wooooooooooo

So coming back from Spain was a little rough. My first day back I had an intimidating presentation to give, a whole bunch of packages to pick up from the post office and lug around town, and it was pouring freezing rain. I was no longer in Spain. I was back in France. And suddenly, my entire plan of going to Uganda started to unravel, because I realized I had no money and no vaccinations and not a lot of time to fix everything.

Luckily a lot of good things happened to turn the tide. I went out to dinner with some visiting officials from Notre Dame... they treated us to spectacular French cuisine and it was a really fun night. Some of my friends bought a frisbee, so that helped. Facebook chat happened, and I don’t even care what people think, I think it’s great since I have no skype. And then, the weather became marvelous. So after, France and I were on good terms again.

I’ve spent a lot of the last couple days outside since il faisait beau. Angers has a lot of parks, but I hadn’t explored many of them. One night, I went with some friends to a park between the chateau and the river, and one guy brought his guitar, and it was lovely. The next day, Gloria organized a trip to the Cointreau factory for us... I didn’t know what Cointreau was, but apparently it’s pretty famous. Annnd it’s made in Angers, so we trekked over to watch a film about it and then have free cocktails. When I first tried it, it burned my throat and almost made me cry. It’s this 40% alcohol, so I mean, maybe that was why. But then we made “cointreaupolitans,” which I just think is a really funny word, and it was better. All of the alcohol factories in France love to make movies about themselves. When we visited a winery earlier this year, we watched a movie there too – and both it and the Cointreau movie ended with shots of smiling, happy people enjoying the beverage of choice. The wine one was funny because it just basically showed teenagers being belligerent after trying the wine. The Cointreau one tried to show sexy yuppies enjoying Cointreau. I’ve enjoyed imitating both movies:

We had a picnic later that afternoon, a French-American affair complete with fromage, wine, and hot dogs. There were people playing gypsy music at a neighboring picnic, and I played some frisbee and basketball, complete with franglais trash talking. Good times. We also randomly saw a yak in the park. I don’t know if that’s like a special zoo-like attraction, or if yaks roam wildly in France. But whatever, I saw a yak!

The beginning of May is full of little French holidays... marked mostly by the fact that everything shuts down. I’ve noticed more strikes lately, namely the newspaper strike. Luckily it was only two days long, but I still managed to miss the fact that a cyclone hit Burma. I’ve found that the best way to deal with these holidays where everything shuts down is to stay out really late the night before and sleep through half of the next lazy day.

I’ve been trying to visit some more “local” things...well, actually, I’m also poor, so staying in the area is a good idea. But I visited Nantes, the biggest city near Angers, last Saturday. Like Angers, Nantes has a castle... but unlike Angers, Nantes has a tram. Angers is getting a tram right now... it’s kind of a big deal here, and all of the bus lines have been disrupted so tram construction can begin. In the midst of the tram digging, they keep finding random human skeletons in the ground. Full grown and preserved people. Little babies. It’s creepy as shit. But anyway, the Nantes tram was cool, and there are no dead people by it. Nantes was cool too. There was a random Japanese island in the middle of the city, a giant robotic elephant, and a castle. There are always castles.


But anyway, the next day I went to Brussels for a school trip. I honestly didn’t see much of the city, because we were in the European Union the whole day, but that was pretty cool so it was okay. It was my birthday!! My 21st birthday. Never in my wildest, craziest, minor dreams had I imagined that was how I would spend the big 2-1. At the European Parliament, baby! Gloria bought me a Belgian beer and I drank it once we got back to Angers. I also had a Belgian waffle... in BELGIUM!

One of my favorite memories of the European Union came right at the beginning of our tour. Luckily, our tour guide was British... I mean, I’m all for speaking French and learning, but I know I miss a lot when we go to tours in French. But this one was in English, yay! Anyway, our distinguished and sassy British tour guide told us we could take pictures on the tour, but not in the meetings we attended. So we start walking and he stops to talk to someone in front of some mailboxes. These mailboxes were divided among all the different countries. I guess they were kind of cool. But my friend Scott got really excited and ran up to take pictures of the mailboxes. Our tour guide kind of looked at him but then was like whatever kid, take pictures of the mailboxes and kept talking. But then! Some dude comes out of nowhere and accosts Scott and makes him erase the pictures of the mailboxes. A picture of a mailbox is not just a picture of a mailbox is not just a picture of a mailbox... in the European Union. Security breach!!!! We almost got kicked out of Belgium. Not really. Almost.