Oops. Just signed on to write another entry and I realized that rather than posting this one I had just saved it. Sorry for the delay…. 

Wow. Time has been going by so fast here. We have less than two months and there are still so many things that I want to do yet I never find myself feeling bored at all. I do seem to be having trouble finding the time to blog though. Sorry for that. But now it’s the beginning of vacation and I have no plans for the rest of the day so I figured it was the perfect opportunity for an update.

The weather here in Besace has been amazing. Some friends of ours who study at the Fac (the regular university) showed us this park that’s pretty close to where all my classes are. It’s so amazing. It’s right on the Doubs which is the river that surrounds the city on three sides. Now that the weather is nice though it’s filled with people and there’s almost always a drum circle going on and a whole group of people who juggle. It really makes me appreciate being here. I feel so lucky to be given this opportunity. I suppose there are parks like that certain places in the US but the point is that there’s one here with me and it’s a place to enjoy the sunshine and sit with friends. It just has such a feeling of community about it.

And other things are going well. Last weekend there was a trip organized through the CLA to visit four castles in the Loire Valley. We left at around 6 in the morning saturday and stayed on the bus for a long 7 hours before we reached Amboise where our hostel was. We only had a little time to settle in before we headed off to the first Castle of the trip, Chenonceau. It was my first trip to a castle so I was pretty excited. The whole thing is built over the river and is absolutley gorgeous. It was packed with tourists though. I suppose that’s understandable as it is one of the most famous castles. It was built in the fifteenth century and has been used continuously since then. In WWI it was a hospital for wounded soldiers and it WWII it served as a way to sneak from occupied territory to unoccupied territory.

The grounds were gorgeous too and it was such a beautiful day. I walked around the gardens and along the river and enjoyed the sunshine until it was time to leave. We went back to the hostel where they served us dinner and we spent the rest of the night wandering around the town of Amboise. It’s so small and beautiful but completely dominated by a huge castle in the middle of town. But that was for the next day.

So we woke up and our first stop for the day was Azay-le-rideau. It was smaller than Chenonceau but beautiful nonetheless. Only one floor was really open for viewing and we didn’t have a guide or anything so again we finished early and spent the morning laying around the fields outside. We went back to Amboise and had a chance to get some lunch before a guided tour of the castle that was right there.

It was interesting to have a guided tour but not as exciting because it seemed like less of an adventure. At all the other places we got to explore but at Amboise we just had to follow the guide. We learned some cool stuff though about the symbols that were everywhere and the political marriages that took place and such. The grounds, of course, were also beautiful. That’s actually the place that Leondardo DaVinci requested to be buried. His house was in the same town but a little farther down. When the tour was finished I went down there with one of my friends.

His house was soooooo amazing. The first part, the actual house part, is not that interesting though it was sort of cool to see where he worked and developed all of his amazing ideas. The basement was a little cooler since there were models of a bunch of the stuff he had invented and sketched. It was the grounds that were the best. There were working models of tons of his inventions. A paddle boat you could take out on a small lake, water pumps, bridges, cannons, geometrical forms, copies of his paintings hanging from trees and even a lifesize version of his flying machine. He certainly was a fascinating man.

That was followed up by a wine tasting in the cave (basement) of the castle and then back to the hostel for dinner. I was so tired at that point from so much walking around that all I could bring myself to do was read a little before passing out until the next morning. When we woke up we had to pack since it was our last day and we needed to check out of the hostel. So we loaded onto the bus and headed to the last and largest castle, Chambord.

I can’t even begin to describe this castle. It was literally breathtaking. We didn’t have a tour guide for this one but it might have helped since it was so huge getting lost was easy. It took a long time to see everything and even then there was a whole section of the second floor that was closed off for renovations. It amazed me to read some of the stuff about it too. Like that Louis XIV only even went there once or something ridiculous like that. I mean, I suppose he was Louis XIV but still, I can’t imagine possessing something that magnificent and only going there once.

