got on a very weird sleeper car where we were packed in with four other people, two of which snored and someone really smelled... Waited in the Lyon train station for another hour at 6:30 in the morning and then took a final train to Grenoble, but it got there late so we ended up not making it to class.... Thus, we arrived, safe and sound, back in Grenoble, 26 hours after leaving our hostel in Porto. Whew.
Overall I give trip an 8 out of 10 though, because it was wonderfully relaxing, great views, totally different, and now we have a million stories to tell the grandkids. Glad to be back home speaking French though. That's all for now. Over and out!!

South of France

Me on the rocks at the Meditteranean Sea!!

That's me, Tiffany, and Aileen sitting on top of the church in Stes Maries de la Mer.


OK, to add to the suspense of finding out how I got mauled let me preface this all by saying that for those of you who found my incredible frustration funny I recommend that you sit down because you’ll probably find my near death experience so utterly uproarious that being closer to the ground will probably make your fall easier. So here was my weekend in a nutshell:
Classes ended Thursday afternoon and Tiffany and I decided to make it a night out on the town with some other girls from school. 9:30 at night to 6:30 in the morning so it was certainly a night. A little Latin dancing lessons, meeting people from three different continents at the bar and some hard core dancing at the discotheque it was a most fabulous evening. Woke up Friday at about 4:00 so nothing much happened that day.
Saturday morning bright and early the whole CEA group met to go to the south of France for the weekend. On the way down we stopped at the Pont du Gare, which you may have heard of. It’s part of the old roman aqueducts that ran through France way back when.

That's the group, minus me and Tiffany qui prennent de photos.

There’s no mortar or anything holding those stones together, it’s all just a whole lotta physics holding it all up. I don’t really understand it because I paid as little attention in high school physics as humanly possible and now I avoid the entire side of campus that involves math and science, but it’s pretty cool overall.
Then it was on to Aigues-Mortes, which is a tiny little walled-in city on the southern coast. There was the finale of a month long celebration there last weekend and we were there to check it all out. The city has a definite Spanish and African influence though the residents are all most unquestionably white. We even got to meet the CEA kids who are in the Aix-en-Provence group.
Anywho… there’s bull running and an arena for people to “play” with the bulls and when we got there we all headed for the arena. It was just me, Tiffany, two of the girls from Aix, Mac and Phil. The guys were down on the arena floor and there really wasn’t anything goin’ on. No bulls were out so we were all just talking. Let me explain the arena a little. The bull pen was off in one corner and when they let a bull out there were two areas the bull could head for: the inner circle or the outer ring. A split rail fence separated the two so even if the bull was coming at you all you had to do was jump the fence and you were totally safe. Ok… let’s back this up a little and go back to a moment on the bus when Patrick (our on-site director) said “The bulls are all old and pretty scrawny and their horns are cut off, so it’s not really that dangerous. It’s not like you can get hurt, but officially I kinda have to tell you I don’t recommend it.” After considering this I present to you Exhibit A.

