VCU Office of International Education

Afterwards we went to the Uffizzi, which was surprisingly empty.  We saw the Botticelli room which was so overwhelming.  I guess I wasn't expecting to be so floored by all of those paintings, I dont know why, Ive only looked at them in books for the past 10 years.  We went up to the cafe on the top floor and sat there for a bit.  It was the first really cold day in Florence so it was nice to feel the breeze and to see the Palazzo Vecchio from eye level. 

Snippets

10/16: Liese and I went to this little restaurant across the river in Santo Spirito called Volume.  Its a crepe/gallette place, they serve coffee and gelato too.  I had a gallette (savory crepe) with Pecorino and fontina cheese, with prosciutto and a fried egg on top with tomatoes and arugula.  It was so incredibly delicious.  I am really enjoying eating little tastes of meat again.  So far I have only been eating it if its something really unique or sounds really delicious and that has been going well. 

10/20: Midterms are finally over!

10/21: I had my third session with the kindergarteners.  The older group seems to know a lot more each week where as the younger group seems to have a lot harder time.  I guess a few months makes a huge difference at that age.  I have come to the conclusion that my Italian is not catered to small children. I can have a normal conversation with an adult but I cant tell a 3 year old to sit down.

10/7

I started volunteering at a Kindergarden just out of the really busy area of the city.  I am working with two classes, ages 2-3 and 3-4.  They are very small and their Italian is most definitely better than mine.  They are reviewing vocabulary and songs that they learned last year and the majority of their class is still in Italian.  They are so cute but I am not sure I am helping them by singing with them.

That evening, Liese and I trekked 40 minutes across the River to Villa Strozzi to see the Tempo Reale performance.  It was really interesting and the space they were in was wonderful.  They had a video projected behind them as they played that had interesting images that started at the micro level and seemed to zoom out and out as the performance went on.  There were also little poems throughout the video that would kind of direct your thought but they were strange, and used large words.  Its possible that they were written by someone whose first language wasn't English and used a thesaurus or something.  The music itself was improvised, with a sax, percussion, guitar, upright bass and two guys on computers. 

10/8 and 9

I got out in the single again today, I am definitely getting more comfortable with it.  There are so many bridges to steer around and the course is only 1k so its not exactly like there are any straight aways.  There were a few other people out today which was nice.  The cafe was packed with older gentlemen reading the newspaper.  I see very few of them rowing but boy do they love to drink coffee and read the paper. 

That evening we went out for Pizza for Liese's birthday, at the place across the street which was affordable and delicious of course.  After that we went out to the Lions Fountain Irish pub, which was much more like an american college pub because it had US university t-shirts plastered all over the ceiling and greek letters carved into all of the counter space. I met a few guys studying in Milan but they go to U of R which was crazy!  After that we met two Italian guys, Marco and Arben, who spoke a few words of english.  I dont think they expected to have a full blown conversation with Kali and I when we burst out into Italian, eager to use everything we had learned, out side of the classroom.  After the bar started flashing the lights to close, we walked over to the (not-so-secret) Bakery.  The line was quite long but it smelled so good we were not really concerned about it.  We finally got up to the window and ordered our fresh baked croissants.  After our delicious early morning snack, I returned home and went to bed.

When we all woke up the next morning, we went to a little "osteria" near school which was absolutely delicious.  I had gnocchi with mozzarella and I wished that my plate would replenish itself, but alas, all good things must come to an end.  That night we met up with our Italian friends from the night before and we went out to Gusta Pizza across the river.  The pizza was spectacular, with mozzarella, Parmesan and arugula.  We trekked it back over to Faenza for ice cream and I almost screamed I was so happy, they had GREEN TEA GELATO.  Incredible. 

9/29

While I did not accomplish much today, we did meet some interesting people.  Giulia had her friend GianLucca over for dinner and he cooked us a large helping of Penne pasta with a broccoli pesto.  He was a very tall hilarious Italian man.  The meal started out a touch awkward: were always starving so we are stuffing our faces unable to make conversation through mouth-fulls of pasta.  There were also no introductions made so we had no idea where this man came from or who he was.  Once our stomachs have been quieted we can attempt to speak in our non-native tongue.  Once we found out his name, we inquired about his line of work. His first answer was a famous chef.  Meanwhile Giulia is standing behind him waving her hands furiously and shaking her head, hinting to the fact that he was most definitely fibbing.  His second answer was a butcher.  Also a lie.  Giulia then stared playing along and said that he worked for Giacommo.  Once again, not the truth.  Finally he told us that he was a cop, or more specifically a Carabinieri.  I also quickly discovered that there are many Italians with a strange, but amazing, sense of humor.  Gianlucca is one of them.  His jokes were bizarre, offhand and sometimes poorly translated making them all the more funny.  After we finished eating he made us a concoction of fresh fruit, wine, and some kind of liquor covered in sugar.  It was excellent. 

9/30

Today we got a late start but Liese, Krysta and I went out to get a pannino and do some shopping.  Afterwards we went to piazza della republicca/via roma to find our friend Gianlucca to see for ourselves once and for all if he really was a cop.  Strangely enough, we found him in his carabinieri outfit sitting on the hood of his Alfa Romeo with his partner in crime fighting.  We went over to say hello and the laughs shortly ensued.

Eventually we made our way back to the house for dinner, shortly followed by gelato at Vivoli.  I had Riso (rice) and bananna.  Riso Is my favorite, its like rice pudding gelato. Mascarpone is really good too.  We went and finished our gelato in Santa Croce then walked back towards our apartment.  Outside of our house there is a little pavilion that the restaurant uses and sometimes they have live music.  Tonight they had two guys playing guitar, playing mostly Beatles and Dire Straits.  We met some people who were also sitting and watching, a guy named Joe from Yorkshire, a guy named Gio from Italy and a girl named Anna.  We walked around for a little while and passed by the Old Stove pub which is evidently a pretty good spot.  By the time we decided to go home it was about 1am.  Time for secret bakery.

Many of the pasticcerie (bakeries/pastry shops) in Italy cook all of their pastries at night.  You can follow your nose around 2 am and find a few of them within smelling distance.  They sell pastries for less than half of whatever they sell them for during the day.  We got there and there quite a line.  After a few minutes someone said that they wouldn't be selling anything until 2 am.  Oh well, for another night, I was just totally amazed that these places existed.  What a strange job.  Midnight Chef.

