Downtown

Hey everybody. I took a day off yesterday on 9/11 for some personal reflection. The somber kind, not the kind I do here.

Today was kind of the first day of school. Not really, but kind of. We had another day of orientation for USAC, learned how to fill out our OFII forms that say we can stay in the country, and had my visa shown off to the entire program as an example. So much for privacy, huh? Then I had a quick tour of the north end of the campus and saw the incredible rock-climbing facility. They had a rock wall larger than the gym at my old high school, which was pretty freaking huge. Finally, I had my first French “class,” which was a phonetics class. We sat at computers and repeated what we heard, just to get used to the sounds and rhythms of the French language. The teacher listened to my speaking ability and then handed me a French tongue twister that I have to recite in front of the class tomorrow:

Trois pensées, trois coquelicots, trois soucis

Trois soucis, trois roses, trois œillets

Les trois roses pour mon amie

Les trois coquelicots pour la petite fille si triste

Les trois pensées pour mon ami

Les trois soucis pour moi

Is it a bad sign when the teacher, who is a French native, can’t read the poem without getting tongue-tied?

Afterwards I went with the group on a walking tour of downtown Pau. The city as a whole is much newer than I expected and has many more commercial shopping chains than I expected. But despite that it still has a small town feel.

Outdoor shopping malls can be quite a relief on a hot day.

 Pau is known as being a royal city. It is home to Henri IV, the King of France. His family’s ancestral home is the Château de Pau. He was a protestant, as most of Pau was, and had to convert to Catholicism in order to reign over France. His famous quote is “Paris is worth a mass.” Another important family in the history of Pau is the Bernadotte family. Bernadotte became a general under Napoleon and later was made King of Sweden. The family still rules Sweden. So Pau, as small as it is, holds claim to two kings.

Yep, that's Bernadotte's house.

 The château is pretty cool. I didn’t get to go inside today, but I see one tower which is crenellated and looks likely to have access for me to walk up there. The problem with this one? The tower is made of brick. No castle is made of brick. Castles are made of stone. You’ll have to wait for me to tour the castle itself to get pictures of it.

Fancy looking, though.

 There’s a few churches in Pau, the most interesting looking is St. Martin’s. They’re  pretty recent, having been built in the 1700s. St. Jacques is now most famous for having lost its steeples in a storm in 1999, which are only now being replaced. But other than that, St. Jacques still looks a little odd, as it was built to look gothic, but it doesn’t have full-sized buttresses. Neither does St. Martin’s, but it doesn’t look quite as odd. Anyway, never mind my rambling, let’s get to some pictures.

St. Jacques has a flat-top.

St. Martin's looks much more like a proper cathedral, at least to me it does.

 Way back when I woke up this morning, I started talking to some of my classmates about making plans for this weekend. I said that I was considering going to Marseilles and also Avignon over the weekend. By the end of the day, I found out that a nuclear power plant suffered damage from an explosion near Avignon. There’s apparently no radiation leaks, but I think I should probably avoid the Avignon area for at least a couple of weeks. I guess that’s just my rotten luck. C’est la vie!