Metro Angel

I think I understand why French people don't like to shave..it's hard enough to turn around in the shower much less find a way to reach your leg. I definitely think we should cut these people slack, as I think I might give up shaving too after that incident. Sooo, I'm in Paris now. Long story short, Leah and I were planning on staying with our friend from school our second night in Paris (our first was spent on the floor of the airport) but then she told us she had somewhere to go. I then texted my couchsurf host because he works at a hostel and got the name and address of that. When we got to the hostel however, the man told us it would cost us 38€ a piece. Yeaa. I don't think so. That left us with no place to stay and honestly we almost went back to the airport. But we called our friend Malika who called her roommate and our friend, Diane, and she told us we could stay at her house. Angel. Because at this point it was dark outside and we weren't sure where we were. But God is good and we made it to her house safely about a half hour later. Her parents are out of town and she went back to her friend's apartment after she let us in and showed us around; so basically we had this beautiful Parisian apartment to ourselves. yesss. Due to getting about 3 hours of sleep the night before and walking around Versailles all day (beautiful beautiful beautiful) we didn't make it much longer after we arrived. Short recap, we were in Mallorca for 3 nights, 4 days and it was so incredibly breathtakingly beautiful there. Our courchsurfer host, Simone, was a gem and we got to see a defense castle overlooking the city, a cathedral that I think rivals Notre Dame, and palm trees and ocean everywhere (it is an island :). We also got to lay out on the beach two days in a row. The first day we went to this little beach somewhere other than Palma (the main city and where we were staying). Basically the beach was tiny but amazing and we had it all to ourselves. Private beach in Spain? Why yes, thank you. We ever got to lay out on chairs for free, though the price of our ice cream made up for that. Anyway, Jessica's morning computer time has run out. Paris awaits.

Mallorca

This is the most beautiful city in the world. Yes, I keep saying that about every city I go to, but seriously. This place is drop dead gorgeous. Even in the cloudy, pouring rain it is majestic. Last night after a half hour nap, we left Diana's at 3:30 am to catch the night bus that would take us to the airport. We arrived, checked in, and set up camp outside our gate to wait for our 6:25 flight. We arrived in Mallorca at 7:30, but didn't have to meet our couch surfer host until 9:30, so we took an hour nap on some metal chairs in the airport. My back felt great after that. The bus system here screwed us over because none of the bus stops have the name on them and the sign inside the bus was broken, so we ended up missing our stop and our 15 minute ride ended up taking over an hour. We had to ask people for directions to our host's (Simone) apartment and then slept from 11 to 4:30. Simone is a young twenties student on internship here from Germany, and she's so sweet. She went with us sightseeing and then sat with us during dinner. We were sooooo hungry due to the fact we had had one muffin at 9 that morning. So at 7 at night we got our second meal of Penchos and Pa Amb Oli. yum yum. Now it's shower and movie night because it is pouring down rain outside. PS - Mallorca and Barcelona are the cleanest cities I have even seen in my life. I literally have a picture of a woman mopping the sidewalks in Barcelona. They are immaculate. Take note America.

Saint Jordi (you ole hoot owl)