9/16

Today, Liese, Kalila and I took a little trip out to Arezzo.  It was just over an hour on the train and it was super easy to get there.  Arezzo was believed to have been one of the twelve most important cities in the Etruscan Dodecapolis.  Etruscan remains, architectural elements and two bronzes were discovered in Arezzo in the 16th century.  First we visited the church of Santa Maria della Pieve.  One of the really cool things about the structure of the church were all of its columns: they are all different.  The Apse was really incredibly beautiful from the inside.  The ceilings are so tall and the half dome at the top was really magnificent

After we left the church we walked through the Piazza Grande, a large sloping square.  This is also where they host their jousting tournament in early September.  We walked around the town for a little while and eventually back down the hill to see the Amphitheater.  We also went into the little museum there to see all the artifacts that had been found in the area.  There was a surprising amount of glass in the museum.  I would be really interested in seeing how they made it. 

After that we went and had a really beautiful lunch.  It was at this little restaurant in an alleyway called the Grottino, which I think means little cave. We had Bruschetta to start with which was absolutely delicious.  We also split a bottle of their white wine.  I had pumpkin gnocchi with a cream cheese sauce with pear.  It was so good, a really sweet dish, I would love to learn how to make it.  For dessert we had a white chocolate mouse and tiramisu.  It was wonderful to just sit there and enjoy ourselves for a few hours.  We then walked around a little bit, passed by the Medici fortress and looped back to the train station.

The train ride back was also really easy.  We were back in time for a dinner of the fried pasta pockets, and a Russian salad that involved vegetables and a lot of mayonnaise.

Panzanella: is a Florentine salad of bread and tomatoes popular in the summer. It includes chunks of soaked stale bread and tomatoes, sometimes also onions and basil, dressed with olive oil and vinegar.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons good olive oil
• 1 small French bread, cut into 1-inch cubes (6 cups)
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 large, ripe tomatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes, 1 cucumber, unpeeled, sliced 1/2-inch thick, 1 red bell pepper and 1 yellow pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes and 1/2 red onion, cut in 1/2 and thinly sliced
• 20 large basil leaves, coarsely chopped
• 3 tablespoons capers

• 1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 3 tablespoons Champagne vinegar
• 1/2 cup good olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

9/18

Today was very overcast and quite cool which was perfect for my wanderings.  In doing my art history homework last night I came across the Church of Or San Michelle.  It was essentially the church of the guilds.  Each guild was to have a sculpture of their patron saint made for the niches in the outside of the building.  Ghilberti and Donatello were among the sculptors to be commissioned to create some of these sculptures.  Anyway evidently it was constructed on the site of thek itchen garden of the monastery of San Michele which is no longer there.  It was originally built as a grain market.  Between 1380 and 1404 it was converted into a church and used by the craft and trade guilds of Florence.

So anyway, this morning I set out to find it to take another look.  I had stumbled on it the other day but I wanted to see it again no that I had read a little bit about it.  I walked over there this morning on my way to the gardens and when I got there, a flock of marching bands were waking by.  Some of them were pretty traditional marching bands, some of them were older people and some of them were younger people.  There was one that was playing a really fun song and doing funny dance moves.  I watched for a little while then made my way across the ponte vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, with its large sloped front entrance.  I waited in the long line to get my ticket and I got to use my new Amici degli Ufizzi card, which lets me into all of the state museums for free.

So you enter the museum through a big archway and it opens up to a big courtyard.  There are entrances to the different things in the museum on all sides of the piazza.  The Boboli Gardens are up a staircase/ramp on the other side, next to a little cave with a fountain in it.  There were also tow little cupids wrestling in it.  This is probably one of the most incredible places that I have ever been.  All of the sculptures look very old and weathered which really adds to the charm of it.  Some of them have been restored and some of them are not the originals but it seems like they have done a really good job making the place feel undiscovered. So when you come up the stairs you are greeted by the Amphitheater (anfiteatro).  The foundations were laid around 1630-1634.  It is surrounded by six tiers with twenty four aedicules which housed statues. 

As you make your way up the hill the Neptune Fountain come into view.  The Neptune Fountain was really graceful but it was comical how little water was actually coming out of it.  You would expect for such an impressive statue and pond that it would have a cascading waterfall.  I wandered up to the Porcelain museum and the Knights garden.  There are so many layers to everything, all the buildings have gardens on the roof, but you dont feel like you're on a roof at all and you definitely wouldn't think that there are rooms underneath you.  This garden was named for the statue of Malatesta the Knight designed by Michelangelo in 1529.  Originally this garden held medicinal plants called semplici.  The lodge was later built to store pots but was used by Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici as a meeting place for scholars and scientists.

Next I came across the Kaufeehaus, where the members of the court took a rest as they walked through the gardens.  In front of the house stands the fountain of Ganymead, abducted by Zeus to serve as the cup-bearer in Olympus. 

This place just totally blew my mind: The Buontalenti Grotto.  This is where the Vassari corridor lets out, it is insane, there is some kind of coral everywhere and weird guys with  weird beards and sheep....its nuts.  It was originally a nursery and was transformed into a grotto in the 1580s.  Apollo and Ceres flank the entrance.  The bas relief inside was inspired by the myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the biblical equivalent being Noah and his ark.  Anyway, the frescoes on the ceiling are of many different species of animals painted by Bernardino Poccetti.  There is also a skylight that is said to have once housed a crystal ball with fish in it.  This place is absolutely insane.  Oh, and water used to gush from the walls. There are a few different chambers that go back into the  grotto, beyond what you can see from the front.

After that mind boggling experience, I walked back up the hill to go to the Bandini gardens.  I found the little Kauffeehaus there too which was a much needed stop along the way.  I had an overpriced but decent sandwich with eggplant and mozzarella and tomatoes and an espresso, but the view was absolutely incredible so I guess that it was actually not that expensive of a sandwich.  The view seemed to change every time I looked up, It was a view of Firenze, across the river.  I could see towns, miles away between the gaps in the mountains, and very faint in the distance was another set of mountains, almost the same color of the clouds. 

After my little snack I walked around the Bardini gardens a little bit more.  They had a lot more information about the plants specifically which was interesting.  The wind started to pick up and the temperature to drop as I was examining a lime bush.  I walked down the stairs, out and then back up the hill to the Boboli gardens again.  The path between the two gardens is a little strange because it goes through a little neighborhood.  There is also a fort, Fort Belvedere, but it was closed because too many people and dogs fell off of it. 

Back in the Boboli Gardens, I wanted to head over to the other side to see the Island fountain but it was about to start raining.  I decided to go inside to see the costume exhibit instead.  There was a really interesting mix of modern and old clothing and most spectacular of all, there were the clothes of the Medici that had been reconstructed from the remnants found in the tombs. That was absolutely breathtaking.  The information said that it took years to arrange all of the little specks of fabric into clothing because a lot of it had disintegrated but it was really amazing to think that these people who were alive hundreds of years ago had worn these things.  

It was quite a wonderful day, soaking up some of the many special places Florence has to offer. 

