Flying Home

Hello all! As I type, I'm using the free wifi on my flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Detroit, Michigan. It has been impossible for me to acknowledge that this isn't another planned program excursion where I'll be back at my host mom's house tonight. I bet it'll hit me in a few days. Yesterday (my last day in Strasbourg), I spent the afternoon walking around town and running last minute errands and picking up some final souvenirs. My heart was heavy as I road on the tram past the buildings and over the Rhine river that have become so familiar. Leaving Strasbourg made me realize how much I've enjoyed the city. It seemed so big at first, but over time, I was able to connect the streets and different areas in my mind and discovered that, in reality, Strasbourg is much smaller than my home town.
Going back is a must. The entire time that I was abroad there was an end date in the back of my mind; "I'll be home on January 16th, this *insert cultural challenge* is only temporary. But what about when I'll be back in France? I don't have that security blanket, that live-to date to ease the sadness of leaving. I'll just have to lean on the confidence that I will make it happen some day.
Heading home is exciting in it's own way. I'll be able to cook my own food, use my cell phone and set up my own exercise routine again. And not to mention that seeing my full wardrobe for the first time after almost five months will be like shopping in my own personalized store! I've been missing many of the brighter colored articles and tee-shirts. And sweatpants! Oh what comfort awaits me.
I hope you have enjoyed following me around France and Europe. It's been fun updating this blog every week with stories and pictures of all my new experiences. Looking back on my entries has been a neat pastime for me to do myself. Who knows, I may even start another blog during my senior research project or to document my experiments with knitting projects and designs. I'll keep you posted! Au revoir!

Waiting for a Collision; They're Driving on the Left!

Hello! Since my last post, I have visited Killarney, Ireland and returned to Dublin. I fell in love with Killarney; the town was quaint and everyone was really nice, though it was the national park that stole my heart. Kailee and I spend the afternoon after we arrived looking around the main streets of town and checking out a few nearby sites. When we went to a hotel to check-in to the B&B next door where we reserved a room as a one-night treat, the manager of the hotel told us that there was a once-a-year deal going on where we could stay in the hotel for the same price as the B&B. We took it. It was so nice! The hotel was a four-star and practically in the middle between the train station and the centre of town. We were so spoiled! That night we went out to dinner at a pub and each ate a bowl of Irish stew for dinner with a glass of Guinness. The perfect Irish experience!

In Killarney National Park

Yesterday we weren't able to find any tours going (it's off tourist season so we were the only two interested) to the Ring of Kerry or the Gap of Dunloe, so we rented bikes and took our own route. Thanks to directions from the man who we rented the bikes from, we visited what he called the "best kept secret in Killarney" called Aghadoe, which is pretty much at the top of a mountain. That bike ride almost killed me. But with the view at the top, you would have thought you'd died and gone to heaven. It was breath-taking. And going back down the hill at what must have been 25-30mph at times, simply added to the thrill of the day.

Ross Castle

After Aghadoe, we biked through the national park to Ross Castle. It's situated on one of the lakes looking out to the mountains. Ross Castle is fairly small, as far as castles go, but it seemed to hold a certain power over the surrounding woods and water. Sadly, due to it being off season, the building was closed. The courtyard was open though and that was cool to walk around it a bit. As we finished touring the castle, it began to rain (that's Ireland for ya) so we headed back into town and returned our bikes before going to an early dinner and caught our train back to Dublin.

Today we had a pretty late start due to both sleeping in and me feeling incredibly lazy and sore from the mountain biking. We left and had a late lunch at a restaurant where a horse race was showing on the television. It was so much fun to listen to the Irish people there making little bets with each other and cheering for their favorites. There was one women who continued the entirety of one race to yell "Come on Avery!" and Kailee and I had a hard time containing ourselves by the end of it. After lunch, we visited St. Patrick's Cathedral. The cathedral is quite beautiful. There are some really old tombs inside along the walls behind the alter that were interesting to look at and read (when possible). We walked through Temple Bar on the way back to our hostel. I was surprised at how popular and lit up that area was. Maybe we'll find a cool pub there to eat at tonight.
More later!

Est-ce que vous avez- Oh yeah! You speak English here!

