Wavering

I think I’m finally arriving at that point which I have always known was coming: the point at which I stop regularly updating this thing. I tried, I really did. And I’m continuing to try. But there’s just not a whole lot to talk about today. And really, I’ve got to say that I’m pretty impressed with myself for this whole thing so far. I mean, I’ve posted almost every day since I’ve been here. I figured I’d get lazy and stop doing it by the time I got to Pau. Instead, I’ve made it almost a whole month. So yeah, I’m going to be a little self-congratulatory.

I’ve had to talk quite a bit about Greek mythology in the past two weeks, with sprinklings of medieval literature and other things, so maybe I’ll start telling stories on this blog, just to keep it going. I’ve got quite a few good ones. Anyone interested? Or should I just embrace the laziness that comes with long days of French class?

Speaking of that, I’ve got to go to bed. Only six more hours until I have to wake up for another day of speaking French! I understand it pretty well, but I’ve got to say that by the end of the week, it just starts to sound like gibberish as my brain turns into mush. Anyway, night all!

Rough day

Today was the day my dorm room fell apart. Today was the kind of day that causes me to steal Stephanie’s favorite phrase just to describe it (note: see title). I spent 8 hours at school today and then walked straight to Leclerc to buy my dinner. When I finally got home it was totally dark, so I switched on the lights. One of them immediately blew out, leaving me with only the hot light that hangs directly over my head when making dinner. So I switched the lights off and switched the bulbs, and then the second bulb blew out. So now there’s no light in my room except for the kitchen work-light. Also, my kitchen sink has clogged and the pipes are leaking all over the cabinets underneath. So it’s been a dark, damp night. Tomorrow I’ve got to try and talk to the maintenance lady, if nothing else than just to get some light bulbs. Hopefully nothing else goes wrong in the meantime… and yes, I’m knocking on wood.

A case of the Mondays

Sorry for no post yesterday, but there wasn’t anything to post about. Today marks my first full month in France, and I feel that as much as I have done, I haven’t done enough. I’ve found out that my plans for this week won’t work out as I had hoped, so I’ll either do Carcassonne or Avignon, not both. It depends on who’s going to which city.

Today I had class, and the teacher gave us a sadistic project. We had to do research on certain cities that she listed. Places like Clermont, which is a place that I wanted to go but convinced myself it wasn’t important. So now, I really want to go to Clermont, and Rheims, and Lyon, and Grenoble, and Nice, and Marseille, and I think you get the point.

Also, I finally did my laundry today. I’m really getting pissed off at the Laundromat, they’ve only got two working dryers now, and there’s always at least four people doing laundry plus the lady who runs the place who also does laundry. So I carried my bag of laundry (which was 25lbs when dry) back to my room and hung up my laundry line finally.

Moments later, my doorbell rang and Stephanie was there. “Are you ready?” she asked. “For what?” I asked. “To go to Leclerc with me!” (See, we had had no plans to walk over to Leclerc, which is a Walmart type store, but this is the type of “spunky” person Stephanie is). So I walked over to Leclerc with the intention of finding dinner. But I didn’t. I did get oranges and orange juice, some eye hooks, a butter knife, and a multi-tool for doing things around the house. I ended up buying pizza for both Stephanie and I because we found a flyer with coupons for the pizza place while walking across the university parking lot. We talked over dinner and now I’m ready for bed.

MORE CHURCHES?!?!?!?!

I spent the day in Toulouse with my Art History professor, Bernard, and a handful of USAC students. Well, honestly, first I woke up at 6:00am after not having fallen asleep until 3:30am. That’s all thanks to the long nap I took yesterday. Anyway, I woke up, got out of bed, and took a shower. I didn’t drag a comb across my head because I don’t yet have enough hair, so no, it’s not a Beatles song. I knocked on Stephanie’s door and we were off.

Some travelers are poor but sexy. As for us, we're just sexy.

 I got some cash out of the ATM and Stephanie suddenly remembered that she left her necklace back at the dorm. So we had to head back, because apparently she feels uncomfortable without a necklace around her neck. By the time we got to the bus stop, we missed the bus. So now we had to walk all the way to the train station, which is only like a mile and a half away, but still… walking around downtown in the dark with no one around is kind of weird. Also, Stephanie was fretting that we wouldn’t make it to the train on time… she had never taken a train before and didn’t understand that we didn’t need to be there very early. At the train station we met up with some of the other students and with the sun rising, we embarked on our trip. Eight of us managed to nab one cabin in the train for ourselves, so the ride turned into 2½ hours of dirty jokes, gossip, and light-hearted insults.

Welcome to Toulous. To your right, you'll notice our Pizza Hut.

We finally pulled into Toulouse and immediately sighted our teacher. He was born in Toulouse, and his sister still lives there, so he drove into the city instead of riding the train with us. We started walking through town noticing some of the interesting modern architecture and statuary before arriving at the Place Capitolium, which was filled with pop-up tents for some type of local heritage celebration.

And also some weddings.

 Continuing on, we made a quick break for lunch before heading to L’Eglise Jacobin, the Jacobin monastery. While it’s a gothic-style abbey, the outside looks quite peculiar. It was very blocky and looked more like a Romanesque church than a gothic one, except that it had many large windows. Also, there were no flying buttresses, which are a staple of gothic architecture.

