dunes, boats, and… oysters!

Yesterday was a pretty great day. One of the reasons was that it didn’t rain once! It was super-sunny and warm all day long and it actually felt like spring is supposed to feel. The other reason was that I got to go on a tour with a student group to see a little more of the southwest region of France and the ocean!

We loaded the bus in the morning and our first stop was the Dune de Pyla (pronounced pee-lah), located right on the Atlantic coast. It’s about 45 minutes from Bordeaux and it’s the highest dune in Europe, therefore a big tourist attraction. Climbing the dune kind of makes you feel like you’re in a desert, only there are trees surrounding it, and once you get to the top, you can see the ocean. At the top we encountered a sandstorm (which I guess wasn’t really a sandstorm; it was just the wind blowing some sand… but it’s the closest to a sandstorm I’ve ever experienced!), and when we finally descended, I got to dip my feet in the ocean for the second time in my life! (The first time was in Spain in January)

After having a nice little pique-nique by the water, we climbed back over the dune to catch the bus to go to Arcachon, a little city on the coast located on the Bassin d’Arcachon. We took a 3-hr boat ride around the basin, where we learned about the basin and the cultivation of oysters, which is a huge region specialty here. There are so many oysters in the basin that they actually export them early in their lives to other coastal towns around France, Spain, and Italy. There’s a whole world of oyster trading I had no idea existed!

The highlight of the day was when we stopped at a tiny little coastal town called Le Canon for our dégustation des huîtres, or “oyster tasting.” Yes, that’s right: I tried an oyster! And it was raw! I figured I had to because a) I paid 10€ for this day and I needed to get my money’s worth, and b) I didn’t try the escargot at Laura’s the other day, so I felt that I needed to try a regional specialty while I was in France. So, I loosened the little sucker with a fork, squirted some lemon juice on it, closed my eyes, and slurped it back, swallowing without chewing it. But I suppose I have to explain that it didn’t go exactly as smoothly as that: it took me about 10 minutes to work up the courage to pick up the thing, then another 10 minutes to separate it from the shell, douse it with lemon juice, and then interview everyone who’d just done it (which included every question about the process I could think of). Then I did it, or at least I tried to do it: the first time I tried to eat it, I only got the juice. Then I had to go through the whole process again. My friend Carly came over and almost made me call the whole thing off when she said, “Jenny, just do it! They’re not good anymore after they’re dead!” I had forgotten that I was about to eat a live animal until she said that. See, if you eat an oyster raw, it is technically still alive until you detach it from its shell. I yelled at her for that comment. But then I ate it anyway. Honestly, it didn’t taste like much of anything. It was just really slimy and the lemon juice covered up the real taste. But I did it! I was very proud of myself.

Below are a few photos of the Dune and the place where we had our dégustation. In the first pictures, you’ll notice Carly pretending to grimper the Dune (grimper is French for “to scale”). In the picture of the little village, you can see some sticks sticking out of the water. These are called pignettes because they are young pine trees (pin, en français) and are used to mark the spots of the parcs à huîtres, little areas where the oysters are cultivated. We saw tons of clusters of these sticks everywhere around the basin. The last picture is of the beau bâteau that we took for our cruise.

A la semaine prochaine! (Till next week!)

rain, rain, go away

I'd heard that instead of snow they get rain here in the winter. This turned out to be true: there's been no snow at all, just rain, but not too much. On Easter Sunday though, it started raining off and on, and it's been doing that ever since. It's been 5 days straight of rain! Sometimes it'll pour, then it'll stop for an hour or two, then it'll start up again. I know it's spring and rain is good, but I'm beginning to feel kind of water-logged. Too many puddles everywhere! I just can't wait till the warm weather comes for good (sunny days have a way of lifting spirits... not that I need lifting of my spirirt for anything in particular, but it's always nice to feel happy :D).

joyeuses pâques everybody!

