So we Greve-ed.

After the unfortunate cancellation of my first class, I decided to just assume that my second class would be canceled and hopped downtown to see the Greve going on in full force! Its more of a ceremonial "Strike" than an actual break down the walls, burn your shoes, kill your neighbor type deal that I was expecting. It was very, Bring the Kids, Grandma will be there, all of the patisseries will be open so you can have a croissant, all while watching farmers, telecomunications employees, and senior citizens march slowly to the beats of American 80's pop. Everyone was taking photos, giggling, and enjoying some good 'ol Greve action! Everyone's invited! Think Labor Day Parade. Emma and I had such a great time we decided to have a celebratory cake afterwards. Enjoy the photos!

La Grève! (and other things French)

Today France is doing what it does best: La Grève. This means Strike, and people here eat it up. They love striking. Its sort of like supporting a national sports team or watching American Idol. Its a fun activity you can do with all of your friends to speak out against the man, not work (but still keep your job and get paid), not go to school, and yell a lot. It has a very snow-day-esque feel about it too. For instance yesterday, at the bank, I needed to pick something up and the woman said "well its not here now but come back tonight, but not tomorrow because there's a good chance there will be a strike and we'll be closed!" She was really excited about it. She was also sort of reclining and half doing her job and I wanted to say, "listen sweetie, you're not on strike yet, finish helping me first..." (But the inefficiency of French bureaucracy is something I’ll go into later). All around town people were saying "Oh, ya La Grève tomorrow, things will be closed! No trams! No elementary school! No mail! Can't wait!” sort of like Pacific Northwesterners would say, "Did you see the weather report? SNOW! Its a comin' tomorrow and everything’s gonna be closed!" When I woke up this morning I looked out my window in the 6am darkness looking for La Grève like I'd look for a white blanket of snow. I waited to see signs of unrest or organized closure but alas the Tram rode by and I felt a little let down.


I was told that the University doesn't necessarily observe La Grève but after waking up at 6:15 for my 8am class (to compensate for the possibility of no tram), no one was there. I went to the secretary of the History department to ask if maybe the course moved or if it was in fact cancelled, and she said "I'm closed". I wanted to say, "Wait, I don't understand, you're right there! I can see you! You're not fooling me." But instead I just said "OK", re-checked my classroom (now 8:15) and decided that I had been yet another victim of La Grève.


Now for some other fun French things:
Efficiency and Accountability in French Bureaucracy- Both do not exist. This will be a new recurring feature in my blog. First Example: The other night I had trouble with Internet and went to check the "trouble with your internet?" sign on the info board in the hall. The first three "suggestions" were very helpful, suggesting such useful things as "enter your user name!" "Enter your password!" "Make sure both are correct!" (I totally wouldn't have gotten those on my own), and then it said, "It is your responsibility to make sure that your Internet works". Wait, what? My responsibility? I mean I really want it to work, and I'm trying, but its not my server or my building, how am I responsible for it not working? The icing on the cake you ask? The last suggestion: "If you are still having problems with your internet connection please send an e-mail to the following address...” I just sat with that one for a minute... no internet... send an e-mail for help with internet... but don't have internet to access e-mail... Thanks.


So on a happier note, Things France does REALLY well... American Candy! Of course everyone knows that France has wonderfully good pastries, chocolate, and other tasty delights but surprisingly, they make popular American candies about 100 x better than America does. A Snickers bar in France begins with a wonderful world of deliciously rich and tantalizing chocolate, darker and much more complex than the hard, mildly sweet chocolate shell of its American counterpart. It then oozes with Caramel that actually tastes like... Caramel! Its much sweeter, milkier, gooier, and smoother than the American compromise, and it makes all the difference. The nougat is also softer and lighter, as if prepared for immediate consumption rather than bomb-shelter storage (again a reference to the inferior American bar of the same name). The same can be said for Kit-Kat bars and Peanut M&M's! The Peanut M&M's feature a sweeter, thicker shell that breaks with a crisp crunch exposing almost double the amount of chocolate surrounding the peanut than the American M&M Peanut. Again the chocolate is of higher quality, which allows for maximum enjoyment. This is just a primer for my many future blog posts on Baguette Sandwiches, my views on butter as a condiment, cheese, gummy candies, teas, and 0.99 Euro wine! Don't think I'm just eating familiar American favorites while I'm over here... oh no, I'm just helping you Americans hop onboard for your culinary journey across the Atlantic. Peace, Love, and Grève

So you let the University know we were coming, right?