9/7

Sospiri:
A dainty sweet cake traditionally from Sardinia called sospiri meaning "sighs".
Ingredients: 200g almonds
                   2 egg whites
                   200 g fine sugar
                   1 tsp vanilla or orange essence
                   Plain flour for dusting
Method: Pre heat oven to 150 C
             Finely chop the almonds.  Whisk the egg whites until stiff, gently fold in the sugar.  Add the essence and almonds.  Flour a baking sheet, using a teaspoon create small rounds of the mixture and spoon them onto the baking sheet.  Bake for around 25 minutes and allow to cool before serving.

So today was insane...again.  I got up and got ready for class which started at 9 on the other side of town, but, I needed to go to an ATM before hand.  So I left a few minutes early but alas, it was not open.  I had Italian through service learning which is going to kick my butt.  I got there and sat down and there are a grand total of 3 people in this class as well.  This is probably for the better because I wont feel dumb asking questions I should probably know the answer to already.  My teachers name Is Laura and she seems really great, she is the same woman who did my Italian placement test interview. 

So she started speaking extremely fast but after a few minutes I could understand pretty much all of what she was saying.  The first thing that we had to do was name as many regions in Italy as we could...I could think of about 10 out of the 20 and I only knew exactly where 3 of them were.  Plan for this week? Brush up on some geography. 

We also introduced ourselves and asked each other questions which was surprisingly easy.  I guess all of those composition and presentation assignments from class paid off after all. 

After that I hustled off to get my Italian textbook from the student center, got a little lost only to realize that where I needed to be was right next to where I was.  I didn't end up having time to get my 'tessera del museo e la musica' card but that was probably for the better because I decided in the end to go with the other, more expensive, but more inclusive card.  I also decided not to add another class.  This is a big step for me seeing as I usually cram as many credits as possibly allowed into my schedule.  I want to take my time with my classes and be able to do extra work to really learn everything in depth.  I also want time to travel and last but not least time to work out and row. The Canottieri is so amazing I want to really get back in shape and learn to scull.  I haven't even been to the rock gym yet but Im excited to go give that a try as well.  There are also so many amazing museums and gardens and palaces here that it will be hard, even as it is, to get to go see them all.

Anyway.  I left Via Faenza with a croissant in hand and headed back over to Giglio for my next class: Florence Sketchbook.  We had to do a drawing 'test' which was not really all that important but nerve-wracking none the less.  We drew from a model which I was extremely rusty at and of course, I had charcoal all over me to prove it.  We then went to the art store to get supplies which were expensive for no apparent reason. Thennn.... I sprinted over to the BNL to take out cash to be able to pay for Crew, then sprinted back to the river to the Canottieri.  I paid my dues and got my super fancy key card so I can get in when its closed.  There was a girl from Penn State there who was interested in rowing which was cool.  Alberto had me translate for her.  He then took me to the ergs to see how I rowed and he said that I looked good.  I did some ab exercises then I headed off to my Italian class.  Tomorrow I am going out in a single which is really exciting. I am hoping that doing something that resembles the atmosphere of the crew team at school will help me get more acclimated to the city and feel more at home.

I booked it back to Piazza Strozzi for an extremely overwhelming class of Italian, I have a lot of work to do to keep up with everything but that's fine, because that's what I'm here for. 

FIELD NOTE 5.67 - Bumpy arrivals.

After navigating a strike, having to stand for the entire 2-hour train ride from Nantes to Paris, and then navigating through the métros and up stairs with my heavy baggage, I finally arrived at the CEA Center in Paris only to find that traffic would be too heavy because of the traffic and that I would have to wait for a few hours there for it to die down.

But now, 6 hours after having arrived in Paris, I am finally in my apartment and unpacking my life for a month before returning to the United States.

FIELD NOTE 5.67 - Paris rain.

This apartment is strange at night as it fills with sounds unfamiliar to me and the streetlight catches strangely on the blue embroidered curtains and transforms the flowers into circles. Meanwhile the rain falls outside and even through the glass of the windows and the wood of the shutters I can hear it.

Even as tired as I am, I cannot help but to hum "La Bastille" from the movie Les chansons d'amour as I close my eyes and drift off to sleep. The weather says tomorrow will be sunny and warm for orientation but I find the rain so much more enjoyable here than the sunshine.

It might be the romantic image of Paris I still hold onto and hope to find or it could just be a product of my fatigue.

FIELD NOTE 5.70 - Inspection.

All students living in a CEA-owned apartment are required to undergo an inspection after students move in and then another just before they move out.

Today at 5h30 was our scheduled inspection and shortly after that time Elisabeth from CEA stopped by with her inspection forms.

Since I had just made a cup of mint tea to settle my stomach and the pot I had used was still warm, I thought it would only be polite to offer Elisabeth a cup of tea. She seemed genuinely surprised by my offer as if simple politeness was something unfamiliar in the typical American students they deal with.
So the tea was brewed and there were more comments about my kindness. It wasn't until afterward and I was talking to my roommates that one of them told me just how much she noticed the small gesture really surprised and pleased Elisabeth.

I guess it's true what they say about the little things being the most important...

FIELD NOTE 5.72 - Saturday tour.

There was a bus tour scheduled for CEA students today to take us around the major spots in Paris. I decided to go to refresh myself on where everything was in correlation to everything else and all through the trip I couldn't help but to notice the differences between myself and the other students as they rushed to take pictures of every monument and street we passed while I was seated, camera in hand but feeling no need to capture anything through the window of the moving bus.

And as they chattered away loudly about all the places they wanted to visit and all the things they wanted to see, I just felt a little lost. To me Paris is magic, but none of it can be found at any of the major tourist spots. No, it's hidden in the breads of the bakers whose tiny stores are overlooked when they stand next to a McDonald's or a cup of coffee from a café well off the beaten path.

I wonder sometimes if it will be like this when I get back - if I will be lost among Americans.

FIELD NOTE 5.74 - Could.

Walking back to my apartment tonight a single thought went through my head as I walked through the park the next block over: I could live here and be happy.

It was a passing thought but it gave me no comfort even though I knew 5 months ago I would have killed to have been able to think that to myself.

I think the problem for me was the single key word: could. Could implies many things, but to me it lacks the feeling of choice. I could live here if I had a program for a degree, I could live here if I had a job requiring it, I could...but would I ever want to for me?

It's silly to think that there could be an answer to this question. There's that word again...

FIELD NOTE 5.78 - Parc Montsouris.

Today the weather has been slightly cloudy and cold but even still I talked myself into doing my preliminary readings for one of my courses in Parc Montsouris which is right across the street from my apartment.

Since most things are closed on Sundays, the parks of France tend to be particularly crowded these days and I was not surprised to note that Montsouris was no exception. The park was full of playing families while runners filled the pathways and old people sat on the benches looking on all the rest. I chose a bench not very far from the entrance but close enough that I could dash back to my apartment quickly in the event of a downpour.