Easter Monday I had the privilege of being invited over to Laura’s place to partake in a real French Easter meal! I’m not going to lie: it was AMAZING!!!! Let me describe this meal and f then let’s see if your mouth isn’t watering by the end of this post:

We had the apéritif first, which is a pre-dinner drink, a little stronger than wine, along with some little snacks. After that we went to the dining room table, where I kid you not, we stayed sitting for the next 4 ½ hours! There we had the cold entrée first, or appetizer. It was smoked salmon in lemon juice and dill, French devilled-eggs (similar to our version, only more mayonnaise and some tune mixed in there), and broccoli that was marinated in something delicious. After the cold entrée came the dish of ris de veau (veal) and the escargots. The escargots were cooked, and I really wanted to try them, since I’m in France and all. Laura’s dad showed me how to take the shell in my hand and scoop out the insides with a toothpick, only when I pulled it out, it was a little longer (and curlier) than I anticipated, and I totally freaked out! (I was partly shocked, partly grossed out). Everyone laughed at the foreigner and her dad quickly took my plate away so I wouldn’t have to look at what was left on my plate. So that was my experience tasting escargots. I wonder if I’ll be able to taste oysters this weekend in Arcachon…

After the entrée, we had the main course: lamb and roasted potatoes… mmm mmm! I’ve had lamb before, but Mme. Chilon made this rack with some mixture of seasonings that made it taste delicious. She actually used to be a chef, so this meal was vraiment magnifique! Keep in mind that with every course there was wine to be drunk and of course a replenishment of pieces of fresh baguette. I myself had one glass of red and one glass of white wine with the meal.

After the main course came the cheese course. Laura’s mom brought out a huge platter of about 8 different kinds of cheeses (“only good cheese" she informed me), which we got to eat with more baguette and a little salad. Mmm I love French cheese!

Last but not least came the dessert: an invention of the cuisinière which is hard to describe, so I’ve attached a picture of it. The dessert doesn’t have a name, but if I had to name it, I’d probably call it something along the lines of “Strawberry-lemon-crème-layer-furnished-with-fresh-mint-leaves-amazing-goodness.” As if that weren’t enough, she’d also baked fresh canalés, including chocolate flavoured ones. The best way I can describe them is that they little fluffy cakes with a glaze on the outside. I attached a pic of them, too.

Needless to say, I was full for the rest of the day. I was super-content because I had had my first real French meal with a French family and it was hyper-hyper-délicieux! When Laura’s mom said, “A la prochaine! [Till next time!]” I answered with an emphatic, “Uhh... Oui, oui, bien sûr!” (Like I'd say no to coming again!) It would be awesome to go back some time, with cooking like that! I’ll let you know if that happens.

a fantastic week

This week started off great: on Monday, I found out I got a 14/20 on my French-English translation test (may I just say "Woohoo!!!! Go me!!!!"). Then I registered myself and some friends for a visite around the Bassin d'Arcachon, a place not too far from here. Arcachon is a fishing town where they mainly catch oysters. We get to have a tour of the Bay aboard a "beau" boat (don't know what that means yet), learn about oysters from a "ostréiculteur" and try some too, and then climb up the Dune du Pyla on the other side of the bay. This dune is the highest in France (or possibly Europe), so I'm excited.

Carly and I did breakfast yesterday-- mmm fresh croissants and fruit salad, with a lot of Nutella mixed in there somewhere (or rather, everywhere). I enjoy hanging out with friends here. Impromptu hang out sessions in my room and theirs will be greatly missed when I leave here. So will eating hordes of Nutella (I've been converted unfortunately).