Like I said... weird looking.

 Once inside, all I could really muster was “what the heck?” Gothic cathedrals are known for having two rows of columns which border a central nave and create two open walkways. This abbey had one row of columns dividing it in half the long way. The main altar, instead of being at the far end of the abbey, was in the center of the abbey. But it did make for a very open, very bright church.

Still a bit weird.

 This abbey didn’t have much of note inside of it except for one item, the sarcophagus of St. Thomas Aquinas. “Who’s that?” you ask? Well I’ll tell you: he’s considered the greatest Christian philosopher of the middle ages. He’s the person who came closest to reconciling reason and faith, explaining that reason can only take a man so far, and beyond that is faith. He also played a large role in the importance of the Université de Paris and its flourishing reputation in the middle ages.

He must have been pretty short.

 This abbey also happened to have cloisters. While these cloisters were more complete than those at Bayonne, I thought they were aesthetically less pleasing. I don’t know what it is about brick, but it just doesn’t stand up to the impressiveness of stone.

At least their shrubberies are nice.

 These cloisters, as I said, were more complete than those at Bayonne. They included large and small scriptoriums (where monks would translate and/or copy books) as well as living quarters for the monks and abbot (which were not open to us).

A nice multi-level effect.

 After the monastery, we moved on to a hôtel, a house of one of the bourgeois families of Toulouse. It had a grand central courtyard with a gallery overlooking it. It also had a tower, for no other reason than to show off the families wealth and importance.

Because what better way to show off your importance than a large phallic symbol?

 We took a short break near the Office of Tourism (which happened to be situated in a medieval keep or donjon. At this point our teacher explained on a map the route we had taken through the city and the direction we would head next.

And because Bernard's awesome, he totally jumped the fence and climbed through the bushes to do it.

 We headed off to Basilique Saint-Sernin, a Romanesque church. This was one of the older style cathedrals, built in the style of the old Roman basilicas, as the name suggests. This means thick walls, small windows, and little light.

...and no pointy arches in the ceiling.

 Bernard scored us free access to the déambulatoire and crypts, where all of the religious reliquaries were held (reliquaries are decorated cases which hold religious relics, which could include the bodies or body parts of saints). I’ve never been in the crypt of a cathedral before, so this was another first for me. It was pretty cool, and creepy.

Lots of dead people down there.

 Among the reliquaries were the tomb of St. Saturnin, a shard of the “True Cross,” and chests holding items dedicated to several other saints. There were also stone-carvings of Christ, two apostles, and four angels which were impressive.

And Jesus is my homeboy, too.

 After this church, we left Bernard and spent about an hour wandering about town. The city reminded me a lot of Florence, not only for its brick buildings and terra-cotta roofs, but for the pedestrianized streets, large bustling crowds, and interesting small stores. We caught the train back to Pau and finally made it home. It was a long day.

And I ran out of good pictures of Toulouse, so here's Angie, Jennifer, and the back of Stephanie's head.

 I escorted Alejandra over to the pizza place and then had spaghetti with Stephanie and Elizabeth. Tomorrow I plan on sleeping in late, doing my laundry, and probably posting this. But for now, I’m going to go pass out.

Sweet, Sweet Slumber

Finally, Friday! I had two classes today, and I got chewed out for talking to a neighbor while the teacher was trying to explain the answer to a question. The problem is that the teacher asked the girl sitting next to me, who wasn’t paying attention and just answered “no” without knowing what the question was. She looked confused, and as the teacher started explaining the answer, I told the girl what we were talking about. Which drew the ire of the teacher: “Shelby, you can’t give her the answer until she understands why the answer is that way. Don’t try to do my job for me. She won’t learn unless she understands the reason for it.” It’s my firm belief that while the teachers here all seem pretty nice, they can turn bitchy really quick.

Speaking of Quick, I went there for a burger between classes and have come to the conclusion that it is in fact not very quick. I stood in line for 25 minutes because, unlike in America where you order your fast food and are given an order number so you can pick up your food when it’s ready, in France you continue standing at the cash register until your meal is ready. Which means no one else can order. Which means service is really slow. I was almost late to class for a small burger and no fries.

Last night I got a phone call from some horrible solicitor back in California, which isn’t supposed to be possible. There’s only 4 or 5 phone numbers which should be able to reach my phone at this point. And the call woke me up at 1:30. I fell asleep at 1, was awake from 1:30-2:30 because of the solicitor, and then woke up at 7 to go to class. So by 3 o’clock, I was pretty freaking tired. I decided to take a short nap, about an hour or two, before heading off to the Laundromat to do my laundry so I don’t stink when I head out to Toulouse tomorrow. My nap ended up being about 5 hours, which meant that most stores were closed and the Laundromat was about to close. So I did a little bit of laundry in the bathroom sink, and hopefully it will dry by tomorrow.

Now that I think of it, tomorrow I’ll be up really early and spend the whole day in Toulouse, so I won’t be able to post this. But I guess on Sunday you’ll get this and a bunch of pictures from Toulouse, so I guess you’ll just have to deal with it.