I got robbed today. Right in the metro station as I was leaving. Ok it was more of a pick-pocketing incident, but getting robbed sounds more intense with the same technical meaning. Full story : I have been so aware and slightly paranoid about getting pick-pocketed while in Barcelona. I thought I would be ok because I have a purse that has a flap cover that buckles at the bottom and I was wearing my jacket over it so no one could cut the strap and I always kept it in front of me where I could see it. But these people are good. So we were leaving the station and suddenly there was a guy directly behind me. I heard someone saying to watch out but it wasn't really registering in my brain until I felt a slight tug on my purse. Something in me freaked out and I spun around and my fist potentially hit him in the stomach and knocked my wallet out of his hand and onto the floor. I started shouting and he put his hands up and said sorry over and over like it was an accident his hand ended up in my bag. After that I basically carried my purse in my arms the rest of the day and was suspicious of anyone within 3 feet of me. But it was a really good day. We slept in and had breakfast and lunch with Diana. Then we went to the town hall where it's the only day in the whole year that it is open to the public. It was the most beautiful building ever and it was decorated with roses in honor of Saint Jordi day, which is like Valentine's Day in the US. There were rose stands and book stands everywhereeee because the guys get the girls roses and the girls get their guys books. Cute tradition. We went in a couple shops and then got an early dinner at a really yummy sandwich shop. We had to go buy an adaptor then because I forgot to bring mine then we headed back to the fountains to watch the show again. OK SO. Last night we went to this fountain show. Basically the most incredible thing ever. I think I took 7.23 million pictures. The street leading up to the fountain was lined with smaller fountains and then the mother of all fountains is in front of the most grand building I think I've ever seen. The show was set to music and it was all lit up and I'm pretty sure I just stood there in awe the entire time. So we went back to that again tonight just because it was that good and came back to Diana's to pack. Well, earlier she went on a date and then offered to make dinner for the guy. But being the amazing person she is, she cooked for Leah and I as well, so we just got done eating the meal that started at about 10 pm..yes it is confirmed that that is not an uncommon time to eat dinner, at least in Barcelona. Yummy but now I'm stuffed to the max. Not going to sleep tonight either due to the fact we have to leave the apartment at 3 to catch a bus to the airport where our plane leaves at 4:30 to Mallorca. Yay!

Wine Stains

First day in Spain = success. Woke up and got breakfast with Diana at a little bakery around 10. I got this mini baguette with this potato baked square things on it. Super yummy. Also. I GOT COFFEE!! ah life. It was amazing and Diana paid for us before we could stop her. Leah and I then hopped on the metro to go see the Sagrada Familia. One of the most amazing things I have ever seen. It was designed by Antonio Gaudi, who also has other breathtaking structures around the city. Afterwards we walked the streets of Barcelona (yes, it is as magical as it sounds) and made our way to Passeig de Gracia, which is a huge and beautiful street filled with retail and restaurants and various designs by Gaudi. We shopped for a little bit (we are women) and I bought a new shirt! funfunfun. We then walked to the Barcelona Catedral de la Santa Creu. We didn't go inside either church because we were broke from shopping and the line was enormous. But, we definitely appreciated from the outside. There were some street performers ourside the church, so we got to watch them dance/flip/climb on each other for a while. We then walked towards the beach and found the Christopher Columbus statue. From there we tried to find this park Diana told us about, but ended up in a construction zone..soo, we tried finding the Picasso museum, but it took us about an hour to do that and by that time we told Diana we would go back to her apartment to help her grocery shop. Ps - her apartment is gorgeous. It is above a Volkswagen shop and it is new and clean and well decorated and we have our own room with a comfy bed. Love. We went grocery shopping with her and almost cried because everything is so cheap here compared to France. She bought seven apples for the price that we buy one back in France. I am debating buying in bulk here and shipping it to myself. Definitely tempting. We hwlped her make a dinner of two salads and fruit. One salad had lettuce, carrots, olives, and brown tomatoes? I don't know but they were delicious and a bit sweeter than regular tomatoes. The other salad had rice, apple, this crab stuff, and one other ingredient I can't remember. But they were both wonderful. Then came heaven. I got to eat a plum. jakhgf;adf; fruit! and strawberries with a glass of red wine. She also had her German friend come over and basically I love her. So we had a great girls night in and now I am excited to sleep in tomorrow.

Barcelona!

