On My Own

I've made it safely home to Illinois! And they were able to put me on a direct flight so I got home five hours earlier than expected, but I had to sit next to a family with a baby... either way I was glad not to have the extra five hours of traveling. I spent my last weekend in Paris, and was able to see a lot of cool things during the day on Saturday: The Eiffel Tower, the outside of the Army Museum which contains Napoleon's tomb (I didn't want to wait in an extremely long line to go in) the Musee d'Orsay, Sacre Coeur, and the Arc de Triomphe again. I loved the museum because not only were the paintings and sculptures amazing, but the museum itself is built in an old metro station with gorgeous architecture. It was just as interesting to stare up at the ceiling and think that this was just a common thing, to build these ornate ceilings in a place where no one would really be looking up anyway because they'd be catching trains! And the temporary exhibits were Monet, Gauguin and Renoir so I saw some great pieces. I sat outside for breakfast and people watched at a cafe, and had steak frites for dinner before going back on the very crowded metro to my hotel out in the middle of nowhere near Charles de Gaulle airport. I was so tired after such a long day that I just wanted to sleep; I was also getting ready to come home to the US. When the plane took off, I was really sad to leave, but when we landed in Chicago I was so relieved to be back and was so excited to see my family. They brought me flowers!

One major goal for my trip abroad was to discover the world of French wine. The Institute hosted a wine and cheese tasting so, of course, I signed up! I tried five wines that are special to the cities within or near to Touraine. It was really interesting to hear the sommelier talk about the wines. And afterwards I stood up and was like “wow, I just listened to a non-Institute person speak about one subject in French for two hours and understood it!” But of course, he wrote down words on the board, and explained things very slowly, with simple phrases. Still, I was excited! With the wine we tried five different chevre (goat) cheeses. The first one was mixed with milk, was very soft, and tasted pretty moldy. After that though, they just got better, even though I’d tried some of them before. Maybe it’s an acquired taste and it so happened that I crossed that threshold two days before leaving?

The shape of the cheese is really interesting, some are shaped like pyramids, some have the pyramidal top lopped off, others are small and round but have this thing on the outside that looks like brains, and they can be green, yellow, or white on the outside. After the degustation, tasting, I was supposed to go to dinner with Claire. We had expected to have a taste of cheese, not a heaping plate of cheese so we had to wait an hour before either of us felt like eating anything else. We both ordered salad with ham and guess what else was sitting on top? Thick shavings of cheese. Ugghh!

I passed! My class had a breakfast party type thing this morning since it was our last day. My professor brought in homemade plumb jam, and it was so good. Then we watched a Gerard Depardieu movie called “RRRrrr!!!” I learned that French comedy is very different from American comedy. Very different. Afterwards I went out to for galettes (basically a crepe with meat so it’s a meal and not a dessert) with my five closest friends from this trip. It was really hard to say good-bye. All week, actually, people have been going so every day comes with a little bit of sadness. Claire came over to supervise my cleaning/packing, and she walked me to the train station. She is mildly appalled at my love for ketchup, and she asked if my bag was so heavy because I had packed two family-sized jugs of ketchup home with me. No… just a lot of clothes.
I had to take a shuttle train to the actual train which took me to the airport where I took the RER metro train with one connection to my hotel. It was a lot of trains, but I made it safely to Paris where I’ll spend the next day and a half being a tourist!

Wednesday night the Institute held a talent show at La Guinguette and a lot of the students were really good! Some, not so much, but it was fun nonetheless. We danced our flashmob at the end of the show but we were all gathered in one area to begin with so it wasn’t as cool as if we had randomly burst out our dance moves. Plus we were all squished together so the actual dancing was terrible. It was still fun.

Our grades were turned in on Wednesday so my teachers said we’d spend the remaining days doing fun and low-key things. Thursday morning I showed up for class and someone from the Institute came running in to say that both of my teachers were sick, so we’d have a substitute today. It was the same one whom we’d had earlier in the week for afternoon classes, and afterwards I felt like I had learned more that day than in the first two weeks of classes combined. She also spoke quickly, but she must have enunciated better than my other professors because it was very easy for me to understand. Plus, she was picky about our pronunciation, so my speaking skills improved drastically. However, we’d do an entire page in our workbooks, correct it, and it would only take twenty minutes max. So the day dragged on and Thursday we have class from 9-5 so I thought I was going to die.

We did do work on Thursday, but it wasn’t so bad, and also I had to leave early to talk with the mean secretary lady that works at the front desk of my residence.

My teacher assigned us a project: prepare a speech for Wednesday that is five minutes long. The subject? Something that you know. Okay, that's a bit vague, so I went through a lot of subjects trying to think of one that would be interesting and wouldn't require doing too much research on the internet. My first thought, of course, was microbiology! I know about that! But most other people don't want to know about that, plus I'd have to look up a bunch of French words. Researching a French composer, or talking about how America separates federal and state governments would also take a lot of research. So last night I finally picked a project: the University of Wisconsin-Madison!

As I was looking up historical facts and famous people that attended, I started to miss UW a lot. I guess I'm glad it's my last week of classes, and I might be ready to come back to the US, but I am savoring my last few days in France. I'm going to bring pictures of the campus and of Bucky to show my class, and will wear a Wisconsin t-shirt so I can show them what school spirit is. Apparently that is not a world-wide thing. Even the Canadian schools lack mascots, and people don't really care about school sports unless it's soccer and then they'd rather cheer for their city.

My classes on Thursday will be normal, but the grades will already be turned in. Friday we still have to go to the Institute but are having breakfast in our classes and saying good-byes. My train to Paris leaves in the early evening, and I'll have to take the metro to where I'll be staying for the weekend. I plan on doing some touristy things, and have a few friends also staying in the city for the weekend so I won't be entirely alone. I'll be flying back to the US on Sunday at 11am Paris time (4am Central Time). Thoughts and/or prayers are appreciated!