Perhaps my vision fails me, but I ask you if that bull doesn’t look really big, really horny, and incredibly frightening. Ok. So they let one bull out and he was runnin’ around and nothing was really happening so Megan, from the Aix group, and I decided to go down on the floor because when else in your life are you going to get a chance to say you were like a matador, right? So now down there we’re the only girls surrounded by a bunch of foreign tourists and drunken French guys… do we see where this is going? We get down there and we’re just watching this one already rather tired bull run around the opposite side of the arena when the announcer begins talking in rather rapid French (yes again dear God how I wish I spoke French…). We managed to make out something about letting out another bull and a finale. Next thing Megan and I know there’s another bull in the arena. Two bulls? We can handle that, there’s two of us, and two of them. Wait; wait… why are all the people in the stands yelling at us? Ok… apparently I need to concentrate on learning to recognize when someone is speaking about a singular article or multiples, because they had let ALL of the bulls into the arena at the same time for the finale. ALL OF THEM. We’re talking about 5 very large, very pissed bulls running around in an enclosed area where small children are setting off firecrackers and drunken men are waving shirts. Suddenly this had become, hands down no questions asked, the all-time worst idea I had ever had. And then it got worse. Megan and I are standing on one side of the fence and we see two bulls coming at us, but they’re on the other side. Unfortunately there are two equally large bulls coming directly at us on OUR side of the fence, so no matter which side of the fence we choose to panic on we’re screwed. (Pardon the language) Donc, I present to you Exhibit B (with thanks to Tiffany for worrying so much about my well-being that she caught part of the episode on camera).
I realize that this picture just makes it look like I’m spazzing out, but those two bulls running in front of us had twins behind them on the side of the fence I’m running around on. And the orange sweater I’m wearing? Yeah, like I said, it wasn’t one of my best ideas. Luckily the bulls decided I wasn’t worth mauling and they turned the opposite direction. Megan and I then ran faster than I thought I could run back to the stands and climbed as high as humanly possible where we sat together and shook for the next 20 minutes while all the French people in the stands laughed hilariously at us. Good times, good times.
The rest of the night consisted of more bull fighting, which I stayed away from though I heard that people were much more intoxicated and one man mooned the bull and the crowd while the announcer decided “C’est pas grave.” We’re not sure if he was referring to the situation or the general state of the man’s derriere, but either way it’s the best usage of that quite popular phrase we’ve heard. There was also a concert in the town center late at night. Everyone in the square was rather drunk and the band was all 30-somethings Frenchmen who played American music. Michael Jackson, Franz Ferdinand, Depeche Mode, the Killers… it was a really unusual combination and the music was so loud that a block away in our hotel room we could hear everything and the windowpanes shook with the bass. What a night.
The next day we went to Saintes Maries de la Mer for the Catholic religious festival to the Marys they had there. And while I have lots of friends who are Catholic and I in no way think the Catholic religion is lesser or anything of that nature… people here are a little creepy. I present to you, the readers, Exhibit C… creepy statue in weird costumes in the basement of a medieval church.
The best part of the day was that I got to see the Mediterranean. Not only did I get to see it, I went into it!!! Tiffany and I spent quite a long time just walking on the beach, and while the water was much much colder than I had expected, it was really nice once your feet went numb enough not to notice.

Me and Tiff in the water
The view from the beach

And that was my weekend. In other news, the French students are staging a grève this week because the price of university in France has been raised to 200 Euro a year. I feel like smacking them all… I’m pretty sure that students and parents in the US everywhere would celebrate if they just paid 280 USD a year for a university education. Oh, and here’s a picture of my framily (french + family = framily)… so see mom? They do exist.

Tiffany and I are off to Portugal tomorrow for a mini well-deserved vacation. We’ll be staying in Lagos so next week I’ll probably have more incredible stories to tell you all. Have a superb rest of the week and a fantabulous weekend as well!

The shadiest thing I have ever done...

So Tiffany and I decided to buy a cell phone today so that we can actually get in touch with each other. Patrick had one cell phone but that was it, so we had to buy another. He told us about the Arab place at the end of the road that sells stolen re-worked cell phones. We were really only concerned that it be cheaper than cheap so we headed to the store, under the pretext that we were Canadiennes. So we got there and asked about cheap cell phones and he pulled one out of a drawer and said it was about 50 Euro. Then he said we'd need the Sim Card which was 35 Euro, but just for us he'd make it 30. Then he grabs a very obviously used charger off the wall and says it's another 10 Euro. (Everyone doing the math here?) So he sets up the phone a little bit and then hands it to us and says, in French, "That's about... oh... let's say 80 Euro. So we pay him and to get us change he goes into his fannypack and gets out this HUGE checkbook and starts going though it. Inside he's got two passports, American money, Euros, some random other kind of cash... Like I said, it was just the shadiest thing I've ever been a part of. Exciting though!!

Stories from the weekend including pictures coming tomorrow!

Cognte Answers

Sorry this took so long....
actuellement - currently
chance - luck
demander - to ask
librarie - a bookstore
sensible - sensitive
sympathique - nice
travailler - to work
occidentale - western (referring to the western world)

Check back on Wednesday for exciting stories about me almost getting mauled, vibrating windowpanes AND MORE!!!!

Quick Notes

New pictures up on the other website: http://community.webshots.com/album/442645186XqgRxn
The end of page two and page three should all be new. Check it out.