Last night I decided to go grocery shopping, and since I knew I'd be buying a lot of heavy stuff, I gave in and took my rolling suitcase with me downtown to Auchan. Now it's a very common sight to see people with rolling suitcases around campus. I'm constantly hearing the sound of little wheels rolling across the extremely rough and uneven paths around Village 5. At first I was perplexed: surely people can't be moving in all the time? But then I realized that lots of students go home for the weekends, but others just use suitcases to carry their groceries instead of buying a little grocery cart. Smart! So I did just that last night. I have to say, I'm really glad I did. It was so much easier on my muscles! And grocery shopping was a pleasant experience, too. I even found the new French Céline Dion CD for 9,99€! You can't get much better than that! (Although I'm sure a lot of you readers would think otherwise!)

taking tours in tours

This weekend, 3 friends and I took a little trip to Tours, located in the Loire Valley just north of Bordeaux by 2 1/2 hours. While there is not much to see in Tours, there are hundreds of châteaux in the region to visit, and so we stayed one night at a hostel in the city but went on a little day trip both days we were there.

All in all, it was a pretty awesome trip. We saw two beautiful castles: Château Chenonceaux and Château Royal d'Amboise. Leonardo da Vinci spent his last years in Amboise, and so he is buried in the chapel of the château there. Down the road from this château, we got to see the smaller château where da Vinci lived during his time in Amboise. The château, called the Clos Lucé, is now a museum and is surrounded by a park showing his inventions, built to scale. This last stop was actually my favourite out of all three, perhaps because I actually know some things about da Vinci, whereas I don't know as much about Henri II or François Ier or Catherine de Medici. The Clos Lucé was cool because we got to see the room where da Vinci slept, where he relaxed by the fire, where he ate, etc. The basement of the château was also really neat because on display were little models of all of the inventions he made diagrams and outlines for. The park was really nice to walk through, although we had to wait until it stopped raining to venture through it.

Another thing we saw in Amboise were these houses called maisons troglodytes. They are houses that are built in hollowed out rock walls... really cool! I'll put pictures of the Clos Lucé and these houses on later; my camera's battery died and I couldn't take any pictures after the Château d'Amboise.

I do have to make mention of the other highlight of out trip: the man who ran the hostel. He was so awesome! We'd called to reserve the room about a week ago, but every couple of days I'd call again to add one more person. I know he was going to say something about this when we arrived, and sure enough, he remembered me and told us he'd been waiting to hear from us again so we could add a fifth person to our room. He's one of those people who really likes to talk, and so we ended up talking for 1/2 hour about what we were studying, why we were in Tours, etc etc. It was he who recommended Chenonceaux to us, cuz we hadn't planned on visiting that one. I'm glad we did though. Anyway, my favourite was when we said 2 of us where from Canada and the other two from the States, and he went a pulled out a huge map of the USA so Danielle and Nancy could point out their cities. He really likes meeting people from all over the world it seems. At the end of our stay when we went to pick up our bags, he was all proud and showed us 2 little pins, one of the Manitoba logo and one of the Winnipeg airport logo. Turns out a Winnipegger had stayed there at some point the year before and sent him the pins after she got home. I think Kristin and I may need to send him a postcard when we get back home...

Here are a few pics from my trip. The first two are 2 different angles of Chenonceaux. As you can see, it's really beautiful because it's built over the Cher River. The next two are in Amboise, the first near a church built in 1521 (L-R: Nancy, Danielle, Kristin). If you're wondering why Danielle looks pregnant, it's not because she is, it's because she was on a mission to take a picture of a big stuffed cow puppet with a castle for her Sunday school kids back home, and didn't have a bigger side bag to carry him in. Thus, the only solution was to carry him under her jacket... of course. The last 2 pictures are in Tours: there are poppies everywhere there, and it was the first time I've ever seen a real live one, never mind all the different colours! The last one is the Cathédrale St-Gatien in Tours, a beautiful cathedral that looks a lot like Notre Dame de Paris on the inside. And that's all for now!

mon anniversaire!

