bachelor party on the atlantic coast?

Once again, apologies for neglecting my blog. July has been a very busy month, especially with a 25hour class load every week.

Bastille Day in France (La Fête de la Bastille, le 14 juillet) does not compare at all to the 4th of July at home. The national holiday is celebrated so differently. There are a few similarities, everything is closed, no one works, there are fireworks and a parade, but other than that, it has a very different feel. I went out to get lunch during the day on the 14th, and the city was completely desolate--it looked like a ghost town. I couldn't believe it! Everyone is always so active and out and about on the 4th of July. I talked to my host mom and I also asked Lindsey's host parents about it, I just commented on how empty I though the town looked and they all gave variations of the same answer, "Ehh, I don't really care about Bastille Day." I think in the USA we are much more excited for and take an active role with our national holiday. Typical French....lol.

The real party for Bastille Day was actually on the 13th, that Sunday night. I went to the gangette that night (the bar on the Loire river) with friends, and there was a crazy live band playing all night. They were so cool! They had an older, rag-time American sound to them, and yet they played a variety of music: jazz, swing, jive, rag-time...we had a lot of fun listening to them. There is also a big dance floor in front of the stage, so we were all up and dancing. If you've ever seen the movie "Big Fish", you would know what I am talking about. The look of the bar (which is an outdoors bar), with the dance floor in the middle, lights stringed from all the trees, the view of the Loire and the bridge lit up in the background, and definitely the music playing that night, reminds me of the scene when William Bloom is in the tiny town of Spectre. I am going to miss the gangette so much when I come home. It's been one of my favorite things to do here at night. There's always different music every night, beautiful scenery, fun people, and great home-made sangria :) .
The live band that night

Sunday night was also the arrival of a new British group of students at the institute, so I got to meet a lot of them that night. One of them, a guy named Jamie, is the new roommate of Jen. He reminds me of a character straight out of Monte Python, especially with his accent. I did my Cockney accent for him, and he said it was really good! Haha. He actually laughed really hard...and now I've picked up some new phrases to add to my cockney vocab!

So after being out late on Sunday night, I spent most of the day in on Monday (the actual Bastille day) and even when I went out for a little walk, nothing was open and no one was out and about. That night, however, we all met up at the Loire river again and watched the fireworks show. Top marks for the show! It was much much larger than I had anticipated. And they were shooting the fireworks off for a good 25 minutes. It was a really nice and picturesque evening. Then I went home and went to bed since we had class the next day.


Tuesday was very low-key. I just went to classes, then bummed around at home till dinner. The only crazy thing that happened to me that day was the dinner conversation! Normally at dinner Joan (the girl from Georgetown) sits there annoying everyone because all she does is make really terrible assumptions about world economies and politics (since she IS a georgetown student after all...) and everyone gets really annoyed and Huguette constantly makes sarcastic remarks about her over-generalizations even though me and Maria (the Swiss girl) are the only ones who notice and understand..haha. But at Tuesdays dinner, Huguette tried getting the Taiwanese girls to talk a little bit, and I realized that Taiwanese are much much much cooler than the Chinese, even though Huguette likes to lump them as being Chinese. She asked them if they eat dog in Taiwan and the girls were so shocked! The one girl, Jehn, said, "No, that's illegal! Only the Chinese eat dog!!" but then she continued to say, "In China, they also eat babies."

My mouth dropped wide open and I turned to look first at Huguette, who was sitting to my right, but she didn't make any weird face! I think she just assumed that Jehn mispronounced some word, or meant to say baby animals, so she just dismissed it and carried on eating. So I turned back to Jehn, really shocked, and said, "Babies? Like, real babies? Not animals?" and Huguette answered, "No no no Dana!! She didn't mean to say babies." but Jehn looked at us and shook her head yes, "Oui! They eat babies!"

"Human babies?!" I asked, and Huguette started looking really shocked, too. Then Jehn explained that the Chinese consider it a delicacy to eat miscarried babies! Oh my god. Needless to say, I completely lost my appetite and sat there stunned. Ugh, it's so gross. Huguette kept trying to clarify what she was saying in case she was just not explaining herself correctly in French, but yes, miscarried babies. Wow. I mean obviously it's not like you would go to a market in China and buy a baby to make for the night...but still I was super grossed out at dinner with yet another cultural revelation.

Tuesday night I was a very diligent student and wrote my huge portfolio/paper for my prof! Phew. Now I just have to finish these two novels...

Wednesdays I only have class in the morning (3 hours straight lecture...very hard to sit through) so in the afternoon I walked around a little bit with Jen and Lindsey and we did a little shopping. The sales are still going on in France, and every week they mark the merchandise lower and lower. I think this past week is the second to last week of the sales because ever store said it was their "last mark-down." The terrible paradox of my money situation here in France is that with all the sales this month, clothes are really cheap...but buying food for lunch, or anything else is just so expensive. I can't wait to come home and not have to pay as much for food!! So, I just picked up a couple souvenir presents to bring home.

Thursday was yet another day of studying. I had class all day, then went home right away to keep plugging along with my homework. After dinner however, Lindsey came over, and she and two of my roommates watched the movie, "Martin's Room" with Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, etc. I remember first watching the movie when it was out to rent when I was really young. Anyway, Yuka (my japanese roommate) asked me one day if I've heard of the movie, because she just bought the dvd of it, and she said, "The English title for the movie is--Mahii Loo" and of course I had NO idea what she was talking about...but then she told me the actors and the it suddenly dawned on me what movie it was; I got really excited and said, "YES I KNOW IT!" hahaha. These language boundaries are really funny to be dealing with. My other roommate Jehn came down to watch it with us too.