Great quote yesterday: "Describe France in one word. What is it? Huh? Huh? You're wrong... it's ridiculous."

On to real blogging:

“Seinfeld” created the man-ssiere and the puffy shirt. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy introduced the term metrosexual. Ralph Lauren or some other high and mighty designer introduced pink shirts for men. And in France we’ve got the man-purse. Men here pretty much always carry a purse with them, though it’s not like a regular American woman’s purse. It’s a tiny little thing, probably no bigger than a wallet on a really thin and really long string. They’re a fashion statement and a status statement. You can buy YSL and D&G and all sorts of stuff. And it’s not the homosexual men that wear these, it’s the straight ones. It’s deifinitely a “cool” guy thing so do I guess. Although the men over here do tend to be a lot more feminine than the guys back in the States (perhaps this is why American women think they’re so fabulous?) They’re really into the PDA thing and they take a lot of pride in their appearance, from the outfit they’re wearing to perfectly placing every strand of hair on their heads. If any of you guys back home would like a metro-sexual purse just let me know, I’d be more than happy to get one for you. *wink*

Paragliding

I finally did it! I finally got an appointment that wasn't cancelled and the weather was fabulous so I got to run off a cliff! It was a amazing. I definitely had my eyes closed for the actual off the cliff part of it but after that I was in awe. It's the best money I've ever spent and it was probably the coolest thing I've ever done. The views were amazing, especially because there was a view of Mont Blanc while we were in the air and the fall leaves and everything. I got an extra long flight, actually twice the length of what I paid for, because the winds were really good so we were able to stay up really long. The landing wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, mainly because it was really fast, but because we had already been up for so long he tried to get us down really fast so we did this spiral downward which was cool at first, but I got really really dizzy/motion sick after a minute or two and that was not particularly grand. One thing that both Tiffany (who went with me to laugh and take pictures) and I thought was unusual was the lack of paperwork. I walked in and wrote down my first name and address and then walked out. No signing my life away or promising that if I was injured it wasn't their fault, no proof of insurance or anything. And then when we walked down to the jump off area he just handed me a harness and assumed I could get myself into it. Then he said "When I say three, run forward." and we were off. Very unlike the US, but very very nice. Enjoy the pictures!

Me flying way up in the air. Thanks for takin' pictures Tiffany!!
The takeoff area.

Me getting ready.

Cognates... or are they?

Ok, so here's some French words. Think you know what they mean? Leave a comment with your guesses and I'll put the REAL answers up later. NO CHEATING! Don't look it up, just see if you know it:
actuellement
chance
demander
librarie
sensible
sympathique
travailler
occidentale

Finally,,,

So it only took six weeks but Grenoble finally feels like home and I finally don't feel like a complete idiot 24/7! Here's the highlights:
- Made a phone call to someone where I spoke French, they spoke French and we actually understood each other. This may not seem that great to some of you, but for those of you who have ever tried to make a phone call in your non-native language you'll understand how incredibly exciting it is.
- Asked ma mere francaise for help with my homework because I was getting really frustrated at understanding NONE of it, and she didn't get it either! This was exciting because it means that I'm not just easily confused by things I should know, and it means that my Grammaire prof really is as crazy as we all thought she was.
- I caught myself mumbling to myself en francais. The fact that even my subconcious is starting to think in French is exciting because that means hopefully my actual conciousness will catch onto the trend.

In other random news I heard "I Got You Babe" on the bus today because the batteries on my CD player died (please battery charger replacement get here soon!!!). It made a small part of me die that the French play that on public transportation. Are we trying to make people suicidal? Also, I was told that this woman spoke English... which was kinda like saying chickens can fly. Technically they can but only for about 10 seconds and it takes a lot of effort to get off the ground. I don't tell people I speak French, I say I speak a little bit. I'd rather underexaggerate and have them assume I'm stupid, because they speak slower that way. Europeans seem to get that foreigners understand things slower... not louder. And to all you Americans please remember that an increase in the volume at which you speak to a foreigner does not correspond with an increase in their comprehension, rather it increases their frustration and disgust with you. Tiffany and I decided that while French people are definitely thinner than Americans they aren't more fit. There are very very very very very few obese people here. I could probably count the number I've seen on one hand, but the skinny people look more anorexic than in-shape. I think that's about it for today. I know that's all really random, mais, c'est la vie. A bientot...

