Nothing extraordinary really happened from Tuesday to Friday to warrant individual blog posts, so I'm just going to condense last week into this one massive post.
Tuesday
We officially started our Intensive Language Program, and my instructor is this ultra-chic French journalist food connoisseur woman named Isabelle. She's fabulous, and she's super sassy, which just made me love her more. I don't have a picture of her, but I'm sure one of us sneakily snapped a photo of her. Let me tell you: 7 consecutive hours of French grammar is not the business (especially on 5 hours of sleep).
But even after a long day,
Adena and I still found the energy to take a ton of pictures on the street. There's this awesome garden across our house, and there's also a building with mirrors for walls, so it's the perfect place to take selfies. Observe.
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| Cobblestone catwalks. |
There's also this cute little patisserie a few blocks away from our house, so we make it a point to visit it every so often. Besides, Sarah also wanted to buy
un petit cadeau (a little gift) for Madame Véronique for letting her stay at the house for three days.
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| Galette des rois. Miam miam! |
For Sarah's farewell dinner, Madame Véronique and Monsieur Vincent made this delicious traditional French meal:
boudin blanc, aka sausage made of mysterious meat, with a side of caramelized apples. It was heavenly. Look. Be jealous.
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| Dinner time at the Leonards is always a classy affair. |
Oh, and I've been getting a fair amount of requests for pictures of the house I'm staying in, so here you go, impatient people.
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| Welcome to Chateau Fiji. |
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| Bathroom selfies. |
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| Slightly messy. #sorrynotsorry |
Thursday
Our electricity went out for a few hours, so we broke out the candles for a little bit.
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| Lights will guide you home. |
It came time to make dinner, and the power still hadn't come back on. We eventually had to eat dinner in the dark.
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| Kinda romantic, don't you think? |
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| We may not have electricity, but we have wine. |
Friday
By the time, it was Friday, everyone in our program was so sick of French, or at least the grammar part. We set out to explore the beautiful city of Bordeaux. Remember when I said I was going to tell you why you should always pay on the tram, even if no one is watching? I'm going to tell you that story now.
Almost everyone from the UCEAP group got on the tram at the same time after our class finished, so there was a good 15 to 20 of us clumped in one area of the tram car. Barely anyone bothered to swipe their cards because no one's gotten in trouble for not paying yet. For some weird reason, I got the urge to swipe mine, just in case (and maybe because I'm just an honest person like that, ha). About four or five stops later, we see a bunch of men in black coats, and I swear, everyone's eyes went so wide that their eyeballs almost popped out. Everyone in my group frantically swiped their cards, and this one girl, who forgot her card at home, intelligently hopped out of the tram, telling us that she would take the next tram and meet us at Victoire in a bit.
Just when we thought we'd dodged a bullet, one of the tram controllers walked up to our friend Emma, and when he scanned her card, it didn't work! Twenty jaws dropped in unison, as he pulled out his special pad to write her a ticket. Once the initial shock wore off, everyone in our group started whispering to each other, obviously confused. "What the heck is going on?" we muttered under our breaths. "Didn't she swipe her card?" As always, our group was louder than the entire tram car. We were now drawing the attention of the French people, earning a ton of head shakes and muttering, "Americans." I had previously heard that riding the tram without paying warranted a €10 fine. Emma was charged €33. Honestly, we think it's racial profiling (they must hate Americans) because when we checked her card, she had four more swipes left. But from that point on, we were all swiping our cards, at least for the rest of the day. (We all probably went back to not paying the following day.)
We just walked down Rue Sainte-Catherine because that's where all the shops are, and they were all having sales, some as much as 70% off. Then, we all got kebabs because apparently that's the thing to do here.
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| Beef, cheese, and veggies in naan. YUM. |
And just in case you were curious, this is what we all, or at least most of us, look like.
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| Un, deux, trois... FROMAGE!!! |
We walked around for hours, just taking in all the city had to offer us. The architecture in Bordeaux is absolutely impeccable, and it sort of reminded us of Harry Potter.
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| Spotted: A Ravenclaw in Diagon Alley. |
Later that night, we all went out for the first time together, like a mini American family. Everywhere we went, people stopped and stared because we're all so obviously sexy.
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| U-S-A! U-S-A! |
The bar we went to had awesome live music. The band played some Justin Timberlake, Michael Jackson, Coldplay, and so much more. It was great to see everyone not so stressed out and just
dancing their hearts out, without fear of looking foolish, even though I'm sure we all looked goofy. But hey, all's well that ends well.
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| Roomie loveeeee. <3 |
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