We are in Barcelona! It was all in all a really smooth day of traveling. We took a train to Paris at 1:00, then took the RER to CD airport. We boarded right away and I slept most the way to Barcelona. We arrived at 8:00 and that's where some stress set in. Our couch surfer host hadn't given us very good directions to her house, in fact, all we really had that we understood was her address. She was also flying in an hour after us from Moscow (she's Russian) so we were going to wait for her at her baggage claim. But then we got a message from her saying to just meet her at her house. Well we had no idea how to get there and after asking three different people in the airport for help and getting three different answers, we decided to catch the bus over to the other terminal where she would be arriving. This was a good plan until the bus literally took ten minutes to get to the other terminal. By that time her plane had already landed and we waited for her and waited but we didn't see her so we assumed she left. We then discovered that neither of our French phones worked in Spain and we weren't receiving any calls from her. After trying for ages to figure out how to work the pay phones, we finally got ahold of her. However, the phones charged basically 1 Euro for 30 seconds of talking. Then it just straight ate some of my money. Ten Euro later and still no concrete directions on how to get to her house, we just decided to take a cab. First time in a taxi! It was more expensive than the bus and metro would have been, but we didn't want to risk being lost in Barcelona on our first night at 11pm with no way of communicating with our host. It really wasn't that bad though. But our host is AMAZING. She's this adorable Russian woman in her late 20's who's working and taking night courses. She gave us water and gezpacho  and we sat around and talked about everything from her work to her exboyfriend to her grandma who stuck chocolate and garlic in her suitcase because she's convinced that they don't have anything in Spain. haha cutie. Also, her mom works for a cosmetic company, so we got to go through all her samples. precious. Sightseeing starts and ends tomorrow it seems. Since this weekend is Good Friday to Easter, everything will be closed all weekend. Hence that puts a damper on actually visiting Barcelona, but I'm not really worried. Super sleepy though...

P90X

I am officially on a three week break from school. I LOVE the French system! Our Spring Break is supposed to be only two weeks long, but we were only scheduled for one class this week on Friday for some reason, so we talked to the teacher and she agreed to reschedule the class, so now our two weeks has turned into three. Fabulouss! Starting on Thursday, Six girls from my volleyball team and two guys from the guy team represented Audencia in a beach volleyball tournament. We all drove to La Baule late morning and played until late afternoon. I had never played beach volleyball officially and it is possibly one of the greatest sports ever. Leah and I were on a team and ended up getting third in the tournament. Granted, there were only 5 teams total, but we didn't come in last and we got a medal, so could have been worse. It was an absolute blast though. I was dead tired though. I have great respect for people that can play that all day everyday. I had a skype interview that night for International Orientation Guide for when I get back to Butler. I think it went well but won't find out until May if I got the position or not. Then Friday night Leah and I had Malika, Diane, Adele, and Estefania over for dinner. We made them Chili con Carne and Malika brought over vegetables and cheese for an appetizer and Diane brought an apple pastry for dessert. It was so much fun, and the food was pretty good if I do say so myself. After the dinner we all stopped by my old roommates flat for a get together they were having. It was a good time but all the marketing majors were supposed to go to a party that night, so we headed over and danced to classics such as Man I Feel Like a Woman and Cotton Eye Joe (which I taught them all the proper way to do the cotton eye joe like people from Tennessee). Lots of fun but I literally couldn't breathe because everyone was smoking and there was no open window or anything. Today I woke up, worked out and then tons of the Erasmus students went to cheer on our Irish friends for their championship gaelic football match. They ended up losing but it was a really close and exciting game. Leah, Bryan, Janina and I then went to IKEA / shopping mall because I had to buy Leah a new duffel bag as I broke her other one. Oops. Then a group of us went out for Mexican because it was Janina's birthday (sweetest German girl ever). This Mexican restaurant was hilarious as practically nothing on the menu was Mexican. I got a a plate of two burritos, which, I thought was going to be massive amounts of food. False. When the plate came out I almost laughed as the burritos were about the size of my pointer finger. There were approximately 7 beans on my plate as a side and some shredded lettuce for my salad. This is why the French are all skinney I imagine. To celebrate her birthday with everyone else we met people at our typical bar, La Maison where we played card games and ate a really good birthday cake. I also got to talk to the Korean girls and they are my new favorite. We learned/played a Korean hand game in which you slap people's hands if they are doing the same motion as you or something like that. They said that if you play it for over an hourish then blood vessels start popping. I told them suppressed anger and violence was not the answer. However, oddly enought, I found the game amusing. I will go to church tomorrow evening and in the meantime not spend any money. Probably a very good thing buy it's not by choice. I totally blanked on my pin number today and entered the wrong number three times before Leah just bought my purchase for me. I now owe her 20 Euro. But when I remembered my pin later and went to the bank to withdrawl money to pay her back, the thing told me I had entered my pin wrong too many times and then wouldn't give me my card back. This is slightly problematic as the bank is closed tomorrow and Monday and I leave Wednesday for Spain. mmhm. Yes this is a problem.