I passed almost 2 and a half hours there reading and listening to little snippets of passing conversation and the occasional clip of pony hooves when they would pass with children on their backs.
I always love the parks best here because they are the places where I feel that I cease to be viewed as a tourist and I just am. Sure, the French definitely know I am not one of them with our greatly differing appearances and dress styles, but nor am I of the same sort of loud American tourist which they are used to.

So I read and they go about their lives. Occasionally our gazes meet and then we look away. And then I continue reading and they continue on with their lives.

FIELD NOTE 5.81 - Early morning, 7AM.

For the next month I will be waking every morning at 7AM to give myself ample time to prepare for and get myself to class on time.

Normally I hate early mornings, but something about Paris changes all that. Taking a shower in my tiny bathroom, flinging open the shutters, rushing through Parc Montsouris to catch the RER - somehow all of it makes me feel like an adult, like I can actually pretend like I have an entire life of my own. Sure my parents paid for it, but that seems trivial.

So I run through this city's metro system, keeping in time with the French people around me and reading the French newspaper in between metro stops. It might not be a full life, but it's enough life for now.

FIELD NOTE 6.1 - June.

It's June and I've had to write that 2 times today. Strange to think that it's my last month in France - stranger still to think that these past 5 months have already gone by. I would ask where the time went, but I am making a steadfast effort not to fall prey to the clichés. It's the clichés that cause the problems.

FIELD NOTE 6.5 - "Mon beau cheri."

Every morning will entail a walk through Parc Montsouris to get to the RER station that will take me to the Sorbonne.
Today as I was walking through the entrance to the park I found it filled with runners and other people traveling to the metro stop. I noticed one man in particular dressed in spandex and stretching beside a park bench.
A few minutes later he was jogging beside me and singing in what can only be called off-the-charts-off-key before stopping suddenly and saying, "Bonjour, mon beau cheri." Then he was running again and back to his off-key squealing. And I couldn't help but laugh.

FIELD NOTE 6.11 - Accents.

I think one of the best things about being here in classes full of international students is that I've been given the opportunity to hear French spoken with such a wide range of accents. Each different country brings with it different sounds and different phonetic problems, which, once learned, make international understanding possible. Another fun part of this is that I can now tell which country someone comes from usually when the speak to me in French - although I still have some work to do with distinguishing the regional French accents.

A large part of my ability to do this has no doubt been due to living in a French setting and having adjusted to the "vrai" French accent. Surprisingly the American French accent is the one that grates on my nerves the most - probably due to the fact that it has, as one of my friends says, "no real accent, it's just French spoken with neither inflection nor tone" - and this is definitely true of most of the Americans I've known who speak French.

This is not to suggest that my French is different from this. I feel that my French is most definitely in this category with the exception of the few monosyllabic phrases that require nothing more from me than a shameless imitation of what I hear the French say - at least in these I can say that I sound French. But today I received a compliment from the girl who has been sitting beside me for the past few days after we all had to read out loud. She asked how long I'd been in France and when I told her 6 months she said that she was impressed because I didn't sound anything like the other Americans when I speak French. To her I had broken that accent and fallen somewhere close to actually sounding French.

That pretty much made my day.

FIELD NOTE 6.21 - (Better) French?

Something is happening and I don't know what it is. Perhaps it's just that the Sorbonne grades way more harshly than the Université de Nantes. Perhaps it's just that the one-month span of time to receive all this information isn't enough and I'm being overloaded with information. Or perhaps - and this is the most likely reason - my French really isn't anywhere near to being "avancé".

But whatever the real reason, I have now reached that threshold where my French and my grades are actually starting to get worse. But I'm sure there are even reasons for that: the addition of a new phonetics course this week, the test this week, the fact that today was rather dreary.

I tell myself that I need to keep going and so I push through my badly translated conversations and turn over the papers with their horrible red-ink grades, confident that if I can just get through this bad part then knowledge will come. And if not knowledge, at least a few new words and phrases.

FIELD NOTE 6.23 - Ants.

We are at war in our apartment at 24 ave. de Reille.

Ants have taken over the kitchen and we have had to wrap our honey jar in a plastic bag and to put our bag of sugar into the refrigerator to keep them away. Even still their little red-black bodies crawl over our counters, blending in with the Formica.

I fear the war zone is expanding to the living room and my bedroom because I have counted 8 ants there today. Sadly, I think is one of those wars where there can be no victory, only a hostile sharing of ground.

FIELD NOTE 6.32 - Cemetery wishes.

After our trip to the catacombs we decided to continue our macabre-themed day by taking a brief tour of Père Lachaise cemetery before going to the St. Paul métro stop and meeting my friend from England for a falafel.
The entire short 45 minutes we were there was spent on a quest to find and kiss the grave of Oscar Wilde. After a few wrong turns and a few stops for pictures we finally found the grave. It was just as I expected it, covered in lipstick from past kisses and little notes from past visitors wanting to leave their mark on the grave of the writer who left his mark upon them. The front had fresh roses and lilies, also from visitors, and a single candle stood before a plaque noting that the plot was a national monument.

And so we did what we came to do: we each of us in our turn walked up to the grave and kissed it after asking for a wish to be granted. I thought that my wish would be one of those ones that I would instantly know the minute I set eyes on the stone of his grave, but it ended up being one of those pointless ones I've wished for at birthdays and while passing over bridges and holding my breath.

I guess some things don't change.

FIELD NOTE 6.33 - Falafel.

I was supposed to meet my English friend Sarah and go out to dinner with her tonight since it's her first trip to Paris. But she ended up getting to Paris much later than she thought she would and so was unable to meet us.

So I went with my roommates Pegah and Susan to l'As du falafel, a restaurant in the Marais rumored to be the best place to buy a falafel in all of Paris.

And I must say that if our dinner was anything to go by, then this rumor is most definitely correct. Our dinners ended up being 11 euro apiece which included a falafel and a lemonade made fresh by the restaurant.
After a little playful banter with the waiter we left the restaurant with full stomach and definite plans to come back and have another falafel before leaving the city.

FIELD NOTE 6.51 - Si loin.

"Tu viens de si loin... mais je ne te dmande pas qui tu es."

François Cheng wrote this in his work Le Dit de Tianyi, which appears in the anthology of French literature that the Sorbonne gave me my first day of classes. We weren't scheduled to read this piece but even still I just happened to stumble across this page and found the passage fit entirely with what I feel now.
I am not, nor will I ever be, French. The French know this. I think they can see it in my hair, in my skin, in my walk. And if not there, then in my accent and my half-wit words. I can only say enough to get by, they can understand. And even in this, they let me pass and pretend that I can speak French.

That's enough for now, I guess. It will have to be at any rate since I can't change it now.