So I must say that it was pretty cool being in France for my birthday this year. I spent most of the day by myself, which was a new experience, but after my evening class I did go out for supper with my friends. Here's what my day consisted of: I went downtown in the morning to print off our train tickets (I'm heading off to Tours this weekend; I'll explain more about that in a moment) and I wanted to walk around and maybe relax and read a bit in the Jardin public, but it was way too blustery and it was raining off and on, so sitting in the park was out of the question. Kind of a gloomy day for a birthday, but by far the best weather I've ever experienced on March 11 (I'm used to cold and snow and the occasional blizzard on my birthday, so this was a nice change). Instead of hanging out downtown, I decided to treat myself with a trip to IKEA, which was awesome. I love going to IKEA, and since we don't have one in Winnipeg, I always find it fun to visit the store. So I went and had some Swedish meatballs for lunch (they call them "boulettes" here) and then went shopping. It was difficult to limit myself to small, lightweight items that I could bring home with me eventually, but I did it. I bought myself little rug for my room, some coasters (yup, Sarah, more coasters for our coffee table!), lingonberry sauce, and some potted gerbera daisies, which I know I can't bring home with me, but I've been wanting to get some flowers for my room for awhile now, and these were reasonably-priced IKEA flowers, so I bought them. Now I just hope they don't die on me!

So after my evening class, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant downtown, which was something new for me and for most of the other girls who came. I was really blessed to be joined by 9 of my friends to celebrate my birthday. It's cool because I met all of them except Laura and Myriam (my French friends who came to the UofW last year on the exchange) when I got here in January, and they are now my "family" here (or the people with whom I spend the most time... besides myself!). Having the Ethiopian food was neat, too: they serve it to you with galettes, or crepes made with whole wheat flour, and you rip off pieces of them to pick up your food. No utensils required. We all had a good time, and it was the best birthday I could have asked for here: good food, good friends, and an amazing birthday cake that Michelle (a fellow Winnipegger) bought for me.

By the way, thanks to everyone back home who sent me birthday wishes. I feel very loved!

So, re: my trip this weekend, I'm heading to the Val de Loire, or the Loire Valley, where all of the French medieval castles are found amidst the beautiful rolling valley hills and landscape. We're going to be staying in Tours for one night, which is a good base to explore these castles. I'm also excited to go to Tours because the Tours accent is considered the most pure, standard French accent in France (no, it's actually not the Parisian accent! I was surprised to learn that). We plan on spending one day in Amboise, a smaller city 20 mins from Tours, so that we can visit "the most beautiful castle in France," according to my guidebook, which is also where Leonardo de Vinci is buried. I'm pretty pumped.

I came to the realization this weekend that my time in France is almost half over! I can't believe that! I remember thinking when I got here, "4 1/2 months is a really long time: how am I going to get through it?" But it isn't a long time at all! It seemed long when I got here because I wanted to come home so badly. But now I feel like I've just gotten started here. Although I miss my family and friends back home, the more time I spend here the more I realize that I really like it here. Not that I want to move here or anything, but I'm just enjoying myself and I'm becoming less and less homesick all the time. I'm learning lots of new vocabulary all of the time, and although I still have moments when I feel overwhelmed at all the things I don't know yet, I know that I need to take everything one step at a time. And I am, too. I just can't believe that I only have 10 weeks left here! And only 7 weeks left in Bordeaux (my last 3 weeks I'm going to be traveling around France and maybe some other parts of Europe)! Despite this fact, however, I'm trying not to think in terms of what little time I have left, but how much time I have to try more new things and visit more place, if that makes sense. I'm trying to seize every opportunity I can.

I'll write about my trip after I get back and post some pics too! Until then, here are some more pictures of Bordeaux around town: the museum with the sex shop right beside it, the skate park, the quais, etc. There’s also a fair going on right now, so you can see some pics from that. You know you're in France when you can buy a baguette sandwich or a crepe at a carnival! When you buy cotton candy here, you can pick your own flavour. Pretty cool. One of the rides I saw was also called “Sexy Dance.” Lo and behold, the ride has absolutely nothing to do with dancing, as you can see in the photo. It’s just a regular ride with an English name. Pretty funny. Well, enjoy!

11/20!! Woo-hoo!

