To Be Erasmus

Oh, to be erasmus. That's what Parisians call exchange students, and practically speaking it means we get the chance to participate in some pretty cool things (also, significantly lower or free entrance rates!). There's a company here that designs trips especially for students who want to see more of France on a budget, which is what I did this past weekend. I was so fortunate to have a wonderful group to travel with and fantastic weather all weekend (between about 18 and 24 for both days). Without further ado, here's some highlights...

First stop: Rouen

Pan de bois (wood and earth) houses, which Rouen is famous for.

This is the site where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

And here's where she was held prisoner before her execution.

Part of the daily market. It smelled so good there!

Yep, that's a slice of chocolate pie. Delicious.

Clock in the middle of town.

La cathédral de Notre-Dame de l'Assomption de Rouen. Equally as impressive as Notre-Dame de Paris, in my opinion. I have no idea how they were able to carve such delicate pieces out of stone, but the whole cathedral was so intricately carved. There was just so much to look at.

Going inside. Look at how thin the stone work is, and then think about the hundreds of years it's been there. Crazy isn't it?

The front left side of the cathedral. There was restoration work being done on the other side, which seems to be a constant thing in Europe.

Next stop: Honfleur

This is where Samuel de Champlain left to go explore the New World. Most explorers and early settlers left from Honfleur, actually, which was pretty neat to think about. I was just thinking of Mom most of the time we were there because it reminded me so much of some of the small towns in Nova Scotia. Also, the apple cider from this region is fantastic if you ever get a chance to try some.

Walking along the pier.

Such great people!

The church. Once you're inside the ceiling looks like a flipped over boat, which I guess is fitting for a maritime town.

More from the waterfront :)

 And then there was Deauville...

Probably the highlight of the day because who gets to eat ice cream on the beach in France at the beginning of March. I mean, really. It was so cool!

Mmm. Waffle cones are the norm, apparently!

There were so many sailboats

Let's be honest, the water was absolutely frigid. But who goes to the beach and doesn't test out the water?

This is where Coco Chanel's first shop was. It's just a small part of the street that's now full of designer shops.

More of the traditional style houses. A bit different looking than the ones in Rouen, but built with the same materials.

Getting closer to sunset, but we left before then for our hotel.

We stayed the night in Caen, which looked like a pretty average town based on my Canadian standards. The town was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War, so that's why the architecture is so familiar. Things were rebuilt for utility rather than beauty. We checked into the hotel, ate dinner, slept, and then left the next morning.

Sunday we spent at Mont Saint Michel. For anyone planning on visiting France, you should add this place to your list of things to see. Really. It was incredible!

Basically this is an abbey built on a massive rock that sticks up out of the salt flats/flood plains. I have no idea how they would have managed to build this... the sandy areas all around it are accessible only if you take a guided tour because there's so much quick sand. People who would go on a pilgrimage to Mont Saint Michel had to make it through the quick sand and changing tides. If they died along the way, which a lot of people did, it was the general consensus that they weren't good Christians so that's why they died. Luckily now there's a road with shuttle buses that got us there quite safely.

Here's the far away view from the bus.

Us and our group of friends from church. It was so nice to be able to get to know all these people better!

The streets were pretty tiny, but there was lots to see!

Inside the church.

View of the Abbey from the street.

There was just so much empty space there. So refreshing, especially for those of us who were getting a little tired of city life

Some of the watch towers along the wall.

Courtyard in the abbey

And some of the gardens. I was actually surprised at the amount of greenery there given how small the island is.

So that was our trip! Coming back to Paris took longer than expected since so many people had gone out of the city to enjoy the nice weather. After all that sunshine, fresh air and walking we were all pretty tired out for the ride home so most people ended up sleeping for a bit at least. All in all I couldn't have asked for a better weekend and I'm so glad to have had the opportunity to go on this trip!

School Things and Touring...

Hey! So I was thinking that it's been over a week since I last posted anything. And then I checked the date and it's been much longer than that. So sorry for the delay!

School is now in full swing, and I certainly was there a lot this past week. Four days a week I have my grammar class from 8-10:30. This week all the other classes started though. And by "all the other classes" I mean my phonetics lab and the conference (lecture) courses. The phonetics lab is one hour every day, but only every other week, so this week I started my first ever phonetics course! Basically the prof says a few words, we repeat them, then she says the same words and adds a few more on to make it a longer phrase. It builds up to full sentence that we just say from memory and then she gets each person in the class to repeat it aloud individually. The class is designed to work on fluidity and linking together words better when we speak. We're also working on putting the emphasis on the right syllables in order to help lose some of our English accent. So it's all pretty interesting to me and sometimes it's quite the mouth work out.

But the biggest part of my week was taken up with the conference courses. I only have to take 3 this semester (each one runs for 2 hours once a week) but at the beginning we're encouraged to go to a lot of them to see which ones we like the most. So I ended up going to 7, all at the beginning of the week. By Wednesday evening I had already done 21 class hours If you're thinking to yourself "holy, that's a lot of class time!" then you and I are thinking the same thing. All of our classes are taught in French (quelle surprise!) so I have to pay close attention in order to be able to follow what's going on.

What were the highlights of the courses? Well, there's an entire class that talks about the Palace of Versailles which was actually super interesting and the prof was fantastic! I thought the topic was too narrow to be interesting, but turns out I was wrong. There's also a literature and cinema course that looks at film adaptations of novels which I really enjoyed. And the third course to make my favorites list is called "Gastronomie, terroir, et culture." Confession time. I didn't look up those first two words before going to the class so I was expecting something about some sort of warfare (gastronomie sounded violent to me), terror (terroir) and how it's impacted French culture... Turns out it's a course about food, so that was a happy surprise. I must say I felt a little silly when I realized that "gastronomy" is an English word which I should have recognized.

So that's school in a nutshell. I'm learning lots and am working at finding more opportunities to speak French. You'd think it would be easy, but most people in the residence speak English (including my room mate) so it's actually a bit of a challenge. But don't worry, school hasn't been taking up all of my time...

I've been to see Notre Dame de Paris...

Such a beautiful day!

The windows were incredible!

I think the sign said this one is 10 meters across.

And we got to walk along the top to see these guys :)

This was right before my camera died. I will definitely go back to get more pictures from on top of the bell tower!

And we went to La Congiergerie, which was a palace/fortress at one point and then was used as a prison during the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette had her own special cell there. The rest of the cells were super small and there were so many people in there that a lot of them ended up dying from sickness before making it to the guillotine. 

The Hall of the Soldiers is the oldest surviving Medieval part of the building and was one if the biggest ever built. The 2000 staff had to eat somewhere I guess.

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One of the Guard's rooms.

Sainte-Chapelle

The Women's Courtyard

Of course with spikes so nobody could get out.

This is where they could wash their clothes.

Clock outside the building

And the view of la Conciergerie from the bridge. It's a pretty impressive building!

So that's what I've been up to lately! This weekend coming up I'm headed to Normandy and Mont Saint-Michel, so I'll have more to share soon! If you think I've left anything out just leave a comment and let me know. Take care everyone!