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!