Katie à l'école des sorciers

(First off, I haven't written in almost a month. Whoops. Time flies here. I don't even realize it and a week has gone by).

On a recent trip to BUDAPEST to visit Allison, my roommate from freshman year, I had a lot of time to sit and wait (on the train, at Charles De Gaulle airport, on the plane...) so I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone en français. The whole thing. I just thought I'd share a few things with you that I found interesting. The French people have a funny insistence on making things very French, including all the names. Professor Snape? No way. Let's call him professeur Rogue. The snitch? Well thats a Vif d'or, obviously. Even Hogwarts couldn't escape the French translator. C'est Poudlard, biensûr. Here's a quick list of a few more of them.

Muggles = Moldus
Oliver Wood = Oliver Dubois
The Sorting Hat = Le choixpeau (which is the word 'choix' (choice) mixed with the word 'chapeau' (hat)...and voila quoi, you get the hat that chooses!)
Hufflepuff = Poufsouffle
Ravenclaw = Serdaigle
Slytherin = Serpentard
Filch = Rusard

The list goes on and on. I asked my friend Brice why they would change the names, and he responded, "Le mot 'muggle' n'a aucun sens en français..." (the word muggle has no meaning in French). Since when does it mean anything in English? Oh you silly, silly Frenchies.

I experienced my first grève (strike) in France yesterday. All the restaurants on campus were closed. No lunch! I don't really know why there were going on strike, probably for money. It was more of an annoyance since I had to go buy food in town (we get lunch free with the study abroad program). But they were back open for business today! Maybe they all just wanted a day off....There were actually some elementary/middle/high schools that closed too, as well as parts of the post office.

This past weekend, like I already mentioned, I went to Budapest to visit Allison. She's studying abroad over there, and has her own apartment and everything. It was a very intimidating experience to land at the airport and to have to navigate my way to her apartment. Thankfully, people did speak English, a nice businessman I met at Charles De Gaulle gave me 1000 forints (about 5 bucks) when I told him I was nervous about the whole ordeal (he happened to have forints in his wallet?), there were some signs at the airport too, and I managed to take the right bus and make it to the right subway stop! An elderly Hungarian woman blabbed to me on the bus when I tried to let her sit in my seat, I gave her the "deer in headlights, I have no clue what your saying" look, and she just patted my knee and smiled. I don't know how Allison manages without knowing the language. I feel like life would involve a lot of pointing.

A bunch of Allison's friends who are studying abroad in Florence came to visit her too, plus some of Allison's roommates friends too, so all in all it was about 13 people sleeping in her apartment! I got a bed, so all was good. Without going into detail about everything, I'll just summarize my favorite parts.

1. Forints, the currency. Its about 250 forints to one dollar. So, if you pay 500 forints, its like 2 dollars. I felt like I had big bucks the whole time. 1000 forint? No big deal. Pocket change.


2. The awkward language barrier. One of Allison's friends ordered apple pie, and the waitress brought him pineapple juice. So great.

3. Business lunch! Monday-Friday, most restaurants have a cheap menu where you get 3 courses for about 600-800 forint. We got soup, chicken burgers and fries, AND dessert for 3-4 bucks.


4. Apple Strudel. Nom nom nom.....

5. The Baths. There are Turkish baths in Budapest all over the place. They're giant pools heated geothermically. The place we went had three big outdoor, wonderfully warm (basically giant hot tubs) pools and then 20 some inside. There were 2 saunas too. It was the most relaxing thing ever. It was also prime speedo watching. Lots of old men in speedos....Another great thing about the baths were the old men playing chess in the pools. I guess its a Budapest staple, they come and play chess all day. One of the people visiting from Florence was this tiny little girl from Korea, and one of the old guys asked her to play. It was a hilarious image, this small girl standing across this giant white haired extreme chess player. Guess who won? The girl! I could have spent forever there, just floating around in the water, but alas, I had to leave.