So the first week of classes went pretty well. I find that my comprehension is growing leaps and bounds but my speaking abilities are nowhere near as refined or articulate as my French counterparts'. So I keep my mouth shut most of the time. I'm slowly figuring out the protocol for things like scarf wearing (you take your scarf off when you're seated in class... if coat comes off, scarf comes off), university restroom usage (just because there's a woman on the door doesn't mean that you can't go in and do your thing), and note taking (apparently you have to have at least 13 colors of pen and always underline things with a ruler).

The Pitzer College study abroad department has seriously fucked up in the last week. It turns out that they forgot to register and pay for one of the Pitzer students studying over here (my friend Emma, one of only 3 Pitzer students here mind you). She received an e-mail after her first day of classes saying that there was no record of her as a student at the University of Nantes. Really Pitzer? So you still expect us to pay full tuition for a semester but you couldn't verify that one of your students, who you sent halfway around the world, was ACTUALLY ENROLLED?? Nice. Fabulous. You're really earning your keep. Needless to say there will be some letter writing to the Dean.
Once we figured out that minor detail, we thought we were in the clear but... nope. Yesterday evening we received a letter saying that our rent payment was late and that if payment wasn't received, our bill would be sent to a collections agency and we would be asked to vacate the dorm. Pitzer had made it explicitly clear (in writing) that our housing would be paid for entirely so the fact that a) payment is late and b) we're even being notified individually to pay, is utterly and completely innapropriate. And a huge joke.

Though we then felt like castaways in a strange and foreign land, we decided that everything would eventually work out, and realized that the only thing we could do was drink a bottle of wine, eat some chocolate and biscuits and try to laugh about it.


Its been quite stormy but we are going to venture into the cold and try and have some fun. Sorry for the bitch-fest of a post but its sort of my world right now. Stay tuned! Hopefully we won't be homeless by next post. Enjoy these pictures of Beautiful Nantes!

First day of school!

So had my first day of classes today! It was fun/stressful. Everything is taught in French (I take my courses as if I were a regular French student), which is exciting because it will give me a chance to improve my comprehension at a rapid pace. It will also give me the chance to get really frustrated and then choose not to listen and decide to eat almonds out of a zip-lock bag hidden in the pocket of my peacoat instead. (I didn't actually do that but if I wanted to I totally could have.)
So in French University land, you usually have two sessions for each course: a Course Magistrale (CM), which is a big lecture class held in a lecture hall with 100+ students, and a Travaux Diriges (TD), which consists of smaller group work (20-40 students) and is held in a classroom. My first class was a History of Modern Art course (CM). My schedule said that it started at 9am but when I opened the door to the Amphitheatre that it was held in, at around 8:45am, class had clearly started and was already in progress. I had opened the door at the bottom of the Amphitheatre so everyone could see me peek my head in, which was terrifying, so i just shut the door and stayed in the hall to contemplate my next move. I went upstairs to the entrance that would be at the top of the Amphitheatre and found a woman who explained that lecture was separated into two parts, Architechture (8-9am) and then Painting (the course I was signed up for, 9-10am) and that they have a smoke break in the middle, and that's when I could go in. Without that bit of knowledge I probably would have just stayed in the hall, shitting my pants and peeking through the crack of the door trying to figure out what to do.
So that class was great, had about 200 students, discussed religious themed artwork of Europe in the 1600's and I understood most of what was said. My next class, Modern History (CM), decided that it was going to change both time and location without notifying anyone, so I ended up waiting at the wrong Amphiteatre, then going to another building to speak with the History secretary to find out where and when my class had moved to. Turns out it was 2 floors up and started an hour earlier than my schedule said. So I caught the last 30 minutes of that course (the professor was talking about taxation without representation in the English colonies of America) and then had a Sandwich with Emma, a super fun Pitzer student who is also studying here.
My last course of the day was the TD session of my History of Modern Art course, which was great because I was there on time, and we received an assignment, did it in class, turned it in at the end of class, and then left with no assigned homework. I went up to the professor at the end of the class and she confirmed that there wouldn't ever be work outside of class. Ever. Super.
They have all of these wonderful cafes around campus, all of which serve espresso, and you have to drink it sitting down, there is no such thing as coffee "to-go". The equivalent (sort of the equivalent but not really) would be getting a tiny coffee from the vending machine, "go"-ing outside, and drinking it while you smoke a cigarette and chat with your friends.
I went for splendid run through village-y neighborhoods near my dorm that led me down to the dirt path that follows the river Erdre. I kept running until I hit a field of horses and then decided to turn back. My rural french countryside running skills are still developing (i.e. I don't know how to get horse shit off of my shoes yet so i wasn't gonna go there...).
I watched Obama's big day on CNN live on my computer, made a dope ham and ementhal cheese omlette for dinner with my Pitzer lady friends, and am now I will go to bed early. I have a 9:30am date with the laundry facilities (which I had to make an appointment for oddly enough) tomorrow morning. My French is getting better by the day which is very nice. See you guys later!