Top 'o the evenin' to ya! Guess who has arrived in Dublin! Yeah, that'd be me. Oh man, the trip to get here from Strasbourg was killer. We had a train to Paris, then the RER (speedy metro) to Charles de Gaulle airport for our flight to Belfast, Ireland from where we rode approximately 3.5 hours between two different buses to finally get to Dublin and our hostel. Phew! It's funny to be here and be able to overhear conversations without much effort. We also have to be more careful with what we say to each other! In France, I've found myself commenting on someones cute boots or interesting hairstyle aloud to my friends, assuming that my low tone and accent would dissuade any English speaking French from fully understanding. But in Ireland, they will most likely understand the majority of what we are saying. heh, heh...
The taxi drivers that we've had here so far have been great. We've chatted with them about the weather, since it's been so cold and snowy all over Europe, and each time the driver has turned to us after stopping at our destination and told us where to go/walk as two girls in the city, but not before forbidding us from certain areas and nightclubs. I felt almost like our first driver's daughter with how he was emphasizing that we should NOT, under any circumstances, feel like going in one area of the town at night. Luckily it's a way off from where we're staying and we don't have any such urges.
Tomorrow Kailee and I are planning to explore Trinity College and other wonders of Dublin. Hopefully we'll find a good glass of Guinness with what will undoubtedly be a lateish lunch. I can't have visited Ireland without saying I had some. How could I live that down?
One week and I'll be on my way home!! Toodles!

The Final Stretch

Christmas Eve

Salut! Tomorrow I'm going to Ireland! It's so exciting to be traveling to a country where the main language is English and we don't have to worry about learning key phrases to get by. My friend Kailee and I are going to be there for about five days; three whole days in Dublin and twoish days (including travel) in Killarney visiting the national park there. Can't wait!

Paris and Strasbourg with my family over Christmas break was wonderful. We didn't end up making it to London as we had originally planned because the trains stopped running with all the snow and cold weather they were getting over there. It worked out well though since it left us with extra time for seeing all the sites in Paris and taking it easy. Meeting up with them at the train station was strange. Europe had been a uniquely "me" experience for almost four months and seeing my family in Paris made it feel like they were out of place. Or I was. And it didn't even feel like it had been so long since I'd seen them. We were able to pick up our sibling bickering right from where we left off (but not really. we get along). It was still great to have them here though.

Sacré Cœur

Hopefully I will have adequate internet service and will be able to keep you updated while I'm in Ireland. Sorry that my posts have been especially sparse this last month. With finals and my ICRP project to finish (turned it in today!). I'll see if I can make up for that a bit this next, and final, week! À plus!

Bitter-Sweet

A portion of my knit shop!

Bonjour à tous! Some good news, my exams are finished! They went much more smoothly than I expected. The test I was dreading the most was the speaking exam. It's okay if I'm given a prompt and asked to write a 150-200 word essay, but tell me to speak in French under pressure? You might as well be telling me to state the Gettysburg Address with 7 sticks of gum in my mouth.
We were given a random question and a few minutes to brainstorm ideas to speak about. Each of us then went into a different classroom and talked at a professor for 15 minutes. As soon as I walked into the classroom and saw my pronunciation teacher sitting at the desk, my stomach dropped. Not only did I have to speak French to a native speaker, I had to speak to one who specializes in how it's spoken! At the end, she said I did fairly well so I was happy.

The last few evenings have been spent out on the town with everyone; it's almost been nostalgic since our friends from Lewis and Clark left this weekend and we won't see them when we're back in January finishing our ICRP. But still lots of fun. We had a Christmas/farewell dinner earlier in the week where we ate foie gras appetizers and gave out Secret Santa gifts. There was a noticeable difference between it and our first dinner. We were talking and laughing with each other so much more. A game of telephone even went around the table at one point. We all have gotten to know each other so much better!

Christmas markets at
the foot of the cathedral

As for Strasbourg, things have seemed to calm down in this past week. The Christmas markets are not as crowded as before (one could probably walk through them at a steady pace with minimal stopping due to bottlenecks) and the continual snow gives traveling a forced casualness about it. I've been enjoying walking around the city on my own lately. It's so beautiful and festive. And it makes the trip even more fun that I know my way around quite well at this point. I was talking with one of the women that I work with at the knit shop today about how much I'm going to miss Strasbourg. I've fallen in love with it. Her solution was that I need to return someday. That pretty much has become a must. Maybe I'll be able to work at the shop again for a bit... Who knows!