6. CHRISTMAS MARKET!!!!!!!! It was my first taste of Christmas since I've been here, as the market in Rennes doesn't open til this weekend. There were lights, vendors of gifts and food, music, people, a GIANT TREE!, everything you would ever want in a Christmas market. Allison, Cristal (her roommate), and I got some mulled wine just to get the super cute souvenir mugs that say Christmas in Budapest in English and in Hungarian. We also got some delicious cinnamon bread that was roasted over a fire before our very eyes. I was in heaven. A peculiar thing about the music....there was a little mini choir that was singing songs on a stage. First off, they were singing in English, but in a way that made it pretty obvious they didn't know what they were singing. I had trouble at first telling if it was Hungarian or English. De plus, their music choice was decidedly un-Christmasy. For example, Son of Preacher Man? But I loved it all the same.


It was a really great trip, I also learned a lot of the history of Budapest from both Allison and random drunk Hungarian men, and I got to see a part of the world I'd never seen before. It was hard to leave to go back to class :)

Tomorrow is THANKSGIVING (or "Sanksgiving" à la française...they have such a hard time with those -th- sounds). I'm eating lunch at a retirement home with Leah and Steph to talk about the tradition with some elderly Frenchies and then the Institut Franco-Americain is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant in the city. TWO THANKSGIVINGS!!!!!!! I'm exciting to see how they pull off pumpkin pie. Its absolutely unheard of here. Cody tried to find pumpkin pie filling to make pumpkin bread and failed. Lucile (my little host sister) thought it sounded horrible, but maybe thats just because we eat pumpkin an awful lot at my house. I showed my host siblings clips of the Macy's Day parade and I basically told them all you do on Thanksgiving is eat. They were sad they don't celebrate it here. It's weird not seeing turkey decorations and hearing all sorts of buzz about no school and the holidays, and it's even weirder that I'm not going to see my family. But, I'm going to celebrate it with my friends, which have basically become my family here, so hopefully it won't be too sad, just full of fooooooood!

Another quick observation: Little kids looooooooooove marbles here. I have played marbles more times in the past week than I have in my entire life. Lucile is obsessed. I can tell you all the different types (who knew there were multiple kinds of marbles?) and the types of defenses you can use while playing (mur, araignée, coquillage). I don't get it.

Bahhhh voila quoi. A bientot!

"Hey, are you guys French?" "No! We-a are-a Italianooooo!"

A LOT has happened. Which explains why I haven't written....First off, fall break.

I went on a road trip with Yoann, Leah, Larissa, and Cody to the south of France. After some mishaps with the GPS (fondly named Marie-Claire), which included her sending us down dead end roads and her suddenly deciding she needed a nap, we made it through mountain roads to Marseille.

Dead End Directions from M-C

But, alas, Marseille was definitely a sketch town. I'd heard from a lot of people that it wasn't that great. The old port was really pretty and nice, but once you went a block off of it, the safety level severely dropped. At least our hostel was nice, and the next day we went on a really nice boat ride to Château d'If, the location of the prison in Count of Monte Cristo. It was a beautiful day and the Mediterranean was gorgeously blue as always. The castle was also pretty neat. We saw prison cells and there were all these etchings in the walls that tourists had made, some dating back to the 1800s.

After that we said "Au revoir Marseille!" and headed to Nice. Which is A LOT nicer. Our hostel was called Villa Saint Exupéry, after the author of Le Petit Prince, and it was really nice. The place was over run by Australians, who love backpacking, and it was definitely weird after being surrounded by French for over two months to be in a giant English bubble. One of the workers asked us if we were from Québec because we were speaking in French to Yoann. We said no, he asked us why we were speaking French then. "Ummmmm, we're in France?" was our reply. I think Yoann felt a little out of place, but it was really cute to see him order stuff in English, "Sank you!" (ie thank you, those darn "th" sounds...). The hostel was a little ways away from downtown and the beach, but Nice recently installed a tram that was SUPER nice and efficient, and the hostel had a shuttle running to the tram and back, so no biggie. We spent the first night down on the beach. Leah and I attempted salsa dancing at a salsa bar, but just ended up running into everyone.