As usual the day was finished off by sitting around on the huge lawns and enjoying the (still) beautiful weather. There were bikes and boats available to rent but we didn’t really have enough time to do either. I can’t wait though because my family is coming to visit me when school gets out and we’re going to go back there. I really want to rent a bike and ride around the grounds. They’re huge and gorgeous. It really is like a fairy tale. It kind of makes me wish I had been the Queen of France. Of course I would want to have avoided the whole beheading of the monarchy thing, but to live in a Castle like that would certainly be a dream…..

Well I don’t have too much time to update, litterature class is in 20 minutes. But I at least want to finish up about my wonderful vacation.

The last part of our day in Nice was spent shopping and sitting in the hotel lobby since it started to rain and we were pretty exhausted anyway. We headed to the train station early and when we boarded, the entire train was completely empty. It was the weirdest feeling. Eventually two people got on and then a few more at other stops but it was still not a lot of people. There were two guys in front of us though who we heard speaking English who were also going to Barcelona and they ended up helping us out a lot since our tickets were a little messed up. But we made it into Spain and transferred trains. It was perfect timing too because the first part of our ride was along the sea and it just so happened that the sun was rising just as we were going by. It was probablmy one of the most gorgeous sights I’ve seen.

We eventually got into Barcelona and realized that someone (not me) had forgotten to bring the address of our hostel. The guys we met on the train pointed us in the general direction of where it might be and we parted ways. So we wandered around the streets for a little while and we found our biggest challenge….no one in Spain speaks English. I guess in some parts they do but in Barcelona there is such a strong sense of regional heritage that the second language for everyone is Catalan. Interesting though a little unfortunate for us. Luckily we found an internet cafe and were able to get the address of our hostel which ended up not being too far from where we were.

By the time we had settled in and were ready to head out again; it was raining. We had been planning on wondering a bit but instead decided to find some Museums. We ended up at the History of the City Museum as it was the cheapest but it turned out to be really interesting. The entire basement was a reconstruction of the city in roman times built with real ruins.

It was still raining when we left and it continued through most of the night so we stayed at the hostel which we thought would be boring but wasn’t at all. It was amazing to meet so many people. In our room there were two sisters from Slovakia and a German guy who all spoke English. We went out into the common area and played cards and met some other people like this group of guys from England who I actually understood less than the people who spoke English as a second language.

Day two was gorgeous so we decided to do our outdoor things. I had really wanted to go to the Park Guell which was designed by Gaudi as his Utopia so we went there first. It was gorgeous. It’s on a hill overlooking the city and there are tons of palm trees and huge plants. I dopn’t even know how to describe it. Almost everything is done in ceramic mosaic tiling. If you’ve never seen it it is necessary that you do a google image search right now even though it’s nothing compared to what it’s like in real life.

The rest of the day was spent exploring the Sagrada Familia which is a gorgeous church (another thing by Gaudi) that was started 1882 and is still being worked on today. It was weird to get there and have it still be under construction. It was so beautiful though. It looked like a drip sand castle and had tons of sculptures and stuff. There was a lot of symbolism and such in the design and it was all explained in the basement museum area but none of the signs were in English or French so we had to try to read them in Spanish which kind of worked some of the time. It was still good fun though.

That night we cooked dinner in the hostel and walked down to the Marina and looked at boats and the water. It was interesting to do but not so much to talk about so I’ll just skip over to lunch the next day. We decided that if we were in Spain it was necessary that we eat the traditional food, paella. We found a restaurant that had it and went in. The traditional version is mixted seafood which I chickened out and didn’t get though my friend did. When it came though, there were prawns on it. Full prawns. Like eyes and antanes and legs prawns. I was happy with ,y vegetable one but it was still good fun to watch my friend struggle to get the meat out making a huge mess in the process. 

After that was the beach. It had been warmer earlier in the day but by the time we got there it was windy and kind of cold. I stood in the water and laid on the beach and played in the sand. But now it’s time for me to go. So let me just quickly say that we left and took another long train ride (12 hours) and arrived home at 5:30 the next morning. Exhausting but an unforgettable experience without a doubt!

…with Nice. It is, without a doubt, the most amazing place I’ve ever been. Seriously. I’m here right now with SUNY. We had a vacation this week and the program paid for us to come here for the last few days of Carnaval. It was a long train ride but the second part of it was all along the Mediterranean so it was gorgeous. We got here Saturday afternoon and had until the next morning free. So after grabbing some quick food we all headed down to the beach. Walking along the streets was amazing. I didn’t realize how much of a real city Nice is. I thought it was just tons of beach houses (which is does have a lot of) but there are so many stores and little boutique shops.

