The week of September 6th

Monday, September 6^th, we had our DEFLE (department of international students learning French) placement exams. (The DEFLE is where I am taking most of my classes).  There were a bunch of students all in this giant amphitheater.  The people of an Asian origin clearly outweighed the 65 Californians. The test included listening and writing and a one-on-one oral component.  It wasn’t as bad as expected and I tested into the second degree (which means nothing to any of you).

This day became known as “messy Monday”.  Almost all of the Californians (except some of my friends and I) decided to start drinking after the DEFLE test, which ended at like 12:30pm.  We still had class that afternoon, so people had come to class buzzed/ drunk.  By nighttime, I got back to the dorms from dinner and everyone was WASTED!!!! It was hilarious to hear about some of stories later.  Obviously, some of them never made it to class the next day because they were throwing up/ too hung-over.

Most of this week consisted of classes in the morning and some meetings here and there.

Thursday was an end-of-ILP dinner (which means it was the end of our intensive language program dinner).  We were finally going to get to try real French food that none of us would ever get on our own… like duck.  That was another glorious drunken night for the Californians (minus my friends and I… we somehow keep not getting the memo).  During the dinner, one of the program coordinators told us that the French believe that one should drink, but in moderation...which means that she could tell that the Californians were already drunk.  The next day I heard tons of crazy stories about the drunken people.  After the dinner, we went to the reflecting pool where there were tons of Erasmus students.  Erasmus is like studying abroad for European students.  So we got to meet some new people. YAY.

Friday, I moved into my permanent residence.  I rent a room in this ladies house.  So I live with a mom and her three teenage sons (14, 16, and 17). My bed is a futon so it is incredibly uncomfortable, but at least I have my own shower and big French windows.

That night, my landlord Cecile invited me out for drinks with her and the girl who used to rent my room, Gale.   At the bar, I asked the bartender for a coke and all the French people just laughed at me and called me and talked about how American I was.  Then the bartender proceeded to give me white wine mixed with the French equivalent of sprite. When I finished that, he gave me a coke with lemon, which was nice… Then he got inspired and tried different mixtures of drinks. I tried coke mixed with red wine which sounds gross but wasn’t bad.  Interesting night out with my 45 year old landlord and Gale who is 27.

Biarritz

Saturday, September 4, 2010 at the butt-crack of dawn, I got up to catch a train to Biarritz (a beach town on the France-Spain border).

We got there and caught a bus to the center of town and just kind of wandered until we figured out what direction our hotel was.  The hotel was unimpressive and small, but I seriously didn’t care because it wasn’t expensive and it was a place to sleep and change in between all the fun.

After checking into our hotel, we explored the town a bit and got lunch at a Basque restaurant (Biarritz is Basque country).  The meals were fine, but the Basque cake was especially good.

Biarritz is known as a big surfing beach… when we got to the beach, the waves were so huge that none of us not-so-fabulous surfers dared to surf.  So we went to just swim or whatever. Unfortunately, the swimming zone was ridiculously small and there were like 200 people in the zone.  Little kids were running into me left and right! We were scared to body surf because we would run into/ kill people/ ourselves. I was actually scared of going under the water for fear of someone being on top of me so that I couldn’t get up.  Nevertheless, the water was AMAZING!!!

The beach was so great. I actually fell asleep on the sand for the first time ever. Then we played Frisbee on the beach, like the Americans that we are.

We went back to our hotel to change for a night out.  We got dinner at an Italian restaurant (which is oddly common in our group) and then met up with other Californians who were in Biarritz that weekend.  We went to their hotel and people pregamed… then we began the hunt for a hoppin’ bar.  While searching, we got these coupons to get a free drinks at a bar… needless to say, we decided to go to that bar.

We thought that we could choose our drinks, but the bartender just gave everyone Sex on the Beach cocktails that most of us could’ve sworn did not have any alcohol in it.  The DJ in the bar could tell we were Americans so he decided to play American music. So of course the American girls all started dancing… we pretty much got the party started at that bar.  Throughout the night more people came and girls started talking to guys and blah blah blah… Overall, it was a fun night. And, I had my first cocktail… fancy that.

Sunday, we got coffee at a café and pastries from the farmers market.  Then we went back to the farmers market and bought strawberries and probably the most legit Basque cake ever.  We went to this place that overlooks the beach and ate cake and strawberries (one of the greatest decisions we could’ve made that day).

We couldn’t stand not getting in the water on more time so we ran onto the beach, changed into out bathing suits (on the beach… we are in France, people are topless on the beach), and ran into the water for 30 glorious minutes.  There were less people in the water and the waves were smaller so it was great.  After, we quickly changed back into our clothes and ran to the bus stop to catch the bus to the train station.  We took the train home and chilled out the rest of the night.

Sorry for the delay... First week of September

So I pretty much fail at this blogging thing because I am well over a month behind in updating it but, here we go!

The whole week mostly consisted of going to class from 8:30-12:30, getting lunch after, wasting time watching shows/movies on my laptop, getting/ cooking dinner, and watching more movies… school does really suck the interesting things out of my life

Phonetics Lab

But Thursday, September 2^nd, the entire EAP group went on an excursion to some vineyards.  They were gorgeous!

ya that's someones elbow

I tried my first wine (also my first drink ever).  Everyone said that it was really good, expensive wine, but all I could taste was the alcohol… I was not a fan

On Friday, I signed the lease to my logement (my room in some lady’s house).