Internal clock? How do you reset that?

Nantes is super cool! I feel like its a training city for a larger french metropolis. It has beautiful old architecture in the city center, 2 rivers running through it (the Loire and the l'Erdre), and a tramway that rocks my socks. It is super easy to get around because everything one needs is basically on one tram line, which stops right next to my dorm. Since last we spoke I received my luggage, and spent the most crazy, frustrating two days wading through the bureaucracy of France and the University. You have pay about 8,000,000 Euro for two types of mandatory insurance, paying into French Social Security, housing deposits, etc. and they are all at different locations around town with literally NO ONE to tell you what to do. Really bizarre and scary because if I didn't have my friend Mathilde, who studied at Pitzer last year and is a student at Univ. de Nantes, I would be lost. BUT that is all taken care of, I have a new French phone number and a dinky French phone (which is really cute actually) and that number is
06.47.66.66.10 but its about 8 billion Euro if you try to call me from the US so either text or e-mail me. It is a pay as you go phone and its better than in the US because incoming calls are free!

I had a fantastic time with Ewa, Dominic and baby Camille. Ewa showed me all around town and made Raclette for dinner (SUPER excellent alpine meal with melted cheese, potatoes, sliced meats, and baby pickles). We also got Crepes, chatted about Politics, and discussed French Recycling and the efficiency of round-abouts.

The dorm is really great. Super small room with a little foam bed but TONS of amazing cube storage. I have a cube for everything (I even have a flip-flop cube and a belt cube)! Luba and Emma, my two companions from Pitzer, are here and we've been trying to get everything in order. We went to Ikea yesterday and a Target-esque store called Leclerc and it was marvelous. It was in this gigantic mall and it made me shamefully overjoyed! We have to cook for ourselves so we had to buy some cooking supplies, bedding, Emma bought a cactus, and I got a coffee maker for my room.








Classes start on monday and apparently I'm a history major. I'm not sure where they got that but i'm signed up for a bunch of history classes, but I'm super down with that so its all good. We met some really fun mexican exchange students last night in the dorm kitchen and they gave us the scoop on studying for classes, not studying for classes, fun day trips, cooking, partying, and where you can buy bottles of wine for under a Euro. Needless to say I'm spending more time with them. My french has gotten exponentially better in the past 4 days.

I have wireless internet in my room. Getting used to the 24 hour clock is really confusing. I sleep at really odd hours and it's not really conducive to early mornings so that sucks. I haven't exercised in a week and surprisingly I haven't died, melted, or gained 85 pounds... who knew! I'm going to try and go for a run today. Where I'll be running? Don't really know. Supposedly there's a trail that goes by the river which could be beautiful.

