Hello friends! I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter. Personally I don't celebrate Easter, but the French do, so I got off from school for Easter monday.
My parents returned home safely from La Rochelle, without too much trouble. Irritatingly enough, the airline lost their luggage. In spite of our persistent phone calls, it never arrived. Still I believe they enjoyed their time here. Perhaps so much so that they "accidentally" missedtheir return train to Paris. Fortunately they were able to catch a slightly later train, and theysucceeded in catching their flight without incident.
I still attended a majority of my classes while they were here. My schedule is such that I spend the mornings in class with the afternoons, starting at 12:30, to myself. We took long walks in town, granting me an opportunity to show them the aquarium, the market, and other such sights. They seemed appropriately impressed by everything, in spite of their utter lack of French language skills.
The lady I'm staying with invited us to have a cordial. I spent a conversation glancing back and forth from them to her, translating as much of the French as I could as quickly as possible. She left the same day that they did, to visit her son in Nice. Almost immediately after she left, I accidentally broke a vase with my backpack by turning too quickly. I tried not to worry about it too much while she was away, and she didn't seem too upset by it when she returned.
In my parent's absence, I felt a tinge of momentary melancholy. Fortunately I live in a beautiful city in a beautiful country, so that didn't last long at all. I immediately went out with my friends. A veritable parade of German boyfriends decided to visit La Rochelle to see my German friends (who you can see in the St. Patrick's day photo). My friend Saskia and her boyfriend taught me how to say Kant's categorical imperative in German. I made her write it down, so now all I have to do is memorize it. I hope I get a chance to come back and visit Germany again. The last time I saw that side of Europe I was a mere fourteen years old. Speaking of Kant, there is an exhibition at the mediatheque (that's a library if you haven't been following my posts) entitled "The last days of Immanuel Kant" (translated) which features crazy abstract photos and a weird structure of florescent lights. I'm pretty sure it earns points for being beautiful, but falls somewhat short of sublime.
On Easter Sunday I hopped a ferry to Île-d'Aix with my friend Thais, she's Brazilian. The Île-d'Aix is a small island that rests near La Rochelle. Napoleon spent his last days in France there, hiding out from the British Navy and plotting a possible escape to the US. Thais and I borrowed bikes and circumnavigated the island... well, sort of. We kind of got lost a few times, which is hard to do on such a small island. We bought and ate some oysters off of a few local teens, and enjoyed the beaches. Unfortunately rain clouds loomed in the gray sky, lowering the temperature. The sun occasionally poked through to say hello, and our luck kept us from being rained upon. Unfortunately I returned from the island with a horrible cold, which kept me bedridden for a few days last week.
Happily, I felt well enough on Wednesday to go to an international festival up at the school. I arrived about an hour late, which in France means that things had just started. This really annoyed my Japanese friends who were quite hungry, but amused themselves by keeping a balloon in the air. We weren't kept waiting for too much longer though, and my palette felt nearly overwhelmed by various nationalities of food served. I tasted offerings from Malaysia, Lithuania, Russia, China, Japan, and Africa.
This past weekend, we hopped a train to Bordeaux. Once we arrived and deposited our belongings at the hotel, we went to a Cuban bar for some dancing and mojitos. Thankfully no one was seriously injured by my lack of dance moves. We spent most of our time in Bordeaux walking around and seeing the sights, passing a lazy Saturday afternoon in a park. I learned how to do a little bit of Tai Chi from my friend Linda, how to taste wine from the wine museum we visited, and how talented some of the skaters at Bordeaux's outdoor skate park are.
On Sunday we stopped by the church of St. André, taking the time to climb to the top of the large tower behind. Because my friend Milenco is an EU citizen, and because the guy running the admission felt kind, we all got free tickets to go to the top. From high atop the tower, I saw a side of Bordeaux that one can only glimpse from the street. It never ceases to amaze me how much fun it is to be atop tall structures, even though I am acrophobic. On a side note, when I was in Paris waiting on my parents to arrive (their flight was delayed) I finally got around to climbing atop the Arc de Triomphe. The nice thing about doing so is that since Paris is laid out on a star, I could see in every direction. Although it was not as centrally located, the tower next to St. André was much higher and gave a wonderful view of the city.
After our main adventures in Bordeux, we took a tour of a vineyard and a small town called St. Emilion. Not only was I able to see a working vineyard and taste some of their excellent wine, but we were afforded the opportunity to view a huge underground church in the catacombs beneath St. Emilion. Never before have I climbed to the top of a grand tower and descended into the depths of catacombs in a single day.
This upcoming weekend I will be going to the Châteaux d'Amboise, a famous castle used by French kings during the fifteenth and sixteenth century. I'll be sure to write all about it when I return.
In addition, I have a plan to add more photographs to this blog. I will endeavor to post a photo each day (Monday through Friday) to show you a bit more of La Rochelle and France in general. Sometimes these might include a caption, other times it might be a bit more. In any case, I appreciate your patience with my infrequent posts. I hope this will solve the formatting problems with trying to include lots of photos in a single post.
I trust you are all doing well, and I very much enjoyed speaking to those of you who have e-mailed and called me since I have been here. I look forward to recounting my adventures here in person in the not so distant future.