Tonight my host mom invited me to join her, her niece and some friends for a tarte flambe outing. I'm excited to have been asked to go along, but also nervous since that means that I'm going to have to use that good 'ol French to the max.
I leave Monday to meet my family in Paris!! À plus!

Exams... Not Fun in Any Language

Yes my friends, it is once again that time of year when the minds of young, strappin' individuals are striped of their ability to process properly by being crammed full of a plethora of facts known as "what you learned this semester". But what's that? It's a BONUS ROUND! So we get to take them in French! So far I'm still alive.

Booths in the Place
de la Cathedrale

The way that it works here, at the international area of the university, is that we have one week (this week) where we take the exams for the "option" classes that we chose outside of the French language class schedule and next week we have the language tests. This allows us to rest in a continuous state of semi-stressed existence until we explode, or more commonly, stop trying to predict the French way of running things.
Today was quite fun because after classes and ICRP meetings were out of the way, almost all the people on my program went to a pub/microbrewery called Au Brasseur and hung out for a couple hours. It's fun to go into these types of places as a group of 18 or so and try to figure out how to have tables situated as close to each other as possible. We are always arranged in different groups too, so the conversations never get old.

Place Kleber

On the way home from Au Brasseur I stopped at the university's international program Christmas party and watched some of my classmates sing, dance and put on skits. It was fun to see everyone out side of the class atmosphere, we're all such great, fun-loving people when we don't have to use one specific tense or grammatical form to communicate with each other. A group of the professors even did a number! They sang out of key wearing colorful wigs and boas. It was fantastically fun (and might be even more so when brought up in class tomorrow...).
Chris had come with me to the Christmas party but he left a little earlier to get home and have some dinner (our host mom was out of the house this evening). It was lucky that he headed back because when he walked in, the kitchen was full of smoke because our host mom had forgotten that she had left one of the burners on after leaving.

A Christmas booth display

Nothing bad happened (other than the sausage not being quite as edible any more) so we called it a success. The other course for dinner was sauerkraut with bits of ham and some kind of dumpling-like stuff. Anyway, it's Alsatian (I've found that practically anything in France that has German origins is "Alsatian") and really good. I first had some of it at my favorite marché de Noël in Place Broglie for lunch between classes this week. I plan on eating much more at the marchés in the future. À plus!

Uhhhg, Immigration!

Because we are here on a year-long visa, almost everyone on my program had to get up at 6am today to find an office and get our chests x-rayed. Then we had to walk downtown to another office so an actual doctor could look at our results and tell us that we were fine and TB free. All while it was below freezing outside and way too early for most of us to function. The whole experience wasn't difficult, even though it was mostly in French, it was just a tad bit frustrating since we are all leaving in about a month (the Lewis and Clark students leave in two weeks), making the visit practically pointless. It was definitely an eye-opener to what countries require foreign visitors or immigrants to do in order to stay there. We had to give up our entire mornings (missing "crucial" hours of class, exams are coming up!) and pay 55€ for a mandatory doctor's visit. Any day where I'm asked if I'm pregnant, more than once, is not considered a good day in my book. 
Luckily, I was able to make up for feeling fat and grumpy by walking around the marchés de Noël and buying a pretzel covered in cheese and bits of ham (a Strasbourg specialty!). While eating, I meandered around the little booths set up in the square and admired all the candy and beautifully hand made toys and gifts. There was a lovely pair of earrings at one of the shops that looked like a black and white flower made of some sort of shell or coral... I may never know which. But I got them anyway. :) I've finished my Christmas shopping for everyone else, so why not myself?
Yesterday ended up being a fairly good day as well. As I was leaving the house in the morning, I couldn't figure out if I was setting the alarm system up correctly or not... it kept beeping at me and flashing funny lights. By the time I was closing and locking the door behind me for the second time, Chris (my friend who I moved in with) was walking up the front steps and helped me out. Perfect timing!
Classes were... classes and we came back home for dinner. Once again, my host mom and I ended up talking about plants and a day-by-day calendar of flowers that she has next to the dinner table for a while after we finished eating. There was one of the plants that we couldn't remember the common name of so she pulled out one of her books and we searched it out together. She also gave me a book of plants to read through in my room! So much fun.
Right now, I'm off to enjoy the weekend free of doctors and classes but full of shopping in Christmas markets and baking with my host mom! À plus!