I'm Hurrrr

I'm here guys! I've made it to Nantes! But sadly my luggage has not... I made it through 3 flights and was stood up at the carousel at Charles de Gaulle. No bags. Nada. Just me, being confused (and a little smelly) without any of my belongings. I chatted up all of the people at the lost luggage counter and said fun things in French like "My bags have been forgotten" (instead of lost) and "Do I supposed to meet my baggages in London?". So what, I wasn't expecting to have to whip out my French skills (to the max) until at least after a couple hours sleep. Anyways, Sam-u-el (baggage dude) and I worked it out. I called my family friend Ewa, got her address, and long story short, the bags should be coming tomorrow. Well one of them anyways... The flights were good! Seattle to London is really long. The food was surprisingly good. I sat next to this really hot guy with a euro-style mohawk who I thought was Spanish or Bulgarian (something dark and man-ish) and kept eyeing him and then after the 9 hours he spoke and it turned out he was from Belleview Washington. Totally not as hot. I tried to wash my face at Heathrow but turns out they don't have paper towels anywhere. I was so out of it that I considered putting my face under the hand-dryer, but then I caught the eye of another guy who was brushing his teeth and could see him contemplating the same thing and decided that this was totally one of those "well if that guy jumps off a bridge would you jump too?" moments, and I wan't about to go along with it. I had coffee at starbucks of all places and then wandered aimlessly. Slept on the flight to France. Made it onto the train (sans baggages) in the depths of CDG airport and made it to Nantes! I'm staying with Ewa and her husband Dominic (offspring of my mom's friend who lives in St. Lo, France) and they have a 2 year old daughter named Camille who runs around alot, wears orange pajamas, and makes fun sounds. We chat but it doesn't go very far because I don't know what any of her toys are called (and neither does she, she sort of makes it up as she goes along...). Anyways, we're really good friends. Ewa is going to give me a tour of Nantes and then I am going to meet the fabulous Mathilde (of Pitzer 07-08 fame) who will show me around the University and help me register for things. I move into my dorm room tomorrow. Hopefully I will have clothes then. K bye!

Ports of Air... Lots of em

So I'm hangin' at PDX about to get on flight 1 of 3 to France! Props to PDX for having free internet access. So packing was successful and even included the dry-run bag-weighage (where you pack your bag and then go into your mom's bathroom to awkwardly weigh yourself, then yourself + bag and do the math...). Before departure I was able to go to the gym, eat a burrito (I hear mexican food is hard to come by in france), buy a book about baby animals in/around the northwest (for the 2 year old who's letting me stay at her house), and now i'm just waiting. Security was pretty relaxed and I got a chatty TSA woman who was giving me her conveyor-belt shtick about it being a federal offense to bring chocolate overseas... I sort of giggle-choked and realized she was trying to be funny so I gave it to her. TSA's gotta do something to keep it light. I'm headed to Seattle where I have 4 hours to wait for a flight to London (9 hours) then a 3 hour layover until my flight to Paris (2 hours). Then I crawl around Charles de Gaulle Airport looking for my bags, my coffee, my french language skills, and my soul (jet-lag is hard). THEN I curl up snuggly-snug near the train station where I sleep for 2 hours and then board a 2.5 hour train to Nantes, for a 11:38pm arrival. This all takes place in roughly 24 hours (I think). Anyways, to summarize, I'll be really tired, dry, bitchy, and on another continent. See you then!

A week in Advance

Hi! Welcome to my blog of fun and France! This will be where you can proctor my progress throughout my journey in and around Nantes, France. So its saturday morning and I'm drinking my coffee while taking advantage of my mom's new computer. I'm trying to think of all of the things that must be  arranged cleverly near my suitcase so that when I walk by it (the suitcase that has been on the floor since I came back from last semester at Pitzer, slowly accruing crucial items like dust and cat pee (not kidding)) I can pretend that I'm making progress. I have my plane ticket, my train ticket from CDG Paris Airport to Nantes, and many a document written in French, all of which take far too long to read. BUT I have all week to worry about that stuff. Except that I'm going on a ski vacation on Thursday which means that everything needs to be packed by the time I leave. Ok, so looks like now we have less than a week. Geeze, time flies when you're mentally planning. Ok I must move on to the next items on my mental to-do list, which include: 1. Oatmeal 2. Television. Hopefully things will look a little more organized on future posts. Come back soon!

-Andrew