Wondering Where I've Disappeared To?

Ok, so there's two versions to the story of what happened to me while I was gone.

Short version: I was painting tiles in the pyrenees, then started my independent travel. I am currently in Dublin.

Long version: My really cool host family in the pyrenees lived in the middle of nowhere and had no internet connection, so I couldn't update while I was there.

I lived with a family in a village called Brassempouy. They had two small children, and they were really nice. I spent my days painting tiles with my host mom. I made two tiles that have a rose painted on them. The rose was sketched from a picture I took at the rose garden in Richmond. It took a lot of time and effort, but I'm happy with my work.

As much as I enjoyed this, I didn't have much interaction with other Earlham folks. I spent one day with Ben and his host Dad, which was interesting. I ran into Ben, Litos, and Sam at a crafts fair another day. It was really nice, because I got a chance to catch up with them and have a good conversation with Litos. Mandi and Dan hosted a dinner party for the students, which involved pasta, lots of desserts, hot tubs, and me spending the night there because my host mom got lost on her way home. I ended up making a couple of drawings while I was there and got to try out their host brother's scooter.

We had a dinner for the entire group and their host families on our last night in the Pyrenees. We got to show off what we made to the rest of the group. A few people asked me about my tiles, and it was interesting trying to explain it all in French, especially because I didn't really know what I was doing half of the time. Overall, everyone made really cool stuff. Don't ask me how some of them are getting the things home, though.

After that marked the start of independent travel, aka, what I was losing sleep over the entire time I was in the pyrenees. It didn't help that we had three large suitcases, one small suitcase, two backpacks, and a carry-on. The train to Bordeaux wasn't too bad, and we found our way to the hostel without too many problems, even though the directions were sketchy as hell. We spent two nights there with a friend who graduated last year.

Next was Paris. This was stressing me out. We had a three hour train ride. The only issue with this train ride was when we were getting off the train, and I made the mistake of taking Mandi's bag down first, which is broken and cannot stand on its own. However, a really nice man held her bag for me while another man helped me bring my bag down from the train. People have been suprisingly helpful about these things! We find the metro and enjoy a puppet show while en route to the apartment where we were dropping off the bags. Take care of the bags, get on the metro again, and start heading over to the bus depot where there is a bus that will take us to the airport. Find it suprisingly easy, get to the airport, and RUN INTO JUSTIN!!!! WTF! I actually walked by him at first, until Jeana looked at me like I was a moron and I looked up and realized who it was.

Find out that we don't actually need to take a taxi to the hotel, take a cheap bus there, and crash. An hour later, Jeana wakes me up to tell me that we actually get to help choose people for the next program. I threaten to punch her in the babymaker, and go back to sleep.

Next morning: flight to Dublin. Arrive in Dublin, and freak out over directions to the hostel. Make it to the hostel, buy food, and pass out.

Since then, we've been to a museum and a library and a park. We've been walking everywhere, so my feet are tired as fuck. It's cheaper than the bus, though.

That's all, folks.
-Sarah, who is in Dublin

Exams, Buses, and Goodbyes

Long time, no update. Sorry about that.

I had exams for history, conversation, and grammar earlier this week. It was all really intense and I'm glad it's over. We had study sessions in the Japanese garden for the history exam and celebrated the end of all the exams by buying pastries.

The other day, Jeana and I booked everything for our independent travel period. Our itinerary is looking like this:
October 2: train from Dax to Bordeaux
October 2-4: Chill with Sara H. in Bordeaux
October 4: train from Bordeaux to Paris, spend the night in Paris
October 5: flight from Paris to Dublin
October 5-10: stay in Dublin
October 10: flight from Dublin to Brussels
October 10-13: stay in Brussels
October 13: train from Brussels to Paris

I'm really excited about our plans. I'm just hoping something doesn't change at the last minute that throws everything else off.