Goat Cheese

After a wonderful bowl of cereal with sliced banana and yogurt, I have decided I shall blog. Leah and I are now officially moved into our apartment and all is going well. Praise Jesus. Things are still a little jank around here though, not going to lie. :) We only have one lightbulb for our entire apartment and one for both sections of our bathroom. That means that if you aren't right by the kitchen, you're in the dark aaaand to use the toilet (unless you want to make it a public affair) you will also be in pitch black. ha Part of that may or may not have been my fault as I may or may not have accidently broke one of the lights when I dropped it. Hmm. Gernerally not a good thing. I can't decided if we will be cheap and just live in partial darkness at night or if we will break down and buy a lightbulb soon. Only time will tell. Let's see, this past weekend was incredible. We did nothing. Between Missy coming to visit, escaping to the beach, going on the WEI, I haven't had a weekend in Nantes in quite a while. Friday evening we officially moved out of our guy's apartment and got all of our stuff out of Claire and Julia's. The front door to our apartment is wedged inbetween a bunch of cafes that put hundreds of tables out front for people to sit at. So we walked by the same people so many times that after a while I felt like we were their evening entertainment as we tried to figure out ways to manuver everyone without casualties. We also went out to eat with our Irish friends to an Indian restaurant where I had the most incredible piece of nan bread and some lamb amazingness. That night Bryan came over and helped us unpack all of our stuff. And by help I mean he sat on our bed and asked us questions about America :) I love having foreign friends. We got to learn a little about Ireland too, I'm sad I don't get to go there. Perhaps someday. Saturday Leah, Kevin, and I went to our friend's Gallic football match. So much fun. It's a really interesting sport but I got a little sunburnt. Sunday Clodagh, Bryan, Eoin, Clodagh's friend, Leah and I laid by the river and played cards all afternoon. Sheena taught us how to make chili con carne for dinner and it's so easy and so good! We visited Peter and our French roommates mostly to use their internet but also because we missed them of course. Yesterday we had class all day - strugs to stay awake not going to lie. They set you up for failure though. Put 35 of us in a warm classroom with the same subject and teacher for 6 hours and expect acute attention the whole time? hahaha I got some couchsurfing for London done last night and worked on my resume for FOREVER as I have recently been in contact with a guy from the Pacers about internships. woo! I tutored his daughter so hopefully something will come from this. Going to the electric company today and the CAF - potential government aid and the post office. yay errands. a tout!

Updates!

Let’s see, the last time I updated was a long long time ago. I really am sorry about not giving regular updates. It’s so hard to find adequate time because I always want to include all the details but can never find the time to, so I just don’t write anything instead of giving a minimum account. Not good. But let’s start out with some good news. Leah and I are in the process of finalizing paperwork for our new apartment!!! Thank you to everyone who has been praying for our accommodations. It was definitely not coincidence how we came across this apartment and how everything has worked out
so well. One of the Erasmus students left the semester early to finish his studies in Spain, and a mutual friend of ours told us about it. It is directly in the Center of Nantes, which is absolutely incredible, and it was affordable. Leah and I were so excited and thought it would be perfect until we contacted the owner. He told us that on top of the monthly fee, we would have to pay hundreds in agency fees along with buying insurance. We would also have to give a two month notice of when we were leaving. This was a perceived problem as we are only staying in France for two more months. All of these factors combined seemed to turn this awesome apartment into a definite no. BUT, Max (the owner) said he could wave 90% of the agency fees and that the two month notice wouldn’t be a problem, the bank is allowing us to only buy two months of insurance, and the agency we’ve been working through has been really helpful. Not going to lie, it’s still an incredible hassle trying to communicate and get all the correct paperwork everywhere it needs to be on time. Between arranging insurance, contracts, and an electric company on top of about 6 school projects, WEI (more to come on that), and living out of a suitcase, it’s been a semi-stressful two weeks. It’s also been so incredible. We have been staying with our friend Peter and his three French roommates since we moved out of Claire and Julia’s apartment. It was really convenient because they have two
extra mattresses and a massive apartment that is about a two minute walk from where we are keeping our large suitcases. They are all so much fun and so wonderful to house us so long. We were planning on moving out last Friday, but that failed miserably and here we are the next week Tuesday. We cooked them dinner last Thursday (quite delicious if you ask me) and spent almost an hour doing all their dishes and cleaning the kitchen (nasty boys), so we hope that it’s not too terrible living with us.