Friday finally came!!! Yayyyyy only a half day of class, then the weekend! I spent my afternoon still being a good student and working. Then I got very frustrated and tired from working 3 hours straight so I packed up my stuff and went back home where I went on the internet for a little while and talked to Matt. Friday night after dinner I went to the gangette for a couple hours with my roommate Jehn, Lindsey, Pat, Gary and Matt. We didn't stay out very long because we had to wake up at 6am the next morning for our excursion to La Rochelle.

Now for the big day, Saturday, at La Rochelle. La Rochelle is a little port town on the Atlantic coast, known for lots of fish (yum), open air market, adorable maritime architecture, etc. It also had a huge Huguenot population (French protestants) in the 16th and 17th century, but then they all left for Canada to seek religious freedom. Even though it is not very far south in France, and it is also on the Atlantic coast, the gulf stream that comes into the port gives it more of a Mediterranean climate (although I can say that it was no where near as hot as it was in Aix-en-Provence or in Marseille.) Nonetheless, when we left Tours with our coach bus at 7am in the morning, I was wearing jeans and a sweater, and by the time we arrived in La Rochelle at 11am, I was able to change into a sun dress because the air was nice and warm, and the sun was actually shining! So nice to not have a day full of gray skies. We had until 2:30pm to walk around the city. We visited the different sites (l'hotel de ville, the cathedral, the huge clock tower, etc) and also looked around at tons and tons of open air markets. There were lots of vendors selling jewelry, clothes, shoes, trinkets, and also food markets, with fresh fruit, vegetables, etc. It was so much nicer than Tours! I enjoyed the small town feel, and the weather was so pleasant.
View of the port
Me, Jen, Lindsey, and Kristen (in the wheel chair.) The story behind her being in a wheel chair is actually quite terrible. She wasn't originally going to go to La Rochelle with the group, she had plans for awhile to go to Germany this weekend where her boyfriend and some friends were visiting to during their study abroad. On her way to the train station on Friday afternoon (she was taking a train to the airport in Paris, and then flying to Germany) she was crossing the street and out of no where a car came flying through the intersection and hit her! She was taken by ambulance to the ER where Thao and Prof. Norris met her, and thank god, only her right foot is a little sprained/badly skinned. The flats that she was wearing were able to protect her feet for the most part, and her duffle bag that she was bringing for the weekend actually also protected her in lessening the impact of the hit, as she was holding it on the side she was hit. So, no bones were broken, she just got a little bruised. Stupid French drivers. They are TERRIBLE drivers. However, at least they don't drive SUVs, and it was just a little European car. At any rate, the accident was quite a shock. What is it lately with car accidents?
picture of the open air market

Here is another funny story. So a 2.5' grandma pushing a stroller in a VERY crowded and narrow street cut me off and I started complaining about it to Jen in english, saying, "How could this 2 and a half foot tall old lady just cut me off like that with her stroller?"and then she turned around and looked up at me with WHITE eyes that were completely crossed and she had no teeth and I started choking I was so shocked/terrified, hahahahahhahaha. I'm pretty sure I got hexed.

At 2:30, we took the coach bus to L'Ile de Ré, a little island off of the coast where there are nice beaches. The beach that we went to wasn't too bad, it was a little rocky, but I was so thankful to be at a beach in general and to be able to lay in the sun (so sad that I've only been able to do that a few times this summer!). Then of course, the day started to get interesting.
Zero and I!

A group of French guys arrived at the beach with a huge cooler on wheels, some of the guys were wearing ridiculous wigs, they were all laughing and being loud...and kept looking over our way. Jen and Lindsey and I were...taking in the sights...when suddenly one of the guys walked over to us and said, in English, "Um excuuze me guyz, but I juzt wanted to zay zat Michigan Sztate suckz!" Mikayla, another girl from our group, looked around at all of us and said, "ugh, ok who is wearing the Michigan state gear today?!" And then the French guy started laughing and explained himself. His name is Laurent, he apparently spent 2 and a half years in Michigan, living in Birmingham (although I'm not sure why he was there exactly). He studied for a little while and then stayed for another year or so. He spoke English very well, and was excited to be able to talk with us, as we had a lot in common anyway and he could relate since he lived in Michigan for some time. Then he paused for a second and said, "Well, if you guyz would like to have zome drinkz wiz us, thatz cool." And since they were offering, we decided , why the heck not, and a little group of us stood up and went over to have drinks with them (to which the rest of the French guys started clapping and cheering about haha).

We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with the guys and talking with them, which was a very unexpected but fun event. They were having a party that day because one of the guys, Olivier, was getting married. And evidently for French bachelor parties, the guys take turns wearing crazy wigs. They were really nice guys and were probably just as excited as we were to hang out with them, because they were able to spend the afternoon with American girls. They invited us to go out with them that night, and even though we said that we couldn't because we were with our group and had to take a bus back to Tours at 6:30pm, they wouldn't take no for an answer. Laurent even offered to drive us back to Tours the next day, haha. THEN they went over to Thao, who came over to the beach around 6, and started talking to him and trying to convince him to let us stay. Oh my god. At first it was funny to see Thao standing there, acting like a dad, but in the end it was all good fun, and they said that they might come to Tours this upcoming weekend to hang out with us.
Picture of the bachelor party. It's kind of dark, but you can still see all of the lovely French men :)

We got back to Tours last night around 11pm, and I just went home so I could shower and wash all the sea-salt of my skin, and then I went to bed as it had been a long day. Today I've just been updating with this huge entry, and then it's back to work on reading..only 11 more days!