The next day, we met Alex (an Aussie, of course), and the 6 of us walked around Nice for the day. We wandered through the flower market, ate some yummy lunch and then went to the beach. Cody, Yoann, and I braved the cold and jumped in the water! It was nothing compared to the polar plunge, but still a weeeee bit chilly! But how could you go the Mediterranean and not swim at least once! After that, we climbed up this big cliff which a sign described it as having the most beautiful panoramas in the world. I'd agree. The sun was setting and Nice is really just a beautiful city. Sea on one side, mountains on the other. It was perfect. After a stop for some ice cream, we headed back to the hostel for dinner. This hostel was awesome, really. I recommend it to anyone traveling to Nice. The dinner was super yummy (and cheap) and they have one euro beers at the bar! We played a really fun game of shoulders, and then went into downtown and wandered for a bit. And so ended our time in Nice.

Us with our Aussie friend

Des plus beaux panoramas du monde!

The next day, we headed back out on the road, putting our trust in Marie-Claire once again to get us to our next destination safely. We took a route that followed the coast pretty much, so it was a beautiful drive! I don't know how some of the houses don't fall of cliffs into the sea. We made a pit stop in Eze, home of a famous French perfumery. It also has a really cute old city on a hill, with more beautiful views of the Mediterranean. And a lot of nice cars. After that, we made another stop in Monaco. We wandered into a carnival, which was surprisingly a lot like a 4th of July carnival in the states. Complete with carnies. But, they were giving out Wiis as prizes......We also stopped in at the Monte Carlo Casino. At first, we didn't know if they would let us in, since we weren't high rollers, but we got to go into the slot machine room. We collectively put in 5 euros and took turns pulling the handle. My first gambling experience! And we lost. Yoann played on his own and won 6 euro though! Big money!!!!!!!

Then it was on to Italy. The drive there was through mountains and really twisty turny. Then when we got to Florence, it was even worse. ITALIANS! They are crazy drivers. There was so much traffic and no one cared about lanes. It took us maybe 45 minutes to drive one km. Yoann nearly had a heart attack (I did too). Of course, Marie-Claire decided to nap right as we got into the city, so we had no idea where we were going. It was a tense moment. Luckily, we found the hostel, got the car parked, and everyone was happy (ish, Yoann was still kinda stressed). We ate some pasta, and then walked around the city at night. Florence is such a beautiful city. The bridges, the churches, the statues! There's this statue/fountain of a boar that your supposed rub for good luck and put money in its mouth, which we all did. I think it worked, because I feel pretty lucky to be here :)

We did more wandering the next day, included going up to the top of this hill which gave a great view of the city. Leah, Larissa, and I went on a search for Leah's perfect boots, but it was unsuccessful. Instead, we just went into Chanel and pretended to be fancy. The one weird thing about Italy is that they have a cover charge in restaurants. So, not only are you paying for food, but you're paying to just be there. It was annoying. But the food is good, especially the tiramisu, so no worries. We did get ripped off (those italiens, ils profitent de la situation...) because we're tourists and don't know the language. We bought gelato, thought we were getting the 3 euro cups, only to be charged SIX EURO afterward. Yeah. Boooo. Thats-a lame-a itaaaalia. We were all exhausted so we went back to the hostel (which had free wi-fi and breakfast btw) and watched How I Met Your Mother on Cody's laptop.

Florence from above

Yummmmmmmy tiramisu

Final stop: Lyon. We drove the next day through the Alps and I saw my first REAL MOUNTAIN! I was super excited. We stopped at a gas station and took pics. My host family says I need to try skiing, which I've never done. If it means I get to touch a mountain with snow on top, I'm in! The mountains were just so beautiful. We got to Lyon pretty late, just in time to watch some Simpsons Halloween (in French) because it was Halloween after all, get some dinner, and then the Americans (Yoann slept) headed out to our dear friend, Sirius, the riverboat dance club. It was a ridiculous evening, to say the least. Leah and I sandwiched a random man, we all spoke in awful Italian accents the entire evening, and we danced home through the streets of Lyon. A fitting way to end the trip I'd say.