So I got my first "controle continu" back in my English-French translation class today, and I got 11/20!! I never thought I'd be so happy to barely pass something. I'll try to explain the French marking system a little bit, even though I still don't understand it completely. Everything is marked out of 20. If you get under 10, then you fail, but if you get 10 or over, you pass. It doesn't matter your mark out of 20, just as long as you pass. An 11 or 12 is really good, a 13 or 14 is excellent, a 15 or 16 is amazing, and nobody ever gets a 17 or above, as far as I know. I'm not exactly sure where profs get these marks from, but I'm content with my 11, especially because it was a difficult text and I was translating into French; this is harder for non-native speakers, so I'm assuming the prof went a little easier on me. So I'm excited.

galavanting can be tiring

So I think I've finally recovered from my week-long trip around France and Poland. It was tiring, but worth it. If you're reading this, you may want to grab a snack or something, cuz you may be here for awhile! This post is pretty long. Here are some of the highlights of my vacation:

Rachelle and I left Bordeaux at 5:30am to take the train to Paris. Consequently, we had to take the bus de nuit at 4:30am to get to the station on time. Here was where our adventures began. The bus driver was driving like a maniac the entire time: I don't exactly know where he had to be or what schedule he had to keep, but that bus hardly slowed down until it stopped to let us off. If you've ever seen Harry Potter 3 when Harry is riding the night bus, you'll have an idea of what this ride was like. And to make matters worse, it was a doubly-long bus joined by an accordion-type middle and Rachelle and I were facing the back end, watching the accordion compress and contort while a pile of pamphlets flew and slid around everywhere the entire time. We both got off the bus feeling a little ill... not a great start to a holiday.

We arrived in Paris without much mishap (and thankfully the Paris night bus to the airport 2 days later was a calm and comfortable ride!), and spent our first day, Rachelle's birthday, at Versailles, which was beautiful but packed with tourists. Later we found a restaurant that her godsister had recommended to us to try, saying it was "the best restaurant in Paris." I don't know if Chez Gladine was the BEST restaurant in the city, but it certainly was the restaurant that gave you the most bang for your buck! Rachelle ordered a salad for 6€ and got a huge metal mixing bowlful of it. It was amazing! We also ended up sitting beside a mother and daughter from Australia (the mother was visiting the daughter in France), and had a really good talk with them, so now if we ever go to Australia, we'll have a place to stay! (Can I just say I love traveling and making connections like this?)

The second day in Paris was good too. It was bright and sunny and we visited the Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Coeur, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Champs-Elysées, where we attempted to track down the Starbucks but failed. That day we were also super-tired already so we ended up going back to our hostel around 7ish and going to sleep really early. After all, we had to wake up again at the crack of dawn to catch our night bus to go to our next destination: Krakow!

We arrived in Krakow after a smooth Easyjet flight just before noon. Although we were both hungry and tired, our first task was to take a bus from the airport to the Old Town to find our hostel. Luckily a lady at the info desk explained to us, in English, how to get there. I guess I didn't quite realize what I was getting myself into, going to Poland, and Rachelle thought it was funny how stressed out I was about not being able to speak the language. But this was the first situation I've ever been in where I felt absolutely helpless when trying to communicate. At least in France I knew enough French on my arrival to get by. Here I had to depend on a little phrasebook and people's abilities to speak English. Nevertheless, I forced myself to learn several words: thank you, hello, excuse me, yes, no, and English. Just the basics. I never thought I would long for the familiarity of France so much!

Despite the language barrier, our time in Krakow was amazing! The city is beautiful, with clean buildings painted every colour you can imagine without looking too tacky, and it feels small, even though it has a population of 800,000. We spent the majority of our time in the Old Town, which is surrounded by the Planty, a park which was formerly a moat, and contains two castles, a huge square that's existed since medieval times, and tons of little boutiques, souvenir shops, and restaurants, most of which thankfully had menus in both Polish and English. Whenever we could, we ordered perogies and cabbage rolls and sausage. We thought it was funny that the Polish always tried to translate "perogies" into English, by describing them as "dumplings filled with..." or "pockets like ravioli filled with...". I guess we can't just assume that everyone will know what perogies are. Us Winnipeggers are used to eating them, but I guess others aren't. My favourite type we ordered was blueberry perogies with cream drizzled on top. We had these for dessert and we're going to try to replicate them this summer when we're both back in the Winnipeg.