I'm trying to avoid thinking about the fact that I will be sitting at home in one week--my very real and American home, not my dreamy, host home. Shock, not sadness, would more accurately describe my emotions right now. I can't believe that nearly a month has passed already, despite my occasional bouts of homesickness. Yet this has also been one of the fullest months of my life, so it seems like a week and a quarter of a year at the same time. I wish I could stay longer but I acknowledge that it's probably healthier for me not to stay stuck in French fairyland forever. Thankfully I have an interesting and rewarding lifestyle awaiting me, otherwise I'd kick and scream at the airport. Well, I'll probably kick and scream at Charles de Gaulle, anyway, but not because I'm upset about leaving the world of cheese snobs. I'll kick and scream because the employees there are remarkably clueless.

Anyway, I should recount how I spent my final weekend in La Rochelle. I tried to profit--a word the French employ at every opportunity, so they can stop criticizing American capitalism as if they're not guilty of some of the same crimes--from the sunshine and blue skies without becoming a total beach bum. The weekend began five minutes before class generally lets out at 12:30 p.m. We wrapped up a French version of the board game Taboo (one classmate had to get his team to guess the word toilet water during the Pictionary portion) and then wandered off to the main lobby to scarf down lunch. I had packed whatever was lying around my host family's kitchen, from apricots to chocolate mousse, and then bought a sandwich in one of the school vending machines. The option of buying a pre-wrapped sandwich from a machine known for selling candy and soda surprised me, but I figured I might as well try it. The bread, a rich wheat, was delicious. Unfortunately, the rest of the sandwich, was not. It contained chicken, way too much mayo (again, the French can stop criticize America for O.D.ing on condiments), and crudités. Crudités are raw vegetables, but you have to be careful anytime you see the word "raw" in this country. You'd be surprised by what this country doesn't cook. They did, after all, serve as raw hamburger meat in the university cafeteria one day like it was sanitary and even appetizing. I politely insisted that they cook it. Mad Cow Disease doesn't sound like a fun malady.

Once we finished our lunches, we boarded the charter bus headed for Cognac. The ride was over an hour, so I grabbed my own row, as most of the students did, and curled up with a book. When I decided to rest my eyes, I videotaped scenes from the countryside. Let it be known that France grows many, many sunflowers. Van Gogh wasn't hallucinating. Or if he was, at least he imagined very realistic scenery.

Finally we arrived in the City of Cognac, right outside of the Hennessy headquarters. A few of my classmates and I explored the figmental town for about thirty minutes before our scheduled tour of the distillery. For a non-drinker, visiting land famous for producing liqueur definitely has the potential to be boring. I, on the other hand, considered my visit to Hennessy nothing short of a success. I got to go on a boat, literally just to cross a canal barely wider than the C&O. My whole class laughed because when the tour guide instructed us to get on the boat, we assumed we'd go down the canal, not across it. Non. Our ride lasted five minutes, including the time it took to dock the boat.

We got out and followed our tour guide. She was about 5'6'', brunette, and young, probably in her late twenties or early thirties. She wore a chocolate-colored suit from head to toe and spoke English with a very heavy accent that was not entirely French. I'm convinced that French was her early second language and English was her very late third, but I couldn't determine what her native one was. Normally our school requests all-French tours for us, but somehow we got mixed up with a bunch of British tourists, so the tour couldn't be conducted in Frog. The British can make fun of Americans for not knowing foreign languages, but it doesn't seem like many of them can utter words outside of the realm of "bullocks" and "sprocket," either. Only two English people I have met on this trip have been able to adequately express themselves in another language. Otherwise, they know French the way many Americans know Spanish: "Yo quiero Taco Bell" and "Living the Vida Loca."

The Hennessy distillery was full of bulbous machines and big barrels and baskets containing alcohol from the 1800s. Black fungus, which the tour guide called angels, also covered the interior and exterior walls of most of the buildings. The fungus eats most of the alcohol that evaporates during the fermentation process. Once the tour guide finished explaining how they manufactured their cognac--using the finest ingredients, of course!--we headed over to the bar and shop. I tried cognac for the first time and nearly choked. A classmate captured its essence when she said it tasted the way rubbing alcohol smells. I gave the rest of my sample to someone who actually liked it.

I saw not one but two cognac producing companies, including an independently-owned family business. Hennesey's plant was grander and their store featured crystal bottles, but the family business won my approval because it radiated to much more charm. The estate was only six hectares big and featured a four-hundred year old family home made of stone. The tour guide was a tiny French grandma who bought the vineyard with her husband back around World War II, but apparently the land has been used for cognac and pinot production for the past couple hundred years. I tried pinot for the first time and, while it was not as strong as the cognac, I did not love it. I could only tolerate it. It smelled lovely, though. The highlight of that tasting portion came when a classmate bought nearly three-hundred Euros worth of cognac. Her father's a huge fan. The school representative who has organized the excursion--a British lady who looks like Princess Di--kept laughing at the purchase. She asked over and over again how the girl intended to bring that all back to America, to which the girl responded she had brought an entire extra suitcase just to bring back gifts from the trip. Apparently when the girl went to her host mother's later that evening, the city bus driver honked at her and made a drinking motion when she got off. It's ironic because she's such a responsible drinker, but she looked like an alcoholic carrying all of those bottles.

The rest of the evening was supposed to involve me eating one of the pre-packed dinners my host mother had made with the aforementioned cognac-stocker-upper girl, watching a movie at Vieux Port, and walking around town/clubbing. Yet some plans remain nothing more than plans. 

My host family was out for the weekend because the mother's sister was going married, which meant I was all alone. I invited my classmate over for dinner because my host mother had left me with far more food than I could possibly eat alone and, besides, I wanted company in the big, old house. I sort of live in the boonies, so the bus to my neighborhood does not run especially often. By that hour Friday night (8 o'clock or so), it had stopped running altogether, so my classmate and I walked all the way from the bus station to my host family's house. We chatted about the Cognac excursion, how the study abroad trip was going altogether, and how eager we were about our plans for that evening. When we finally reached my host family's house, I unlocked the gate, wove through all the clutter in the courtyard, and straight to the house door. It was locked. I wiggled the handle again, just in case it was stuck. Ha, no, it was completely locked, when my host family always leaves the door unlocked. The previous night, they had said they would either leave the door unlocked (like usual) or put a key out for me. They didn't leave a key out for me the next morning, so I assumed that the door would be unlocked like always. I wake up earlier than anyone, so there was nobody to ask before I left for school on Friday morning. I wasn't worried about it, however. I hadn't had a key up until that point during my stay, anyway.