WEI (Weekend of Integration)

So.Much.Fun. We left this past Saturday (4/2-4/3/11) at 7:40 am. Aka, too early for Jessica. Leah and I (America) were on a bus with Elias (Sweden), Peter, Janina, and John (Germany), Melissa (Scotland), Alice (UK), Mathieu (Canada), Anna (Mexico), the 4 Korean girls, lots of Chinese,  and other wonderful friends that sat in the front of the huge bus; I believe I counted 13 nationalities on the bus. I don’t know I think that’s pretty awesome. We sang songs and then had a competition to see who could guess parts of songs and from what movies they came from. We also had to fill out a questionnaire about ourselves and then come up and talk about the most embarrassing things we wrote down. Apparently they liked my sheet because I had to tell two stories. I also had to explain the meaning of skinny dipping to the entire bus..potential culture shock for most of the Chinese. Whoops. Our first stop was to go paintballing. I had never been before and was honestly a little nervous. However, that didn’t last long. I now love paintballing and have several battle wounds to prove it. Except some not so nice dumb guy came up and shot my ankle while my back was to him and he was about two feet away from me. I was about to shoot his face off but the ‘overseer’ person made him leave the game first. Probably a good thing for his sake. (mostly kidding). I killed a total of around 9 people and got killed 4 times. If anyone ever wants to go, count me in. We all ate lunch at the paintball place, and had an..let’s just go with the word interesting..lunch. It was bratwurst, but instead of a bun, they gave us crepes. Ahh France. It could have potentially not been bad, except the crepes were stone cold. Regardless, I was famished so I ate both my brats and some chips and maybe three cookies. (Spring Break diet starts next week) Then our bus switched locations with the other bus and we went to tree climbing while they did paintballing. This tree course was incredible. It was
about 5 times the size of the one I work at and everything was attached to the actual trees, not just posts, so it was integrated into the nature and it was just so beautiful to be climbing in the trees. I don’t think I have ever had so much fun. There were so many zip lines, plus two that went over a gorgeous lake, and tons of different elements. Five other people and I decided to climb on the
highest elements that were 30 meters high. I know I keep saying it was beautiful, but the view was breathtaking. After a few hours of climbing, we were bused to the hostel we were staying at. It was very nice for being a hostel, but the rooms got messed up and mine and Leah’s room got combined with Elias, Peter, and Constantine’s room. We were given a grand total of 25 minutes to get ready and leave for the restaurant. Four speed showers later we got on the bus and went to this very nice restaurant. Our table was next to a full length window where we watched the sun set over the ocean during our dinner. It was incredible. The food was delicious too. We had some chicken and vegetable
goodness wrapped in a type of rice paper and covered with this creamy mushroom sauce. For dessert we had an apple pastry of sorts and a glass of white wine. We went to the beach after dinner and then to a club that night. The next morning we took a walk on the beach and through the streets of St. Malo. It was so adorable and the flowers they had planted were (I’m running out of positive
adjectives) spectacular. Lunch was back at the hostel and then we had about a 45 minute bus ride to Mt. St. Michelle. (Please research images on Google because I forgot my camera when we went and words will not do this place justice). We toured around there for a few hours and then had about a 3 hour bus ride back to Nantes. All in all the weekend was so much fun and I got to know a bunch of the French and other Erasmus students a lot better. Yay new friends!

Hopefully I can get details up about Missy’s visit soon!