Fumeurs

So I know Europeans have a million bad reputations in the US and one of them is that they all smoke like chimneys, right? In the bigger cities I’m sure it’s more prevalent, but then again if you go to NYC in the states you’ll feel like you’re smoking a giant cigarette yourself. Grenoble isn’t really all that bad. If you go to a bar or a restaurant that isn’t separated you’ll more than likely smell like it, but almost all the restaurants I’ve been in have a rather distinct smoking and non-smoking section and government buildings are all smoke free. Even out on the street there aren’t a huge number of people smoking. I think part of it is because Grenoble is really known for their outdoor activites (hmm… could it be because they’re in the middle of three mountain ranges and have two rivers running through town?) and a lot more people here are health concious. Three things about smoking here though. It’s very social and totally random people will start a conversation with “Avez-vous un cigarette?” and even if you don’t have one, sometimes it was just a way to say hello and meet you. A LOT of people roll their own cigarettes, you can buy the papers and the tobacco separately and roll your own. Seeing as I don’t smoke, I don’t really understand if this is better or cheaper or what, but I haven’t seen anyone in the US doing it. Lastly, and Claire you’ll love this as much as I do, the French do not mess around about smoking. There are no tiny little notices that say some random “Surgeon General” suggests you not smoke or anything… No. There are GIANT stickers, and I mean like take-up-half-the-package-of-cigarettes/tobacco HUGE stickers, that just say “Fumer tue” in big bold letters so that it ends up looking like “FUMER TUE”. The translation of that is simply “Smoking kills”. I like that.

Beaucoup de Photos - Finally

What a day!! Today was the CUEF (my school) sponosored trip to Le Retour des Alpages in Annecy. We left at 8:30 am, which makes it the earliest Saturday morning for me in a very very very long time, my entire family was still asleep when I crept out at 8am to be there on time. Lots of American students, but I did meet a guy from Paris and the two girls I hung with both speak very good French as well so I did get to practice quite a bit of French. On the way there we stopped at Chambéry, which was a surprise for me since I guess I didn’t read about the trip very well and didn’t know we were going there. It was a beautiful little town and we got an hour to walk around and just kinda check it out. The church was the only thing we really had time to go in, but following with my obsession all things cathedral, I was perfectly ok with that.

Chambery. The flag is the flag of Savoie.

Then a pit stop at Aix-les-Bains, which is on one of the largest Alpine lakes. We had like 20 minutes here, just enough to get out and walk to the end of the pier and take lots of pictures and breathe in the really fresh air and take in the view. It was definitely more of a summer tourist place, but beautiful nonetheless.The lake at Aix-les-bains.

Me on the pier at Aix-les-Bains.

And then on to our final destination of the day: Annecy et Le Retour des Alpages. It’s a one day festival that celebrates all things Savoie. Savoie is a part of France/Germany/Italy that was, at one time, autonomous but the three larger countries decided to split it among themselves and essentially it got split along the lines of who spoke more of which language. This festival was incredible. Very French and German. There was food and music and dancers and animals and vendors and anything else that might possibly have anything to do with la vie Savoie. It got really really crowded after about 14h so I was glad we were leaving soon actually. We spent five hours there and it was fabulous. By we I mean myself and Irene and Debbie. They’re both from Calvin College in Michigan. Irene is from Wisconsin and Debbie is from Korea, but spent the vast majority of her life in the Congo, where her parents were missionaries. It was really interesting to hear her talk about her life. But back to Annecy. The town itself is centered around the old village which is very picturesque. Lots of churches in town, which I loved, and un château de le XIIIe siècle. The pictures really say more than I could, so enjoy!

Me in front of the Chateau d'Annecy.

Woman in traditional old Savoie attire... in stark contrast to the very modern woman next to her.

Like I said, it got really crowded. That's during the parade.

The lake that Annecy is famous for and a few of its many sailboats.

Musicians who played all day. Too bad I didn't know the songs or I could have sung along like everyone else. I did get video of them though...