When we got to the beach we realized that we were right in the middle of the carnaval. There were tons of people and floats getting erady for a parade so we hung out for a while and then went up to where everything was going on. There was a Ferris Wheel right in the middle though so we went on and that’s  how we saw the first part of the parade. When we got down and stood on the street, it soon became apparent that we were lacking two essential items, confetti and silly string. I am not joking at all, EVERYONE had them and you aimed at anyone, even perfect strangers.

So we had an amazing time getting in silly string fights with small children and watching the parade and dancing around the streets. And the parade was really gorgeous. There were people wearing the most amazing costumes and elaborate make up and huge floats and baloons. And even though it was a huge thing there weren’t any barriers or anything so you could just run into the middle of the parade and have someone take you picture and there were plenty of people doing that though I was a little too scared.

The next morning we met up with the director of our program and she gave us a tour of the old part of the city. It was nice to get to see it during the day. The architecture here is so different from Besançon. Someone was saying it looked a lot like California. At any rate, we learned about how old the city is (it was founded by the Greeks) and about a lot of the regional traditions and specialties. We ended in this huge outdoor market the first half of which was all flowers. The weather here is so nice and there’s tons of citrus so we were walking through and it almost felt like paradise with tropical flowers and fruit trees everywhere. And the second part was a farmers market with stuff like naturally grown pineapples and oranges and incredibly delicious strawberries. We also ate this traditional food called socca which is chickpeas, olive oil, salt and water ground together and fried into a crepe looking thing. It was amazing. Then we had free time.

The first stop, of course, was the beach. It was beautiful. Totally clear blue. A little cold but we only put our feet in anyway and then laid out on the beach which has almost no sand, only rocks. But it was ok. Much better than being someplace cold and cloudy…

After that we hiked up to this park on a hill with a post card perfect view of the sea and the city. Beautiful but tiring. We decided it was time for lunch and it was at this point that we discovered the biggest problem with Nice, prices. Every restaurant we looked at was 15 to 20 euros for the most basic thing. We had to walk around for about an hour before we found something for 7 euros. A little ridiculous? Yes. But what can you do?

So we finished eating and headed back over to meet the director. We had gotten tickets to sit in the stands next to the last parade. It turned out to be pretty much the same as the night before but there were a few new things. I didn’t think it was as fun though because we couldn’t run around spraying people. Plus I was pretty tired from all the sun I had been getting. So when it was finally over I headed back to our hotel and slept until dinner time.

After dinner we went back to the beach because it was the last day or Carnaval so they were going to burn the King of the Carnival who, this year, was Jacques Chirac in honor of his last year as President. They had a huge statue thing of him on a boat in the Sea and they lit it on fire and had tons of fire works. It was gorgeous. The perfect end to the night.

The next morning was free and shopping was done before we met up with the director again. She had organized a driving tour for us and we got to go to a few different places including Sean Connerys house! OK, we just drove by that but it was still pretty cool and prompted much quoting from SNLs Celebrity Jeapordy. We also went to this tniy village on top of a mountain called Eze. It was so pretty and old and had amazing views. After that, we headed to…..Monoco!!!!! It was so cool. I didn’t eralize how close it was, or how rich. We looked at a real estate place and a four room apartment starts at around 5 million euros. Crazy. Though it’s so pretty it’s easy to see how quickly those prices could sky rocket. But all that walking aruond was pretty tiring so we didn’t do much else for the rest of the day.