I cracked. Everything I needed was in the house. I had packed an especially light purse that day because I didn't want to drag around my life on the Cognac field trip. My classmate stood there helplessly as I desperately tried the other doors and searched around the courtyard for a key. Pas de chance. She did her best to calm me down, but I was so nervous about not being able to get to my belongings until Monday. I rushed over to my host family's tenant who rents a room separate from the rest of the house. I was thrilled to discover that he spoke Spanish because I was so upset that my French had nearly escaped me by that point. I explained the situation to him, but he didn't have the family's cell phone number or an extra key. He guided me to a neighbor across the street, so I had to switch back to French. Those neighbors barely knew my family, but pointed to the house next door. I knocked on the neighbor's gate because they had no doorbell. Nobody answered. I raced over to the photographer who lived in front of my family because the host mother had referred to him as a close friend. He answered the door but was of no help, either. By this point, I was practically hyperventilating. That's when I rushed back to the courtyard, where my classmate and the tenant stood. The tenant pointed to a window. It was my bedroom window, but I hadn't even thought of trying it because I knew I had locked the shutters that morning. The optimist in me won over, though.

I seized a chair and stepped on it. Then I began fiddling with the shutter lock. This involved me bending my arm and folding my hand in very uncomfortable positions. Somehow I wiggled my little hand in there and, though I nearly cut myself in the process, unlatched the shutters. Thank Buddha I had not locked the window. I crawled in and immediately sprinted to unlock the front door. I thanked the tenant and my classmate came inside. I still did not have a key, but at least I was safe, inside, and close to my valuables. My classmate tried to get me to breathe. I searched for our VCU professor's phone number and she called her while I searched for keys. I crossed my fingers that there were spare ones somewhere in the house because I was afraid of leaving the house unlocked the whole weekend. It's the Washingtonian in me to think someone is going to creep into my house in the middle of the night. Besides, I was responsible for the house while my host family was away. Call me paranoid, but if anybody unwelcome came in, I would be in huge trouble. My classmate pointed out some keys hanging near the family computer, keys nobody in the family had told me were there. Most of them appeared to be car keys but I grabbed the ones that weren't. I asked her to lock the front door so I could test out the keys while she continued talking to our professor. Eventually I found the right one. The professor was very understanding and apologized. She said if I had been truly locked out for the weekend, I would have of course been allowed to stay with her. She also coached me in what to say when my family returned. She told me a story of a French woman staying in a British or American's home. The woman knocked a vase off a table and then blamed it on the hostess, saying that the vase was in the way and that it was probably broken to begin with. Denial is very French. My professor then ordered me to have a nice evening. She told me to take a taxi with my classmate and go have a nice dinner; she would re-imburse me for the cost.

God, I should get locked out more often.

I called a taxi. The receptionist said the car would arrive in five to ten minutes, but this is France. Half an hour later, my classmate and I got into the taxi and asked to go to Vieux Port. When we interrogated the driver about good restaurants in the area, he mentioned one called L'Annexe and offered to drop us off there. The answer was, 'Yes, please, because we are starving.'

My classmate and I sat ourselves down, to the chagrin of one of the waitresses. She was wearing that mildly perturbed face I've seen many French servers wear. She gave us menus and my classmate and I spent the next several minutes choosing the components of our formule, which included an appetizer, an entry, and a dessert. I went for something with chorizo, honey duck, and brioche with chocolate ice cream. My classmate chose cream of asparagus soup, veal head, and chocolate lava cake. I am, of course, giving you the short English names for everything. The actual French names were long and very descriptive. The French don't have brevity in mind when they write menus...or anything. 

Whatever my appetizer was, it wasn't Spanish sausage like I requested. It was some kind of mollusk with diced tomatoes. I didn't care because I was so hungry and ate it anyway. My classmate won in that arena, however. Her appetizer was great. I kept dunking bread into it (Note: I've noticed the French like eating hard, almost stale bread.) I won for the entree, though. My duck included mashed potatoes and baked apples with a thick honey sauce. Dark green salad with vinegrette came on the side. My classmate's veal head was, as she said, "mooshy." Dessert was fantastic, too, but I think my classmate won in that department. Hers was ultra-chocolatey. Mine was more buttery. The only unpleasant part of the evening came when I pulled the tiny table next to us up to ours. Our table was so small that we couldn't fit all of our plates on it. I figured it was late, nobody was going to sit there, and that the staff wouldn't mind. Wrong. They did mind. A waiter said, "Non, non, non" very quickly and pulled the table back to his  place. Uh-oh. Faux pas on my part. I probably annoyed him further that evening when I made prolonged eye contact with him when I wanted the check. You can't wave or smile at French waiters when you need something. I'm pretty sure it's a law. So the man probably thought I staring at him.

By the time my classmate and I were done with dinner, it was far too late to watch a movie, but we walked over to the Grosse Horlage, a giant clock, where we had agreed to meet other classmates to go strolling/bar-hopping/clubbing. Only one was there, despite the fact that we were ten minutes late. The classmate who I ate dinner with went home almost right after because she was so exhausted. That left me alone with the other classmate, who wondered why we hadn't come to the movie.

He and I spent the next three and a half hours trolling La Rochelle. He bought very bad beer at a convenience store and then we laughed at all of the empty discotheques (apparently the clubs don't get started until 4 or 5 a.m.!). Everywhere we went, the dance floors were either empty or full of weird lounge lizard types. The only place that was happening took us forever to find, charged a cover, and was so packed that there was a huge line to get in. I wasn't in the mood for paying to unintentionally grind against sweaty Spanish tourists. The highlight of the evening came when he and I raided a garbage pile and I found a bunch of old homework and gay porn. It was hilarious to read through some French high school kid's English homework ("I like dolphins.") and go through naughty French photos of over-eager men starring in pun-filled DVDs. When I went home, I watched a French cartoon called "Naftaline la fete."

Saturday was the highlight of the weekend. My VCU professor took my group on a boat ride to Ile d'Aix. We saw Fort Boyard, the location of a very popular French reality TV show, on the way. All throughout the ride, we saw puffy clouds, sailboats, and long stretches of blue-green sea. The island was postcard perfect, with quaint houses, a combination of sandy and rocky beaches brimming with tidal pools, woodsy paths, and cute shops and cafes. My group enjoyed a long, French picnic of cherries, peaches, cheese, cookies, baguette, cheese, turkey, salad, and who knows what else. I ate far more than my body's designed to eat, but it was lovely to discuss race in American and French contexts, and comparing American and French school systems. Then we went for a walk that ended in a rocky beach before we split up. I wandered a little before running into my professor and another classmate. The three of us went to a cafe and discussed everything from bargaining in French stores to French mothers' sexualization of their sons. We were there maybe an hour, with me sipping my apricot juice, my classmate drinking lemonade (citronade!), and my professor stirring her ice coffee. Then we hit gift shops. My professor and I bought similar wooden watches. Mine was brown with African motifs. 