Group Picture

CEA sponsored wine and cheese tasting at the apartment on Wednesday. Official analysis? I hate wine but I LOVE cheese. It was a good time all around.
Back row: Mac, Phil, Laura, Me
Front row: Tiffany, Aileen, Amanda, Brandi, Sunny

(Aileen got really drunk and we only had tastes of wine... guess she's a super cheap date.)

It's Officially Fall

Fridays mean no classes which in turn means sleeping in really really late. I got up at noon this morning... afternoon? and did homework for a while before heading out on my bike. And yes, I'm calling it my bike. Technically it's CEA's bike but since my parents paid for me to be a part of CEA it's MY bike. Anywho... so I head out and it seems that overnight autumn has officially hit Grenoble. For the past week it's been overcast and grey all the time, really rather depressing, and it drizzled really often. But today the sun is shining and the clouds are all gone. Without the clouds the tops of the tallest mountains are revealed and they are covered in snow. It's amazing to ride to school with views of snow-covered mountain peaks in the distance. And the leaves are falling... they never really turned colors and graced the landscape with a cornucopia of autumnal rainbow, but now they're on the ground and the crunching sounds and smell of fallen leaves fills the air. It's really pretty incredible and I can't wait for the weekend to officially start tomorrow. My weekend plans, for the first time, have held up so look out for stories and pictures on Sunday!! Have a great weekend everyone!

Yay!

I got a bike! I'm really just borrowing it from some CEA people for the weekend, but they never use it and I think I just might happen to continually forget to bring it back to their apartment. Ooops! It's really nice to have a lot more mobility, though riding in town you pretty much just drive on the street with traffic and it can be pretty nerve wracking. I decided to attempt and find the path from the university to my house on the way home tonight. I knew it existed, but had no idea where it was. So... I just followed the stream of bikers and there it was! It takes me 20 min to get from the bike rack right outside my college to the front door of my house. It takes 30 minutes by bus. This means I can sleep in for 10 minutes. Therefore it looks like I'm joining the ranks of the bikers and making Lance my idol. It's a really old bike and it's purple and the brakes squeal like crazy, but it works, so what do I care? And there's even a light on the front with a little wheel powered generator! How cute is that? Yup, really excited about my bike. I'll try and get a picture of me and my bike up here soon. Hope everything's good for everyone reading this. Leave some love people!! It's been dwindling!

New Look

New month, new look. Let me know if you absolutely hate it and I'll try and find a better one. Just a quick thought here as I have this incredibly long break between classes. There are three South Korean girls and a Chinese girl in my Grammar class and they absolutely amaze me. Not only do they speak and write French but to do so they had to learn a completely different system of writing and speaking and everything. And they don't have all the cognates that French/English speakers do. Yeah, that's just incredible to me. Guess I should stop complaining.

La Greve

So here's what I think happened a few weeks ago. Two Frenchmen got together and the following conversation ensued:
"Hey, what are you doing on the 4th of October?"
"Nothin'. You?"
"Not much. You wanna strike that day?"
"Sure! Why not?"
And so they did. The entire transportation system of Grenoble went on strike today. Which means no busses or trams (there are few but you have to wait so long for them to come and they're so crowded it's not worth it) so I couldn't get to class. So I woke up late and walked for an hour into town and now I'm at the internet cafe avoiding the blocks and blocks and blocks of peaceful protestors. They're all just chillin in the streets with their signs. Mainly just talking. I think they just wanted a day off. Not that I mind. Didn't really want to go to class anyway. And the walk up here was interesting. Found some cool new places to check out. But yeah. I asked my family about the strike (la greve) and they said it's been planned for a while, which is why it was adverstised and everything. If you're going to go on strike you have to go to the Prefecture (like town hall) and declare it at least a week beforehand. Crazy French. Well I should probably start walkin' back home so I can make it there by dinner! Laters!

Pictures

My mom asked if the leaves change colors around here. The haven't really in town, but up in the mountains (like this picture taken at St. Hilare du Touvet) they're slowly starting to change.
Chillin' in Aileen's dorm room one night to watch Chicago. Sunny, Brandi and Phil there.
View of my neigborhood. I live just up ahead on the right.