Today is my last full day in Nantes. We're leaving tommorow morning to spend two days at Futurscope in Poitiers. After that, I'll be in the Pyrenee mountains for two weeks with no internet connection. However, that is not an excuse for any of you not to leave me some love on my birthday.

Ok, I need to pack...
~Sarah, who is leaving Nantes tommorow

Mont-St-Michel, Saint-Malo, and Class in the Park

Yesterday was our day trip to Mont-St-Michel and Saint-Malo.

Jeana ended up staying over for the night because her bus doesn't run early enough for her to make it on time. It reminded me of all those horse show nights spent in hotels with the team. Anyway, alarm goes off at 5:00 AM (not cool), we grumpily get ready, and set off for the train station to meet up with the rest of the group. Everyone shows up, and we hop on our private bus to Mont-St-Michel. I mostly slept during the ride, but the scenery that I did see was beautiful. There was a traffic jam at one point that was caused by a flock of sheep that wandered into the middle of the highway.

This was actually my second time at Mont-St-Michel, but it was just as beautiful as I remembered it to be. It was pretty foggy out, and even though it made it all look so eerily beautiful, it ruined any chances of taking pictures. After our guided tour, we had a few hours of free time. Justin, Jeana, Mandi, and myself all got some lunch and found a secluded balcony to sit and eat at. After lunch, we wandered around for a bit, then went down to the shore surrounding the castle. I took off my socks and shoes and walked around on the sand. I love the feel of sand on my feet. It's common for the water surrounding the castle to go all the way up to the castle during high tide, so the sand was relatively packed down. I dug my toes in, and it felt amazing. I really love the beach.

After that, we piled back on to the bus and set off for Saint-Malo. We walked around on the ramparts for a while and enjoyed the view of the city. The ramparts are built right next to the shoreline, so I really enjoyed the constant salty breeze that came in from the ocean. We walked around the town for a bit, windowshopped, etc. I also ate crepes with Mandi, Justin, Jeana, Candice, and Claire. I really enjoyed spending some down time with Candice and Claire. They're such great people and wonderful program leaders. After our crepes, we headed back to the buses and returned to Nantes. It was around 9:30 when I got in.

Today was a nice day, too. We were given the morning off in order to recooperate from yesterday's adventures. Today is also Jeana's birthday, so a bunch of us met up and had a picnic for lunch. After lunch, we met up with the rest of the group for a tour of Tour LU, which is an old cookie factory. It was ok, but seemed a bit weird for a cookie factory. We then had class in a park by the train station. We had a great time acting out random skits based on a poem that we read. After class, Mandi, Jeana, and I headed out to celebrate Jeana's birthday with crepes. A nice guy who worked at the restaurant gave Jeana flowers that he found on the street. We found out that today was his birthday, too!

My host mother is gone all weekend at a wedding, so me, Chloe, and Audrey have the apartment to ourselves. Tommorow, I'm going to a horse show with Jeana and her family, and most likely spending the night there.

I'll try and update again later this weekend.
~Sarah, who is sick of crepes

Fun-Filled Weekend!

So, a lot has happened since my last entry...

Let's start with Thursday. Hauled my ass out of bed at 6:00 AM, met Jeana at the tramway stop, went to the train station, met up with Candice and everyone else, and set off for St. Nazaire. Took lots of pictures, toured a museum about ships and their importance to Europe, at lunch on the beach, took pictures of Dan in his speedo-esque bathing suit (Claire made me do it.), ended up seeing a really cool Estuaire exhibit that made me want to have a seizure, almost passed out on the boat ride back to Nantes, searched for other Estuaire exhibits with Mandi, Jeana, Candice, and Claire, found one and looked around in it, and finally went back to my host's apartment, only to be asked why I was back so early.

Friday: no classes, but we did have a test. After the test, Jeana, Justin, and I all went to an Estuaire exhibit in Tour LU. There were actually two exhibits there. One was this odd video thing of this woman who was underwater, but it was three different videos of the same woman being shown on three different screens at the same time. Slightly confusing. The other one was really cool. You walk in the room, and all you see is a screen with light reflecting different patterns. When you walk around the screen, you see a pool of water directly in front of it with lights shining on the water. The patterns were reflections of the different ripples made in the water. I thought it was fascinating.