When we returned to La Rochelle, one of my classmates and I checked out a precious boutique full of fantasy sundresses and tunics that were all far out of our price league. The style was definitely mine, though. Then we went to a much more affordable shop a couple of storefronts down. While their summer clothes were on sale, I was eyeing their fall collection. It was full of purple, black, and gray, which I all wear very often. As tantalizing as the Victorian and 1980s details were, I resisted. Maybe I'll go back my last day and splurge. After lusting after beautiful clothes, I left my classmate for Monoprix. I took a while comparing all the different French hair dyes before I found one I thought was safe. I had never died my hair before (only used sun-reactive highlighting spray), so I was a bit nervous, but I wanted to come home with a new look. I was lucky to find a color I liked with easy-to-understand instructions. Afterwards, I went home and relaxed.

Two classmates and I met up later that evening to go clubbing, but we just couldn't stay out that late. I was so tired from my long and fabulous weekend that I was in even less of a mood to dance with Spanish tourists. I went home and watched "Les Choristes" for the first time. It was around 3 a.m. or so by the time I collapsed in bed.

Sunday was much mellower. I stayed home, dyed my hair with the coloring I bought at Monoprix after the boat ride, and met up with classmates for lunch and a movie. We saw "Une Semaine Sur Deux," which is about two kids whose parents get divorced and try to find new love at the same time the daughter begins to date. Then I worked on my presentation on the nation's cinema while noshing on a French TV dinner. It's strange how quickly La Rochelle is beginning to feel like a second home. 

he little girl in me needed no other persuasion when I heard that my university group was scheduled to visit palaces and medieval castles relatively close to La Rochelle. Considering that I have wanted to be a princess since I knew what a princess was (minus the beheading peasants part), I was very excited to see Amboise, Chenonceau, and Clos Lucé (the last place Leonardo da Vinci lived) with students from VCU, U. Minnesota-Mankato, and the University of Richmond. The fact that I had to board a bus at 7 a.m. was completely worth it, though under any other circumstances I definitely would have grumbled. Okay, that makes it sound like I didn't whine at all. I did complain about how painfully early the charter bus left that gray Saturday morning (especially since I had spent the previous day at La Braderie, La Rochelle's annual summer sale, and bar-hopping until an hour I won't mention), but I didn't whine as much as I would have had we been scheduled to, say, visit a candle factory. Somehow candles don't compare to the mind-boggling decadence of iron-work windows large enough for elephants to walk through without scraping themselves. The sheer wealth of all the royalty and aristocrats who passed through those manors is at once wondrous and disgusting. Instead of helping to feed the surrounding peasants, they shelled out their gold coins for things like pheasant roasts and mirkins.

Needless to say, I took photos of my favorite 6'' plastic dragon in these beautiful historical locations. She would have resented me if I had not. Besides, I couldn't have created more realistic scenery for Lenore myself if I had raided A.C. Moore and the Museum of London. The stone, the velvet, the oil paintings, the views from towers and terraces--everything was incredible with that perfect old-timey aesthetic. My favorite site was Amboise, though, because it was the oldest and most Gothic. Everything looked dangerously pointy, thanks to exquisite curly-cues and, well, points. I was not surprised to hear the tour guide say that Charles II supposedly died by knocking his head against one of the stone doorways and suffering from internal bleeding. Amboise's rooms were spacious and the period furniture allowed me to visualize myself in a time before forks had been invented. As I walked through the castle, I felt the spirits of a hundred dead men call to me, breathe on me, and feel as real as if they had been standing right next to me, digging their impatient elbows into my ribs like modern Frenchmen in line at La Rochelle's Dragon Cinema. Furthermore, I couldn't resist all of the stonework animals in the estate's St. Hubert chapel, ranging from monkeys to goats to frogs to serpents. It was a Middle Ages version of "Littlest Pet Shop."

My time since celebrating Bastille Day has consisted of more than castle visits, however. I know I could easily spend a whole month in France during nothing but touring castles, but that would not be the most well-rounded view of the country. I have to escape fairyland sometimes. 

As usual, I have class everyday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., where I learn about everything from French scatology ("crottin" is just one of many words reserved specifically for animal dung) to translating American satire about French culture. I have also discovered that dental floss is always placed by condoms in the few French stores that actually carry dental floss and that the French sometimes hold pancake or flu parties. At pancake, or crêpe, parties, the host puts a hot plate on the table and allows each guest to pour his portion of batter onto the plate. Everybody then watches their pancake cook. Apparently it's very riveting, assuming you're five-years old or you've already had a lot of wine. Flu parties are organized to help the French build immunity against the disease. Someone with the flu invites his friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and perhaps random hobos on the street (in the spirit of "convivalité") to get everyone they know sick. It sounds like a wonderful, cheese-and-fruit filled way to start an epidemic, rather than a science-based solution for minimizing people's reaction to the flu bug in the fall. Of course, maybe I don't understand because I'm American.

With my university group, I have also seen a WWII Nazi bunker, built when the Germans occupied France. The bunker is located in a La Rochellais hotel but it not the least bit advertised. The owner is rather secretive about it, I suppose because he wants to preserve the space and artifacts as well as possible. Thankfully my school has a good relationship with him and he was happy to open up his Nazi cave for us. Plenty of WWII paraphernalia from all over La Rochelle layered the walls and tables. Imagine scores of maps, jackets, helmets, guns, letters, submarine parts, and photographs everywhere. My favorite artifact was a garishly false Nazi propaganda poster that showed a map of France with cities full of flames to indicate where Anglo-American forces had supposedly attacked. Uh-huh. Nice try. Funny that all of those cities should appear in the Western part of the country, the part the Germans occupied. (Correlation? Um...) 

Anyway, following the bunker came a trip to La Rochelle's Natural History Museum. To put it bluntly, it was a building full of dead things. Considering how morbid I can be, that fact delighted me. I basically wanted to take home every glass globe of stuffed songbirds, even if they were far beyond the point of being able to sing. I wasn't bothered by the dead animals themselves; many of them were gorgeous. I was bothered by how the tortoises and gazelles and owls had to sacrifice their lives for human's vain obsession with science. The museum wasn't in any way remarkable; it was like any other natural history museum I'd ever seen, except much, much, much smaller and with virtually no multi-media. (Then again, I grew up fewer than nine miles from the Smithsonian Institution's Natural History Museum, so it's hard to impress me.) At least now I can say I have seen a French science museum, where the specimens were beautiful but the collection was not as grand as I wished.