We got back to Rennes on Sunday and ate a really good dinner chez Yoann. His mom made chili con carne, which just makes me want some Mexican food! It was sad to end the trip, and after being with everyone for an entire week, it was really weird to get home and be by myself! Leah and I had a test the next day at school at 8:15AM (Merci, Guillaume Marbot....), which I probably did awfully on. Who knows a cheese that comes from the Alsace? Not me...

Since the road trip.....

I got back my first test. 15/20, not too bad! Leah said it transfers back as an A, so I'm pumped! Its actually been a lot of tests lately, I had one in history Thursday that was pretty much my only legit test since its about facts and dates, not just "what sort of roof do houses in the south of France have?" I think I did pretty well on it too, knock on wood. Its also been a week of birthdays! Thursday was Lucile and Leah's birthdays (Lucile = 6, Leah = 21). It was pretty hilarious because Leah was more excited for her birthday than Lucile. I had to remind Lucile that it was her birthday! So, on Thursday, Agathe and I dressed up in coats and hats and scarves and brought the cake upstairs to surprise Lucile. Agathe pretended she was a delivery person, and Lucile thought it was pretty funny. I got her some jewelery and her parents got her a chalk/marker board on an easel. She immediately opened the easel and started drawing! After dinner chez moi, I met up with Leah and Co. They were out for dinner at this nice pizza place. I showed up just in time to see them bring out this ice cream dessert with a giant sparkler! The birthday girl decided it was obligatoire to wear party hats, so we all were birthday-ed out. After dinner, we hung out at Mad Ave on Rue de la Soif, played some shoulders, had random Frenchies come up and wish Leah happy birthday (we were seated next to the bathroom, so it was a high traffic area). Some guy in a silver sequence cowboy hat tried to convince Leah that it was a rule to get naked, and he took off his shirt to prove his point. Leah still said no. We went dancing after, and they played JUMP AROUND! Of course, Leah, Larissa, Steph, Cody, and I were the only ones in the whole club who know what it was. We freaked!!!!!!! Made me miss Madison so much.

Yesterday was another birthday, this time Agathe, my other host sister. She turned 13 (teenager wooo!!!!). During the day, Leah, Larissa, and I went to Mont Saint Michel. Its this crazy island Abbey that's well protected by the tides. We went with our school, and my architecture professor was our guide. Somehow, she has access to places that aren't necessarily open to the public. She told us that now we know Mont Saint Michel better than most français because we've seen more than the average person. We got to climb up to the VERY TOP of the abbey, which was awesome! You could see all around. It was a climb though, up a winding spiral staircase and then a narrow stone one up way way way high. We also saw a second church for the 11th century that people don't get to see either. Visible in this church is a section of wall from the first church on the island, built in the 8th century, that pilgrims used to have to touch before being allowed to enter the big cathedrale. And, of course, Leah and I couldn't resist. We touched the wall too. The only problem was the weather! It was bizzare. It was sunny out. Then all of a sudden, it would pour and pour. Then 10 minutes later, sun. Then HAIL! Yes, hail. Then rain. Then sun. Then wind. Then sun. Etc etc etc. My feet were freezing the whole time. But it was definitely a neat place, pretty incredible to see. There's something magical about it.

From high above Mont Saint Michel

Shadow of the mountain

MSM VIPs!

For Agathe's birthday dinner, we ate raclette. Its sooooooooo delicous, and somehow all French people have a raclette set at home. Its basically just potatoes and cheese and charcutrie, and you melt the cheese over everything. Sooooo good. We also had cake (my second gâteau of the week), so by the end of the meal, I was about ready to explode! Agathe got a radio from her parents to put in her room and I gave her a gift card to H&M. I think she had a good birthday.

Quick last thing: I'm going to Budapest to visit Allison, my roommate from freshman year in two weeks!!!!!!! I can't wait!!!!!!!!!