Saturday (yesterday) morning was spent at Commerce. I woke up early and met up with Jeana, and then we went to the flea market. It started off as disappointing, but I quickly found some really cool things. I bought three books for 2.50 euros. One has a picture of an old lady who looks too much like the equestrian team coach at Earlham. After the flea market, we walked around commerce and stopped into random shops, just looking at things. We also went to Beaulieu, where I got two much-needed tank tops to layer under my white hoodie.

I haven't done much today, but I think I'm going to go to a cafe (if I can find one that's open) after lunch and work on my homework. I also need to find a way to print out my paragraph on St. Nazaire.

I hope the rest of you are having great semesters!
~Sarah, who is waiting for lunch

Group Adventures

Since I did not post anything yesterday (whoops...sorry guys), I'll have to recap what happened then in this one.

Yesterday I ended up going to a soccer (er...football) game with Jeana, Ragia, Litos, Ben, and Andres. The seats were amazing, and they only cost us 5 euros! The game was a lot of fun. Nantes won, 1-0.

When I returned to my host mother's apartment, I had a quick dinner, then met my new roommates! There are two girls from China living with us now. Their names are Audrey and Chloe, and they're really nice. They got in kind of late, so we all talked over a bottle of wine, which was nice.

Today was pretty good. We had history class in the morning, then after lunch we set off for l'Ile des Machines, which is a sort-of museum with mechanical animals. There's a huge mechanical elephant that walks up and down the entranceway that people can actually ride on. Unfortunately, the wait is something like three hours, so we didn't do it. Lots of pictures were taken, including those of Claire operating some crazy flying thing.

Tommorow is our day trip to St. Nazaire, which means waking up at 6:00 in the morning...not cool.
~Sarah, who is not looking forward to waking up early tommorow morning.

Adventures in Nantes!

Today was fun in a sense because I actually went out and did something after class, aside from shop at Carrefour.

After our conversation class, we took a group trip to the musee des Beaux Arts. While I'm all for museums, I prefer for them to have a consistent theme. This one did not. There was an odd mixture of modern art, biblical art, landscapes, and still life. Granted, they were seperated by section, but it was still odd.

After we went through the museum, Mandi offered to show me and Jeana a nearby park. We walked around in the park for a little bit, then decided to take the tramway up the loire river to Ile-de-Versailles, which is a beautiful park on the Loire river. We walked around there for a bit, then headed back to our respective host families.

When I returned to my host's apartment, I found her entertaining some friends. She offered me a glass of sparkling cider, so I sat and talked with them for a bit.

Me, Jeana, and Mandi have planned a picnic lunch at Ile-de-Versailles for tommorow. I'm also going to a soccer game after class with some of the people in my group. At some point I'm going to have to find a place where I can get my watch fixed, because the battery died in the middle of history class today.
~Sarah, who needs to take another trip to Carrefour

Beach

Today was scheduled as a day to chill with our host families. My host mom took me and one of her friends to Pornic, which is a beach on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It's a beautiful little town with a lot of charm and personality. Apart from the five minute rainstorm that occurred when we got there, the weather was perfect for a day at the beach! I finished my book, Everything is Illuminated, while we were there. This means I need to go to Carrefour and buy a new pleasure book.

In a recent turn of events, my host mother is taking in another student who is studying abroad from China. This means that I have moved into my host mother's room so the new girl can use the room I used to sleep in. I'm assuming that my host mother is sleeping on a futon in her living room. While I'm excited to have someone else living here who is around my age, I kind of liked the room I was sleeping in before more than this room, if only because it had a desk. No worries, though. I'll get by.

Until next time, I hope everyone who's on campus is having a great semester!
~Sarah, who has to go move her stuff