Our second day in Poland, we caught a bus going to Oswiecim, the town where Auschwitz-Birkenau is located. There we went on a 3-hour tour of both parts of the camp. Although I've studied a lot about the Holocaust over the years, I learned some new things while touring the camp, as our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable. It's hard to describe what I felt going through a place like that, but mostly it was just really surreal, because I've seen so many pictures and images of it and it was a really strange feeling to be there for real. It was emotional, but I'm really glad that I went. It was something that I've wanted to do for a really long time and it's not something that I would have the opportunity to do every day. Although the camp was such a place of death, it was good to hear about some of the stories of resistance and triumph, and we also watched a short video filmed while the camp was getting liberated. These images and stories gave us hope. While we were in Krakow, we also found out that Oskar Schindler's factory is a museum now, but when we tried to visit it the next day we found out it was closed for renovations. We still took pictures of the outside of it though, as that place also carries a message of hope and life.

All in all the Krakow part of our trip was really awesome. I forgot to mention that we stayed in an absolutely amazing hostel. It was super clean, and we had our own private bathroom and shower, comfortable beds and a little table, chairs, and a wardrobe in our room. We also had a radio that played lots of classical music and Polish hip-hop and we shared a little kitchen with 2 other rooms. They'd even put candies on our pillows for when we arrived! We actually didn't want to leave Krakow to go back to Paris, but alas, we had to.

Our last day back in Paris was spent relaxing as much as possible. We visited the Père Lachaise cemetery and saw Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf's graves, and other than that we didn't do much. The next morning I left early to catch my train to Arles and Rachelle flew back to Korea.

My stay in Arles lasted just one night but I was there for almost 2 full days. Arles is a little city in Provence, a province in the south of France. There are tons of Roman ruins there, and I bought a pass to visit them all. It was pretty cool and really relaxing to just have some down time exploring a new city. Arles is also a really cool city, and it's easy to see why van Gogh and other painters found so many subjects to paint there (and by the way, I have Bonnie to thank for helping me find this city!). I visited a few places where he painted some of his famous works, including "Café Terrace at Night" (which inspired me to go to Arles in the first place) and "Starry Night over the Rhone." I loved Arles' narrow, winding streets whose old buildings opened all their colourful wooden shutters out onto the streets. Both days I was there were warm, sunny and beautiful. One of my favourite things that happened there was on the first day when I bought a huge pizza from a pizzeria and I took it to eat by the river. There were no fewer than four people who walked by and wished me "Bon appétit!" I love France! I also went to a market on Saturday which was massive. I bought a bunch of things, including a 1/2 loaf of bread, a new kind of cheese, some fruit, etc. and made myself a little picnic. For dessert I bought 2 lavender-- yes, that's right, lavender--- cookies. They grow a lot of lavender in Provence, so it's a specialty of the region. It may sound gross but the cookies were delicious! They tasted the way lavender smells, with just a hint of sweetness. Mmm!

Below are just a few of the many pictures I took on my trip: The first 2 are self-explanatory. The third one is the main square in Old Town Krakow and the fourth is a bird’s eye view of the city. The fifth one is me pretending to ring the bell in the bell tower of Wawel Castle, one side of which you can see in the next pic. The seventh picture shows a random little castle just outside of the Old Town in Krakow. It reminded Rachelle and me of a Paper-Bag Princess castle. The last 5 pics are in Arles: a street, the Roman Amphitheatre, the Café la Nuit (look at the bottom right-hand corner and you’ll see a copy of van Gogh's original painting), me and the Rhone River, and finally part of the remaining ramparts, which used to encircle the entire town.

So there you have it! Bye for now!