And that brings us to this morning. The trip has officially ended so we have the rest of the week to do what we want. Me and two other girls are going to Barcelona but our train doesn’t leave until tonight so right now we’re just hanging out around Nice trying to do as much as we can before we have to go. Sigh. I am determined to come back here at some point. It just has to happen……

So last Friday we ate at the Citadelle. It was, possibly, the most amazing meal of my life (sorry Mom…). Seven courses of pure delicousness. There were two main actors there who acted as our hosts and then all the servers were dressed up too. Before every course it was announced and presented to us. Plus the main actors did random things like playing the harp and having a fake duel.
It was so nice to eat something good. Like I’ve said before, it’s really expensive to eat good food that’s actually french. Plus it was good entertainment, though we haven’t really been lacking in that. It’s amazing the things you can find to entertain yourself without having the internet and a tv in your room. I feel like I don’t even know what I’m doing all the time but it’s all going by so quickly. There’s so much walking around town and exploring and meeting new people. I love how everything here is new so even doing things that are normal at home like buying groceries is exciting.
And traveling….I haven’t really done any yet but we’re getting ready too. SUNY organized a trip for our group to Nice at the very beginning of March for three days and then after that we have five days on our own. It’s so hard to choose something to do though…there are just so many options! I’m looking into going to Corsica but there aren’t a lot of hostels there so it’s pretty expensive. There’s also a possibility of Sardinia or the mainland of Italy. I just need to get all this research done. I’ll figure it out soon though. Hopefully….

Well I am currently sitting in the computer lab at the Centre pour Linguistiques Appliquées trying to get used to this keyboard since all of the letters are in different places. Classes started lasr week so I’ve been super busy getting used to the schedule which includes 8:30 classes monday, tuesday and wednesday. I was placed in level B2C which is on par with most of the other people who have had the same amount of French as me and I have a lot of class choices too so I’m pretty happy.

The way classes work here is different though. Each level has different requirements. For all of B2 (A-F) we have to take Written Expression and Comprehension, Oral Expression and Comprehension and Grammar. In addition I’m taking a Literature class, English/French translation and a Culture class that focuses mostly on Architecture. So far I like all my teachers and we don’t have a ton of homework. Actually, we were talking to some friends we made from Morocco who go here and when they heard that in the US we get an hour or é of ho,ework for each class they couldn’t believe it. So I guess I should enjoy not having a whole lot of work while I’m here…

Before classes started though we got to do a few fun things. We went to the Musée des Beaux Arts which is right in the middle of town and is thought to be one of the oldest Muesums in France. It was really nice though some of the lighting is poor and some paintings hard to see. Also there were some Kandinsky’s on loan from the Guggenheim in New York which I found funny since I came to France to see something I could have seen at home. But there was some really amazing stuff like an Egyptian mosaic, some great Rennaissance paintings and a bunch of original Impressionist stuff. Very cool.

And now on to the topic of food. We don’t have a meal plan here like American schools. Instead we get a monthly allowance of cash to use for groceries or for the dining hall on campus. At any rate, we have to be careful with our money so we try to get cheap food and the cheapest things here are called kebabs, what we would call heros. So in talking to some other girls here, we figured out that have not actually eaten any real French food in all the time we’ve been here. I had read about a fairly cheap place in town that had regional specialties so last saturday four of us headed over there to check it out.

It was strange to sit down and look at a menu and realize how specialized that vocabulary really is. I mean I cancarry on every day conversations, take classes, write papers all in French but I don’t know all the different kinds of meet and sauce and what style they’re cooked in or anything like that. I ended up getting trout but it came out with it’s head and tail and everything. Once I got over the feeling of being stared at it was delicious but I’ve never had an experience like that before.

And continuing in this vein, Friday is going to be a very special day for all of us here in Besançon but I suppose I should give a little background before I say why. This city is surrounded on three sides by a river and on the fourth side the land gets pretty thin. It is for this reason that people have lived here since Gaulic times. It is also for this reason that Louis XIV commissioned Vauban to build one of his famous citadelles to block off the fourth side. Currently there is a huge movement to have the Besançon citadelle recognized as a heritage site by Unesco and there are tons of events going on to celebrate Vauban. One of them is taking place this Friday. One of the cities top chefs has done research and is preparing a seven course dinner to be done in the style of the times of Louis XIV and Vauban. The price is somethign like 98€ but we don’t have to worry about that since it’s covered by the SUNY program fees. I’m really excited for that and I’ll make sure to take pictures and post them as soon as I can!!! 