Besides the palaces, the bunker, and the history museum, I've made time for other tourist traps, ahem, sites, as well. I've been to the Musée des Automates, which is full of mechanical dolls from the 1700 through early 1900s. The dolls come in a variety of sizes and forms, but all have one thing in common: they move. They not only move but they move with an eerie stiffness. Nothing about them is realistic because they're way too freaky. Their eyes are glass, their clothes are perfectly tailored (though in some cases moth-eaten), and their skin lacks the softness of true humans. I love them nonetheless. That could just mean that I like scary things but I think the fact that the museum even exists and that it was completely crowded when I went shows that others find them enchanting. It's astounding to realize that these motorized dolls have existed in some shape or form since Ancient Egypt. Apparently Egyptians still had energy left over after erecting pyramids and mummifying pharaohs (ha, wait, slaves did that) to tinker with creepy dolls. I was especially drawn to the Baroque and Victorian dolls, but I generally am. The dolls nearly drowned in their velvet, pearls, silk, lace, and feathers. One scene of motorized dolls depicted two women in a parasol shop, right down to the wallpaper. The shopkeeper bent slightly to hand the customer a parasol. Another one showed a bunch of Baroque boys and girls dressed up for a ball. Right after visiting the Musée des Automates, I went to the Musée des Modèles Réduits, which was full of tiny cars and boats. Needless to say, it did not excite me the same way the motorized the dolls did. My favorite boat was named, "Le Pourquoi Pas," the Why Not?, which I found funny. Names like those just prove that a kingdom CAN have too much money. There were a couple of pretty Chinese junk boats, as well. A classmate and I also walked to "Jardin des Plantes" [Garden of Plants]; apparently the French see a need to specify what a garden entails. It was enjoyable but nothing spectacular. The only point worth mentioning is that whoever designed the garden chose to include both a Greco-Roman style statue and a massive Oceania head. I'm not sure why.

I've watched a few movies since Bastille Day, too. I took my host sister to see the sixth Harry Potter in French. Yes, they do change the names and, yes, it is hilarious to hear the French voices in place of the original British ones. I also saw "Les Beaux Gosses" [The Good-Looking Kids] with a classmate. It's a French comedy about two nerdy fourteen-year olds trying to navigate through all the pains of adolescence as they transition from middle to high school. There's a huge emphasis on, as you would imagine, first kisses and the early stages of dating. It was funny, vulgar, and a smart introduction to current French slang. I've also gone out of my way to watch movies at the Mediatheque. Luckily, I got to see "Sweetie" (1989), an Australian Cannes winner, and "You Only Live Once" (1937).

Obviously I've snuck shopping into the past week. My most notable retail adventure was to Carrefour, the equivalent of a French Wal-Mart or Target. They sell everything a discount department store normally carries in the United States (except sporting goods) with a very expanded food section. I saw everything from octopus packaged like deli meat to chocolate-covered truffles to fresh fish to mussels.They also had several fruit samples; my classmate and I spat out our bites of passion fruit in unison. I ended up buying a dress, two pairs of shoes, and a gift for my host sister because the prices were astonishingly low by European standards. I didn't even visit during La Braderie, when prices are supposed to be jaw-droppingly cheap and it was still inexpensive. 

Afterward Carrefour, the classmate who I'd come with was hungry, so we wandered around the nearby mall a bit. Nothing in the food court seemed nearly as good as what we were accustomed to seeing downtown, where most of the food is prepared fresh daily. At least he spotted a pocket watch brandishing a mini motorcycle. Eventually he and I settled for a bar just outside of the mall. I ordered strawberry juice (it doesn't taste quite as sweet as plain strawberries) and he ordered a beer. I'm not sure if it's because La Rochelle is a tourist city or not, but it seems that so long as a restaurant is open, you can buy alcohol regardless of the time of day. I had praline ice cream, too. Sadly, it was not like the ambrosia I order at Ernest's, the parlor with the most flavors in all of La Rochelle. There I have tried two types of chocolate, including a kind of African dark chocolate and Oriental Chocolate. Oriental Chocolate contains sesame seeds, honey, and maybe a touch of ginger. I'm not sure it exists anywhere else.

I'm also happy to announce that my host mother's birthday took place this week. It was fun to serenade her from my host sister's bedroom window. She was doing laundry in the courtyard when my host sister nudged me to croon. We burst out in a round of "Joyeux anniversaire." Then I attempted to help my host sister choose her outfit for that evening's dinner, but it is never easy to placate an eleven-year old, French or otherwise. I tried crayfish and sea snails for the first time at a quaint restaurant located in the countryside, where the host family too me to celebrate the mother's 46th. (Yes, the crayfish looked like big bugs and, no, they did not taste gross, but it is hard to remove all of their legs). Apparently, it's my host mother's favorite restaurant, even though she repeatedly described it as simple. It wasn't by any means fancy, but the food was top-notch. For dessert, I even tried black currant ice cream, which was quite possibly the best fruit ice cream I have ever tasted in my life. The rustic touches added to the restaurant's charm. Instead of setting a water pitcher on the table, they gave us a glass wine bottle (full of water, not wine). They also put rocks marked "Reserved" on our table to prevent anyone else from sitting there. I couldn't exactly complain about having a clear view of the Atlantic Ocean, either.

I should also mention that during this past week, I've had the opportunity to meet a few other people my age, all European. To get an idea of how the rest of the world views America, let me briefly list a small number of the questions and statements European teenagers and young adults have muttered to me recently: "Is it true that over 80% of all maps in America are of the United States and no other country?"; "Is it true that it's illegal to be gay in America?"; "Is it true that they don't eat fruits and vegetables in America?"; "Do most kids wait until they're 21 to start drinking in America?"; "Is it true that in America you don't have [row] houses?"; "Young Americans are so much politer than British kids."; "America is so religious."; "Americans eat McDonald's all the time"; "Americans don't know much about other countries and only like to study their history and culture"; "Americans are big." I'm only going to comment upon those words in saying that they are offensive, but I realize that Americans harbor plenty of stereotypes about the French. According to most Americans, the French only shower about once a week (Fact: They shower once a day, but take shorter, more economical showers than most Americans because hot water is expensive.); they don't wear deodorant (Fact: Many Frenchies do wear deodorant, but they aren't as obsessive as Americans are about re-applying it throughout the day. Some of them simply use perfume instead of deodorant but I haven't died from smelling anyone's stench yet.); they drink all the time (Fact: the French do drink more frequently than Americans traditionally do because they have so many wines for so many gastronomical purposes, but most do not drink very much per sitting because getting drunk is perceived as rather pitiful.); and Frenchies are skinny (Fact: Fat French people do exist, but, overall, there are fewer big people in this country than the United States because they eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and walk/ride bikes more often).

It's satisfying to review everything I've done simply since Bastille Day--and this is merely an overview. I can't possibly list all of the details (ranging from bike rides with a crazy French eleven-year old to conversations with my host mother about love and marriage to flipping through a picture-free, French version of the Karma Sutra to asking four different Frenchies how to get to the city's bird park only to hear four different responses), while still making time to revel in all the Frenchness that surrounds me. But I've given you the snapshot of my past seven days in La Rochelle. Fortunately, I still have seven more. The negative side is that I still have so much more I want to do, see, and experience.