So all in all it has been a very exciting week. We started off Monday at school to take our placement exam. It wasn’t too terribly difficult but it was very long. Part of it was a one on one interview with a staff member to evaluate speaking skills and the Professor I had was incredibly nice. We don’t find out the results until Friday so we can’t choose our classes until then. There are a four levels, B1, B2, C1, and C1+. Each has it’s own requirements but the higher the level, the more choice you get with electives. I don’t really know what level I’ll test in to but from what I hear, if you don’t feel like it’s a good match it’s possible to change so I’m not too worried about it.

It was also really nice to get to meet some of the people that will be at the CLA taking classes with me. I met a group of kids from Michigan, another group from Nebraska, two Australian people, and a very large group from China. There are probably some people from some other countries there too, but of course I didn’t meet all of them. On Tuesday night though me and some other people went to the Bar de l’U (the University bar) because it was International student night. While we were there we met a lot of interesting people including two French guys, one of whom invited a bunch of us to dinner at his house the next night and, since we were warned it is terribly offensive to refuse an invitation to dinner, we accepted.

Part of our orientation was learning what kind of behavior is considered appropriate in France and luckily for us, we had a long conversation about dinner etiquette. First of all, the French eat very long meals. They take there time, have a lot of courses, and take pretty much the whole night to eat. Also, it is always important to bring something with you. Remembering that, the four of us who were going to dinner walked around town all day looking for some kind of dessert to bring our host. We ended up at this one bakery with a very nice woman who was from Paris. She said that in our city, people tend to be nicer than in Paris. It makes me really glad that the SUNY program goes here because I’ve also heard that in Paris it’s really easy for students studying abroad to have barely any interaction with real French people since the city is so big and it’s so much harder to leave the comfort zone that I think is mostly meant for tourists.

The dinner was really nice. It was strange because even though this kid was a 21 year old college student, he really did do of the proper etiquette things we had learned about and we didn’t end up leaving his apartment until after 11. It’s nice to have made a French friend because I feel like I’ve learned more of the language speaking with him and his friend than I ever really did in school. Also, they have both studied other languages so it’s easy for them to understand the difficulties of being in a foreign country trying to communicate something and not being able to. I hope that our friendship will continue and that through these two French guys we’ll be able to meet a lot of other French people! I suppose that now we just have to wait and see.

So here I am, sitting in the Lotus cafe in Besançon, France. I don’t even know how to start describing the past few days. It’s just been a whirlwind of new experiences and plenty of culture shock. One would think that there is not a huge difference between American and Western European cultures, and I suppose there’s not, but there are a lot of little things.

The bathrooms in our dorms, for example, have neither toilet paper nor toilet seats. There also seems to be much more attention to the environment and not wasting resources. To take a shower, you must press a button and the water comes out for about 10 seconds. To keep it going, you have to continually press the buttom. I’m sure a lot of water is saved, but it can get pretty cold. Also, lights in hallways either have motion sensors or you have to press a button and they stay on for 30 seconds or so.

Perhaps the biggest difference in the cultures, however, is the sense of history. It’s everywhere. The city that I’m in now, for example, is not very well known. It’s in the east of France near Switzerland and not terribly large. Still, near the center of town, there are Roman ruins and Julius Cesar wrote about an existing Gaule village here when he came. It’s amazing to look at these Roman ruins which are thousands of years old and to know that below that there’s even more.

I haven’t had too much of a chance to explore the rest of the city yet. Every day we have orientation which consists of grammar review for our placement test next monday. There are 10 people here from New Paltz, Plattsburgh, and Buffalo and we’re all at slightly different levels but we’ll all be taking classes at the CLA which is the applied linguistics school in the Universite de Franche-Comte, the region that Besançon is the capital of.

This city is also really interesting because it has a large international student population. It’s been hard to really meet anyone because classes haven’t started yet and most French students go home on the weekends and we’ve been spending weekdays doing our orientation. Tuesday nights at the University Cafe is a night for international students to get together and Thursday’s are a big night to go out. I didn’t get to go out Tuesday because it snowed and the bus system shut down (our dorms are about a 20 minute bus ride from the center of town) but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to meet some other people tonight. I hope to update more soon but I have to get back to campus and take a nap now. Jet lag is still a factor but hopefully I’ll be fully adjusted in time for classes to start a week from monday!